Ron Jarzombek - Solitarily Speaking Of Theoretical Confinement
Mr. Kitty 2002
Release date - December 10, 2002

All Music by Ron Jarzombek
Produced, Mixed and Engineered by Ron Jarzombek

Ron Jarzombek - Guitars, Bass and Programming
Roland Emessy I - Strings and Synths
Prodeus Effecks - Piano, Harp, Bells, marimba, B3 and Chinese Gong
Dee Fore - Drums and Percussion

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So what does "SOLITARILY SPEAKING OF THEORETICAL CONFINEMENT"
mean, and why is it the title of this CD?

Well, at first I was going to title this solo CD "AAHHH!" (as a follow-up to
PHHHP!), but that didn't quite explain the concept that I had in mind. I wanted
to take common phrases and literally capture them with musical themes and
notes. For instance, "To B Or Not To B" would have one musical theme only
using the note B, then another theme would use all of the notes except B;
"Having Second Thoughts" would only use Major and Minor 2nd intervals;
"Gimme 5" would be all quintuplets, in 5/4 time, in the keys of B Major
(5 sharps) and Db Major (5 flats); "Minor Yours" would be only minor chords;
"Spelling Bee" would repeatedly spell out BEE in notes; "9 to 5" would be
all 9 #5 chords moving from frets 9 to 5, with the measures going from 9/8
to 5/8; and "Tri, Tri Again" would be all triplets, in 3/4 time, in the keys
of A Major (3 sharps) and Eb (3 flats), using only triads. Now of course I
could solo and play melodies everywhere, but for the themes I'd have to
follow the specifications indicated by the titles. I've always been partial
to writing music based on theory, numbers, patterns, actions, etc... and it
seemed like it would be fun to try to follow such strict guidelines.
But would this be too "confining" for an entire CD? I figured that if my
brother Bobby and I could write a 4 1/2 minute song with only two notes
("See and It's Sharp" - from "Ink Complete") , then it must be possible to
come up with a few musical themes for each of these phrases. But a whole
40-74 minute CD? Why not?! What if I wanted to go outside these "rules"
and just come up with music that sounded cool and interesting? Nope, we're
talking about discipline and persistence here...

After deciding to go ahead with this idea, the main problem was that I had
too many song titles. The first day I came up with 31! AAHHH! Typically, that
would mean writing about 3 or 4 CDs. I just wanted to do ONE full length CD!,
but I really wanted to use lots of titles. Hhhmmm... And having 2 seconds
between all of the songs would be very annoying, so why not make the CD
continuous? I finally ended up with about 50 titles to work with, but now I had
to come up with the music. So let's see... A whole progressive instrumental
CD, based on these musical theories and phrases, and all of the songs
running into each other? How "radio-friendly" can I get?

A few weeks into the writing of this material, it was too obvious that the
CD should not be entitled "AAHHH!". "THEORETICALLY SPEAKING" was a
more fitting title for the collection of songs, but it just didn't have enough
character. Then I thought of the fact that this was a solo effort. Several
words that came up were "single", "individual", "alone", "one and only", and
"solitary". "Solitary"?? As in "SOLITARY CONFINEMENT"? That sounds
pretty cool, but it doesn't have much to do with me and this music. I mean,
sure I'm locked away all by myself in my room writing and putting this
together, but it's not that bad! I'm not confined, but the THEORY and rules
are very CONFINING! Wait a minute!... How about mixing up
"THEORETICALLY SPEAKING" with "SOLITARY CONFINEMENT"?

And that's how I came up with perfect title...

'SOLITARILY SPEAKING OF THEORETICAL CONFINEMENT'