A soft collision of breath
One of my favorite composers is Max Richter. To me, he is the father of post-classical music (sometimes referred to as post-minimalism or neo-classical). The magic of his work—take “On the Nature of Daylight,” for example—is that it’s simple enough to let the listener in, leaving space for their own interpretations and emotions.
In a way, Hans Zimmer does this too. His epic piece “Time” is a masterclass in post-minimalism; it’s a simple, repetitious chord progression with an uncomplicated melody woven through. My goal for “A soft collision of breath” was to capture that same spirit.
Technically, I’ve always loved “slash chords,” where the bass note differs from the body of the chord (like D/F# or C/E). They create a light, unsettled tension compared to the stability of a standard root position. Gustavo Santaolalla uses D/F# in nearly every one of his instrumental guitar pieces, but while I’ve always been a fan of C/E, I’ve struggled to find a home for it in my own writing. For this track, I decided to simply start the song with C/E and let my ear develop the rest of the piece from there.
The title itself follows my love for long, poetic names, often inspired by the poems of Pablo Neruda. While many artists today use unconventional capitalization to stand out, I really dig what Max Richter did on the Hamnet soundtrack by using standard sentence case. It makes the title feel far more considered and poetic. Thus, we have: “A soft collision of breath.”
You can find this piece on all streaming services:
How to play “A soft collision of breath” | fingerstyle guitar
The guitar tab for this piece is beautifully written across a single page. I recommend this song for beginner guitar players and up as the chord shapes are really easy to play.
Enjoy! The guitar tab is available below:
My song structure looks like this, in accordance with the guitar tab:
Verse 4x, Chorus
Verse 4x, Chorus 2x
End
[guitar tab] **A soft collision of breath | fingerstyle guitar
This piece is tuned one whole step down, then dropping the 1st string and additional whole step: D G C F A C.
You can also play it in standard tuning, dropping the 1st string one whole step: E A D G B D