The Great Wave – 2/9/26
My favorite artist is Winslow Homer, whose marine paintings often depict the north Atlantic hammering the rocky coast of Maine. Through that lens, the marine woodcuts of Hokusai are readily accessible to someone oblivious to the nuances of Edo woodcuts as I am. So I am naturally enamored of The Great Wave off Kanagawa.
Being a mathematician by trade, it is apparent that Hokusai’s use of perspective and form in the Wave enjoy a certain ingrained mathematical harmony. So for example, a Fibonacci curve can be superimposed on the Great Wave. There are a number of ways that I have seen this attempted. Here is one:
I wrote “The Great Wave” 40 years ago, and par for my MO, I have revised and reworked it a good bit for this incarnation. Every time I play it it is different, and over the years the song’s title has changed too. I rearrange the bits and pieces as the spirit moves me, I experiment with phrasing and dynamics and there are also a couple spots that allow for improvisation.
I recorded this version on a 1992 Taylor 555c in a kind of odd dropped tuning (BF#BF#G#C#) that I use for maybe 30 – 40 of my songs. The piece is kind of a bear to get decently right, so for this recording I cut myself some slack and swapped in some light gauge strings to be able to play the main theme cleanly. It was a knuckle buster to manage on the usual John Pearce medium set I use.
It is also my Tiny Desk 2026 contest entrant, this is the fifth year I have submitted a piece to the NPR Tiny Desk contest. I tried to record it outdoors on the terraza, but it was too breezy, so I settled for the bedroom instead. I hope you like the tune!