I wrote this rock instrumental for a Sync or Swim Songwriting and Recording Challenge in September 2023. In SWARC you have one week to write and record a song or instrumental based on an emotional prompt. This particular week's prompt was "Tension."
So "Fight or Flight" has a kind of spy-rock vibe. I was imagining this would be music you would hear behind a movie chase scene or fight scene.
I usually try to give myself a particular focus in SWARC creations, and in this one I was trying to create a full, meaty guitar sound by playing the part three times with three different effects. There's one that's a sixties sounding crunch guitar, another that's more of a heavy fuzz sound, and a third that has a lot of delay and other effects that makes it sound almost like a synth.
I wanted the piano to sound kind of anxious and un-nerving, so I just sort of banged on it in a high octave and put a lot of reverb and delay on it. I remember I put down the whole piano part in about 5 minutes when I was about to run out the door for work.
My favorite thing about this piece is the time signature. It's in 7/4, which is a music-nerd time signature that most people wisely avoid because it tends to sound off-kilter, as if you forgot to play a beat every once in a while. Which, however, also makes it a good place to go when you are trying to create emotional tension with your music.
I really like odd time sigs like this, and one of my personal musical challenges to myself is to write things in odd times that don't SOUND like they are in odd times. Good role models in this regard would be, for example, Dave Brubeck's "Take Five" or Pink Floyd's "Money," both of which are perfectly groovy despite having unusual meters.
So I like the fact that, when "Fight or Flight" gets going, it rocks along quite nicely even though it's doing it on a seven-beat structure.