Bow by James Varghese

«Bow» is not the first song I finished but it's the first one I started so to me it's "my first song" and for this reason holds a very special place in my heart:

In 2019 I got a carte blanche from the city of Zurich to play a concert as part of the legendary Stadtsommer series. I initially wanted to play a set with one of my existing bands, with my friends. But since none of them had time on that date I had to find an alternative. It was then that I decided to start my solo project!

I started working on music but found everything to be boring and/or pretentious. As the weeks passed I started to get nervous and was already thinking about cancelling this amazing opportunity.

During this time I was living in Bow and after a night out I remember sitting at my laptop just clicking random notes of a G major chord into the step sequencer and sending them to my Juno synthesizer. I pressed play and let the sequencer loop through the first two bars: I immediately felt like I had discovered gold! This was it! The sound combined with the swing of the sequence was the first piece of interesting music I had produced in months! And listening back to it now it was probably not that amazing but I heard what the song could develop into.

I spent hours putting in notes with the help of the trackpad and trying to generate an interesting path for the melody to take. It felt like I was putting together a mosaic with every note contributing to the bigger picture. When the sun came up I think I had the first 8 bars done. It then took me about a year to finish the rest.

It doesn't feel like I composed this song. It's more like a discovery I made that then lead me down a path that was already layed out and I just had to put the pieces together.

Tracklist

1.	Bow	5:35

Credits

released November 9, 2022
Music by James Varghese
Mixed by Jan Wagner
Mastered by Zino Mikorey
Artwork by Bahar Büyükkavir

License