The Strings of Life walking-entry stab

One note, four bars, and it lands a sixteenth later in every bar. Bar one on the "e" of one, bar two on the "and", bar three on the "a", bar four on the "e" of two. It never lands on a beat, and the walk is the figure.

The note is the key’s fifth, and it does not move. The chords under it move, I to vi to IV to V, and the same note becomes the fifth, then the seventh, then the ninth, then the root. Four meanings of one pitch, and the fourth is the one that resolves the idea.

Do not add a note in bar four to push the figure back round. Over the V it is the root, and the next bar makes it a colour again. A line that refuses to move while the harmony changes under it four times is the point.

Play it short. Lift the hand within an eighth, so the space after each note is longer than the note itself. The gap is as much of the figure as the hit.

Leave the chords to whatever holds them. The stab plays its one note and nothing under it, and the bass and the pad supply the four roots that give it its four names.

Accent the first note and play the other three evenly. One accent a phrase is enough to say where the four bars start.