Halloween being the season for spooky and creepy things, I had planned for my October Patreon piece to be about spiders. My favorite spiders are Orb spiders, which build large, lovely, and intricate outdoor webs. The cover image is an Orb web, covered in dewdrops and glittering in the morning sun; the artist herself crouches in the center of her masterpiece, patiently waiting for her breakfast to join her. I chose this image because I thought it was gorgeous; I didn’t consider whether it would sound spooky enough. (It was a spider on a spiderweb… and all the Halloween marketing says spiders are totally creepy. What could go wrong??)

Well, as I so often do, I put the image on my music stand and began to play what I saw — improvising based on the colors and the lines in the image. However, I quickly realized that this was not going to be a spooky, creepy, dark Halloween piece after all. Instead, it’s a glorious, colorful celebration of the beauty of an Orb spider’s creation: The Web.

In this (not at all spooky) piece, the guitar catches the glittering dewdrops and the intricate lines of the spiderweb. And, instead of evoking the darkness of a Halloween night, the cellos sing of the deep dark greens and teals of the evergreen branches and the brilliant blue, gold, and russet of the morning light. The (not at all creepy) Orb spider, a red-black dot in the center of her web, is barely noticeable in the image, although she is at the focal point. She’s in the music too, albeit subtly: her color makes her a “B” to my synesthesia, so she appears throughout all the verses as the quietly dissonant B (sus2) in all the Asus2 chords, as well as the 5th in the E major chords. The choruses express the blues and greens of the evergreen and the sky, but we always return to that subtle, patient Asus2; and that little B, that small and patient spider, is always there, right at the center of her web.

I really wanted to give my Patrons a nice dark spooky song for Halloween… Instead… well… at least it has a spider in the middle?

Cello: Betsy Tinney