I started this short quartet piece earlier this year.   For some reason, I was obsessed for a short time with quintuplets.   That is to say, five beats over four.  I noticed that they show up pretty infrequently in music, but they're actually kind of fun and interesting to hear.   I realized one day that I could play quintuplets on drums, playing five beats on the snare drum against four beats on the bass drum.   After that, I started thinking about melodic ideas that might work with that rhythm.  The melodies I came up with were actually quite nice.

Download Precipice (Part I)

When I started this piece, I thought it would be a gold mine for ideas and development.  In fact, it turned out to be under two minutes long!  I've been coming back to it periodically, in the hopes that something else would happen, but it actually feels complete as is.  It just doesn't want to develop itself beyond this.  So I will leave it be.  I put "part I" in the title because I still think I might come back to this idea later.   Or maybe to remind myself that I ought to.

You will hear quarter and eighth note quintuplets, as well as other funny rhythms throughout this short quartet.  I tried hard to make them sound natural, rather than jarring.  What do you think?  I had also tried some sixteenth-note quintuplets, but they sounded a bit too much like a Looney Tunes cartoon, so I threw that part away.

The title refers to a conversation I had with a coworker about what true happiness is.    He told me that, for him, happiness is stability, comfort, and knowing what to expect each day.  I replied offhandedly that happiness for me is stepping of the precipice into unfamiliar territory, challenging myself to discover new things.  It actually surprised me that I said that, because I didn't really realize I felt that way!   So I decided I need to be more deliberate about stepping off that precipice more often.