Beat Me

“Beat me, Beat me softer, Beat me faster, Beat me harder, Just beat me!” I wrote ‘Beat Me’ as a kind of sequel or big brother piece to my earlier composition 'Black & Blue'. I guess if you put them together, you get Beat Me Black & Blue! (See also 'Slap Me' and 'Rock Me' for the complete series). This work extends the idea of the alto piece and makes use of different kinds of slap tonguing to simulate bass guitar, multiphonics to simulate the I, IV, V progression from ‘Wild Thing’ made famous by Jimi Hendrix, more distortion to emulate the electric guitar, an extended circular breathing passage that is reminiscent of digideroo playing and of course an extended drum solo overlaid with a bass guitar riff. This was my first composition to explore the idea of getting the saxophonist to do more than one thing at time – sing and play, play notes while beating the keys and play notes and harmonics simultaneously etc. Beat Me has been widely performed around the world and is particularly popular in Germany and the USA.