Night Sledding - What's the Story?

Danamaria Detrick Night Sledding

I'm a bit of an eclectic composer, inspired by everything from Eno to Bartok. For this track, I wanted to clearly invoke things like the pictures of scenes I got from pieces like Claude Debussy's "The Snow is Dancing" and Erik Satie's "Gymnopedie No. 1" (though I prefer the sparseness of the solo piano arrangement, the strings in the prior example really illustrate where I went with my tale a bit more). I like composing with real and unreal (surreal?) sounds and instruments, so I brought that element in, too.

Being predominantly a guitarist, but not using guitar as the lead here, I wanted to incorporate it in a non-traditional, unexpected way. I went with an almost percussive accompaniment role for it, giving just a little bit of low-end to an otherwise treble-heavy piece for me (I didn't want anything to compete with the cello, so I left any sort of traditional bass completely off).

There's some odd layering and repetition that's staggered, but ultimately, all of those details don't matter. The story does.

In my mind's "painter's" eye, I wanted the light of the moon shining off of snow to be the source light for the children trickling slowly onto the cold slope. I wanted the crystalized crispness of the air to take the listener's face off-guard, freezing tear ducts and noses, raising scarves up just a little bit over their chin. Gradually, warmth builds between the body heat of multitudes of children huddling together in the repeated treks up and down the hill, and all discomfort is forgotten in the magic of the quick journey down, with laughing and distant barking and that indescribable sound of snowfall as the soundtrack.

In the end, there's one last child straggling back, heading toward home as the traces of precipitation are only faintly visible nearest the glow of the streetlight. The listener can sense that, in the lone child's mind, they are still playing out that last pass down the hill, and preparing for the next snowball fight as they will soon be snuggled under covers, heading off to dreamland. Or were they already there all along?

~Dana(maria) Detrick