Layers.  Stacks.  Platters.  Records.  Music.  It’s a word association game played in my head that invariably ends up leading to music.  To a classically trained musician, layers comprise the texture of music and determine whether the piece is monophonic, polyphonic or homophonic.  I’m not a classically trained musician, so my image of music layers is mainly limited to a stack of vinyl records sitting on a phonograph spindle waiting for their chance  on a spinning turntable to impress a pair of ears.

A surrealistic interpretation of a record stack was created for the cover of a Rolling Stones album, Let It Bleed.

If you examine all the layers stacked on that record-changer spindle you’ll likely see a cake plate, an open reel tape canister labeled “Stones – Let It Bleed,” a clock face, a pizza, a small tire and an elaborately decorated cake, complete with miniature figures of the band members.  Now those are some layers!

As for the music inside that cover?  Definitely melody-dominated homophonic layers of voices, guitars, drums, piano and more.  I’d love to write more, but I’m lying in bed under a layer of sheets, drifting off to sleep.  Sometimes there are just too many layers to think about and besides, You Can’t Always Get What You Want.