Eleven Gifts in depth, part 6: i

This piece is an interesting case: the person represented in it, in spite of being part of the larger group of people represented by the album, is a special case for me. Therefore I wanted to give it a piece that was at the same level as the others, but that was particularly precious at a personal level. Therefore, I reached for this old composition that, for whatever reason, struck a chord in me and never left my memory.

It belonged to the same project from "c", but it was never actually included in it. I had a sudden moment of inspiration and wrote the song all at once, and I noticed that it truly stood out from the other songs. Originally, this was arranged for synthesizers and a few woodwinds, and it was a challenge to adapt it for piano, because I wasn't sure on which octave each line should be. I didn't want the notes to overlap, but I wanted them to be at the right range. I was afraid to make the right hand melody too high pitched, but it was pretty effective. I have to say I'm very proud of this song, and utterly surprised that I was able to salvage such an old composition with so little changes. Basically the only thing that is new is the arpeggios in the finale with that sudden change in dynamics. To me, the song does have a tinge of sadness, but the most important quality is that of deepness and introspection, of something huge, profound and profoundly beautiful. It gives me the feeling of climbing a hill and, at the top, finding an immensely beautiful landscape. Yeah, it's THAT personal.

Eleven Gifts in depth, part 5: g

This is a recent composition, but it was not written for this cycle. For about an year, I've been fiddling with ideas for entirely electronic and abstract albums, and one of them involved making a suite of several very short pieces, or sketches. One day, I caught myself with that descending melody, which sounded pretty endearing to me. I wrote it down, with the intention to make it as a simple synthesizer tune. When I started writing the cycle, though, I remembered I had this tune and noticed it fit in well. It was all a matter for adapting it to piano.

The right hand melody was written for the cycle, though, as well as the whole middle portion. I had the urge to make the melody filled with very large intervals, and the result sounded pretty nice to me. It's the kind of tune that, to me, is just as simple as it should be, and as effective as it could be. I can't think of a single note to change... though there aren't many at all...

Eleven Gifts in depth, part 4: d

This sounds an awful lot like Scary, from Big Robot, Little Robot, but I couldn't help it: THIS was the sound that I wanted. Oddly enough, when I first thought of this tune, I intended it to be the "j" track, but I realised it didn't sit right. Then, I realised that this tune was absolutely perfect for "d", and there you have it.

In terms of feel and mood, though, it's very far from Scary, which was goofy, slapstick and almost self-deprecating. This one, however, is merely a jumpy and neat little song intended to make the listener smile, at least a little bit. The "dark" second piece was mostly a facetious way to add some tension to the song, and hopefully the resolution from that hanging diminished chord into the sparkly coda in C major should show that it's not a menacing moment at all. This is, legimately, a happy tune.

Eleven Gifts in depth, part 3: c

This piece is based on a very old composition. In fact, it's rooted on a project that I started a long time before, and which is one of the most obscure things I ever did. I don't think you can find the original project on the Internet anymore, and that's good, because it's not that worth listening.

That project was a song cycle set to a collaborative story made on a Simpsons fanworks forum. That obscure enough to you? Well...

Anyway, the left hand melody that starts the composition was the opening theme of the first track on the original cycle, and it popped up a few times later as well. It used to represent frustration and deception, but it actually has a pretty mellow and sweet feel. All the chord changes and the right hand melodies are new material, written specifically for Eleven Gifts. It was one of those cases in which I decided a theme was too good not to be explored further, and I have to say that I've done here, in a minute and a half, what I couldn't do in 10 minutes back in 2004 or so, when the original piece was written. It's not meant to be a sad song. It's not happy, either, but it has a merely contemplative and calming effect for me. I like it quite a bit.

Eleven Gifts in depth, part 2: a

Back in 2007, when I wrote Big Robot, Little Robot, I felt I could tackle the challenge to write a full, three movement piano sonata. The first movement would be the the first track from that album, Scary, and the two remaining movements would be entirely new. This never came to fruition, but I did write the main theme for the third movement. It remained shelved for years, until I came up with the Eleven Gifts project.

The theme never left my head, so recovering it was quite easy, and it was also easy to find the person to attribute it to. The waltzing, partly-joyful-partly-whimsical feel was exactly what I wanted. The already written material actually ends at the full-tone descending scale -- everything from that point on was newly written. It was actually sort of improvised: I intended to keep the waltzing rhythm, but add those tonality shifts and crazy dissonances that I used in Scary. The result satisfied me: it sounds dense, fast, slapstick, and when an actual melody seems to settle in, it's quickly broken and discarded. That's the main idea.

This was one of the easiest song-person matches, in fact -- not only because I already had the theme, but because it was a perfect match. I like it quite a lot, and I guess the fact that the theme ended up here means that the "sonata" idea was never going to work anyway.

Eleven Gifts in depth, part 1: J

I don't know if I have made myself clear enough in the places where I have published Eleven Gifts, but in case you didn't notice, each piece in this cycle is dedicated to a person. The lower case pieces are in alphabetical order, but this one sticks out for a particular reason.

This piece wasn't the first one to be conceived, though. Far from it: some of these pieces are actually reworkings of songs I've written from 5 to 10 years ago, while many are new compositions. This is an entirely new composition, and the idea struck me quite quickly.

I was afraid that the sound of it was too "menacing" or terrifying to associate to the person it represents. The idea isn't to be menacing at all: my intention was to represent a very strong presence and a forwards motion, a very moving and powerful force. The very fast one-note ostinato on the left hand was a pretty obvious choice, and I'm a bit sad that I couldn't find a piano sample that made it sound as good as I wanted, but it still delivers. The odd rhythm and staccato chords are intended to grab your attention and keep you focused on it, but the ending unveils a tender and heartwarming feel that leaves your spirit positive and lifted. That's pretty much exactly what this person is all about.

The rhythm was one of those things that hit me all at once, and I had to keep replaying it in my head so I wouldn't forget it. It was too good to let it pass. Once I got to write it down, it was all a matter to find the right chords, which wasn't too hard. The softer middle portion was written entirely on-the-spot, and the finale just grew out of it. It was surprisingly easy to write this track, which was extremely satisfying: it was expecting quite a challenge from it. But that's art: the challenges sometimes are exactly where you didn't expect any.

So much to do, so much to do...

I've got plenty of parallel personal projects going on, and sometimes I even fail to keep track of them. But I like this: it's better to have lots of stuff to do, than to have NOTHING to do!

I've currently got an album on the works. I spent several months staggering around on a project, and things got especially tangled up when college got in the way. Fortunately I managed to write Eleven Gifts very quickly, and that made me very satisfied. Finally I decided to put that project on hold, and started working on another, completely different project, and it's coming along nicely and it sounds... well, interesting. It's very abstract, electronic and far removed from the likes of Highways. It's also very mixed and rhythmic, and I'm hoping to complete it in the next two months, maybe, now that college is finally over, and over for good.