The An Ending (Ascent) pad

Eight chords, sixteen bars, one note each. The line climbs by step from the fifth of the first chord to the root of the seventh, then leaps a minor third to the peak over the last, and stops. Nothing comes back round.

Every note enters on the bar head with its chord and holds until the chord moves. No late entries, no notes pushed ahead: the line moves exactly when the harmony does, and the slowness is the whole of the feel.

Two notes are a fourth above the chord and stay there: the key’s seventh over the first iv and its sixth over the last III. Neither resolves. Leave them hanging; the second is the last thing the figure says.

Voice the chords so that the key’s root and third stay put. Between them they are in four of the five chords, and going from the first to the second, the second to the third, and the sixth to the seventh, one note moves by a step while the chord changes name.

The seven steps before the peak should be uneventful. If the leap to the top note does not feel like an arrival, something before it was too busy.

Slow attack, slow release, and let each note still be swelling when the next chord arrives under it. A little vibrato reads as breath; none at all reads as an organ.