As I near completion of my CD, I’m wondering, “Should I produce hardcopy discs for mailing, or should I just make the track available for download?” Most tracks would be free for the downloading and the remainder would be available for sale.

Posting the “liner notes” for the Promo CD here on my blog nudges me toward the download side, as I can put a bit more verbiage in electronic form than I could in a hardcopy distribution.

If you care to voice your preference, please post a comment.

The final track on my promo CD, Breakaway was one of those songs that occurred all in my head long before I sat down at the keys (as in both piano and QWERTY). I had just finished an early morning jog and was recovering on the floor of my front room. I heard it all: the opening bass synth; the horns; the bass solo; the ending crescendo. I just had to get it out of my head and into your ears.

I’ve read stories of how Mozart – at a very young age – could listen to a symphony, and then go home and write it out note for note. I lack that degree of memory. I had a hard enough time with 6 measures of musical dictation in college. Heck, I’d probably forget my own name if I didn’t see it in print (ID, mail, etc.) dozens of times every day. As for me, compositions and their arrangements often occur in my mind – in great detail – and then I try to recreate them in an audible way; audible to everyone else, that is. Please don’t think that I’m comparing myself in any way to the genius of Mozart. Let me return to Breakaway before I digress much further…

Although I had the song mapped out in my head, I tried to give it a live feel in the recording. That might be because I had recently seen a taping of John Tesh and his band performing at Red Rocks. I thought about throwing in some audience claps and whistles, but decided that would be slightly disingenuous, since it really wasn’t a live performance (duh!).

The inspiration? I can’t really say. Maybe it was my accelerated heart-rate after jogging. It just sort of happened. The title? It just felt like a breakaway to me; Struggling with a problem, a conflict, or other challenge and then breaking free from it in a triumphal sort of way. The minor (as in key) sections sort of represent the struggle, and the major sections (with the horns) reflect the triumphal part of things. Much like this mortal life, the two experiences often alternate. Sometimes you can taste victory in the midst of the struggle.

Euroclydon is just a plain fun track. I had been listening (and still do) to contemporary jazz fusion by other artists and wanted to try my hand at something similar.

I began with the somewhat syncopated piano riff and the drum part. I’m not a drummer, but I’ve played with enough of them to know what is possible with two hands and two feet. For example, unless you use your forehead, you cannot hit the hi-hat, snare, and a crash cymbal all at the same time. I take such things into account when programming drum parts. Since the drums were just not enough percussion for this track, I later added various percussion parts throughout the song, quite predominant on the breaks. So, if this song was performed by live players, both a drummer and a percussionist with congas, a triangle, a cow bell and even a vibraslap would be required.

The title? Well, given that it’s a driving tune, and the melody is played by a wind instrument, the name of a diving wind seemed like a good idea. “Hurricane” sounds like a 70’s rock tune, “Scirocco” like a Volkswagen, and “Tropical Storm Henrietta” just plain nerdy. “Euroclydon” is sufficiently exotic, esoteric, and enigmatic.

Miletus Shore began as a simple melody that I came up with about 20 years ago (yikes!) while playing my Roland Juno-106: my first polyphonic synthesizer. Since 6 notes of polyphony can somewhat limit one’s compositions, the melody remained unused for 2 decades.

More recently, with software and hardware synths and samplers, my available polyphony is on the order of hundreds of notes (not to mention thousands of timbres – whoops – I just did), I was able to expand that simple melody into a full-fledged composition.

As the piece was taking shape I was impressed with a melancholy, almost bittersweet sense about things. About the same time, I had read biblical account of the Apostle Paul’s final meeting with church elders from Ephesus (Acts 20:17-53). The passage is full of emotion, containing words of encouragement, exhortation, warning and sadness. It concludes with the participants doing a great deal of weeping. This text provided for me the basic structure and title of Miletus Shore (you can listen to it here).

Similar to the passage, the song begins with a melody that is somewhat of a long monologue, building with intensity as it progresses. The comes a point in the Paul’s address where he tells the elders that they will never see his face again. This is reflected in the song by the lonely, somewhat longing, string melody. The topic of the speech then turns from the Apostle’s own life and experiences to words of warning about the future. The music here builds into a rock instrumental – not so much that I was trying to exactly capture the emotional content of the text, but it seemed like a good place for a change of musical pace. After the rock portion, the song returns to its repeat theme only with similar intensity to the immediately preceding rock movement. I may have gone a little overboard with the tympani.

The Biblical passage concludes with an emotional farewell. More so than the sobering words of warning and exhortation that they have just received, the elders are left grieving over the thought that they will never see Paul’s face again. Here, the song concludes with the same lonely string melody first introduced corresponding to the moment when these words were uttered by Paul. If you squint and pretend a great deal, perhaps you can see the ship sailing away through teary eyes as you stand on the Miletus Shore.

About Heart’s Desire (Listen to it here)…

A few years back, I attended an event where singer/actress/speaker Ann Ault was performing. After one of her performances she mentioned a film project that she was embarking on and invited interested individuals to speak with her later. I suppose that she was mostly hoping to speak with prospective investors, but I introduced myself as a film music composer and we exchanged contact information.

After asking a few question about the basic story line, the main characters and the time period, I offered to compose a theme on the condition that I would get some honest feedback. Well, she loved it, and I was contracted to score the film. I believe that the film is still in the screenplay stage, so don’t be looking for tickets on Fandango anytime soon.

Since the story is essentially a romance, I decided to go with ¾ meter. When I think romance, I think waltz. When I think waltz, I think ¾. When I think feature film, I think orchestral. The true story revolves around a Japanese-American family. When I think Japanese, I think Shakuhachi – although I opted for flute. I also tossed in a gong and subtle Asian percussion for a subtle Asian flair.

The main melody came to me while sitting on the couch, thinking about the story. It immediately seemed so comfortable and familiar, I worried that perhaps I subconsciously plagiarized it from someone else’s composition. Maybe because the first four notes are a descending B major scale. I’m sure that I’ve played descending scales a few times in my lifetime.

The piece came together quite quickly. If I recall correctly, I completed the work in a few hours. Although really my first full-on orchestral composition, I still consider it my best orchestral work. It times like that make me feel that my musical ability is definitely more of a gift than a skill.

Although I composed this piece a few years ago, this latest recording was rendered using some better orchestral samples. No, it has not been performed by a live orchestra yet, but perhaps that will change when the film reaches post.

Next time: Milteus Shore

As promised, let me tell you something about how Nightfall came to take the shape that it has…

Since I find it easier to fall asleep listening to music, I often listen to my MP3 player in bed. Somewhat bored with my usual selections, I decided to compose my own nocturnal tunes. I started out with simple electric piano melody, and that vox pad that you hear at first. Well, after a few measures it was beginning to sound slightly eerie. For curiosity, I thought I’d give it that dark contemporary sound with the electric guitar. With the guitar’s bottom E tuned down to a D (to match the D minor key signature), it sounds a bit more ominous. With the addition of the guitar, the song was now headed in a very different direction, stylistically speaking.

I was still intent on the nocturnal theme; however, nighttime isn’t always that serene. Sometimes I’ll water my lawn in the evening, and early the next morning, there will be several little mushrooms that have popped up. It is amazing how much fungus can grow overnight. Mushrooms aren’t the only active creatures in the darkness. We have opossums that pass through our backyard and stray cats that come by our front porch. Nightfall brings on quite a bit of activity; All that to say that I liked the idea of keeping some of that dreamy nighttime feel with some significant activity. The few appearances of the zampona in this piece are meant to represent (albeit extremely vaguely) nighttime critters such as owls and howling wolves, as well as an evening breeze.

The second break (similarity to City Streets completely unconscious) in this tune – the shift from D minor to F major is more akin to the pleasant dreamlike style that I originally set out to achieve. Of course, after a few measures of the pipes and the vibes, I was kind of missing the electric guitar, so I had to throw that back in to quickly come back to where we started, so as not to have too severe a transition between movements.

Finally, since my Nightfall isn’t nearly as effective as Grieg’s Morning in conveying its namesake, I threw in the sound effects (crickets and other night creatures) to better hint at the objective.

Next Time: The making of Heart’s Desire (the song).

Okay - I lied. I thought that I might have more time today to post my commentary on the making of Nightfall.

However, today is my wedding anniversary - and rather than spend time in the blogoshpere, I think that it’s a much better idea to spend the rest of the day with my wonderful, beautiful wife of 13 years.

I’ll let you in behind the scenes on Nightfall tomorrow.

The first track on λογικος is City Streets (you can hear it here). The song began with a couple of loops that came with SONAR. I pulled these loops into a project, and when I listened to them together, I imagined time-lapsed film footage showing an aerial view of a Southern California freeway (US 101, near Hollywood, perhaps). In my minds eye, daytime turned to dusk, and then to night, as the lanes of speeding cars transformed into streams of red and white light – with the freeway lights reflecting on the glass of a nearby high-rise. Yes, just a couple of sounds triggered all that in my imagination.

With that mental image in place, I knew that the song had to take on a modern sound: Somewhat techno without being rave music; Industrial, but still having the structure of traditional western (as in western hemisphere) music. I had considered a string melody, but it didn’t carry the requisite grit of the big city, so I opted for the steel strings of an electric guitar with a enough signal processing to give it an artificial sound, but still recognizable as an electric guitar.

The song structure is fairly simple. It pretty much contains the same repeated guitar melody with two interludes to break up the potential monotony.

The first break is where I really tried to emphasize the industrial flavor. To keep it from sounding like just noise, I devised a synthesizer line with some melodic character to ride on top of the pulsing stuff. While programming the drums for that section, I couldn’t help but think of a TV crime drama of sorts.

The second break is meant to play several roles. In addition to breaking-up the monotony of the guitar melody, it is intended to give the listener a respite from the instrumental loudness up to that point. Not only does it provide a brief rest for the ears, it is meant to inject a lighter, somewhat playful, side. Big-city life shouldn’t be all impersonal concrete, steel, glass and machines. There needs to be something that brings rest and delight to the inward person: a flower; an ice cream cone; flying a kite in the park; a moment to enjoy with thankfulness.

And you thought it was just a cool song. Tomorrow, I will tell you more than you ever wanted to know about Nightfall.

P.S. That cool photo at the top of this entry is the fine work of Gary L. Friedman. Visit the Friedman Archives to see more.