User:LowSelfEstidle/Private Parts & Pieces V: Twelve

Private Parts and Pieces V: Twelve is the tenth studio album by English multi-instrumentalist and composer Anthony Phillips. It was released in 1985 by PVC Records in the United States as the fifth instalment in his Private Parts & Pieces album series. In 1991, Virgin Records released the album in the United Kingdom.

Background and recording
In April 1984 Phillips released his previous album, Private Parts and Pieces IV: A Catch at the Tables, as the fourth instalment to his Private Parts & Pieces album series. Several months after its release Phillips decided to work on the fifth and gained inspiration from Trouble for Trumpets, a book by illustrator Peter Cross who had designed many of Phillips's earlier albums. Phillips had wanted to write a piece based on the book for several years, but it was not possible to do in conjunction with the book due to the limited time available. This left Phillips with the option to put out "a simple album" as the state of the music industry at the time left him unable to secure an advance from any major record label. He realised that he had not put down much guitar-oriented music for some time and instead used his ideas for Cross's project, which he had hoped to orchestrate, for the guitar, specificatlly 12-string acoustic guitar music.

When Phillips started to write the album, he started by deliberately choosing a "weird tuning" on his guitar, and decided to base the tracks around it. He soon ran into problems, however, because "If there are a lot of open strings, it is difficult to modulate into keys because you have to use barre shapes and barre shapes on a twelve string are very difficult". This limitation also caused difficulty in Phillips writing tracks with enough variation using the tuning he had set, which he feared would result in an album that is "not dull, but it is in one timbre" and with one instrument which listeners may find difficult to maintain interest.