Winter's Morning: A transition from winter to the new year.

My newest song is complete! With this marks another milestone for me as I've become able to produce songs of such standards in shorter periods of time. This song took me approximately 1 day to complete (or 5 hours if you compile the hours together) making it one of the songs with the shortest amount of time I've had to work with since Alva. While the quality of the music isn't as impressive as Dragon Hunting, this song focuses more on trying to re-create the effects of winter while infusing the warmth of the sun melting the snow. To put it bluntly in this song I've experimented with mixing warm tones and cold, metallic percussion sounds to re-create the conflict and spectacle of winter and sunlight mixing together. Conceptually it seemed challenging but it seems I managed to achieve it by using "Reverb" on the bells and vibraphone to create a more echoey, desolate feel. Hopefully I'm not the only one who feels that way though. If the beginning of the song made you feel cold and desolate while the climax of the song filled you with awe and warmth, I'll be happy to let you know that those are the effects I've intended for you this time round.

Synopsis

The end of December is coming and with it the icy paths start to thaw under the warmth of the sun. The frost and warmth seem at odds with each other as morning dawns on these cold peaks...until it begins to snow one final time. The scene then evolves to a breathtaking landscape of snow, light and warmth slowly flirting through the canopy of trees as winter makes one final sigh and leaves.

Analysis

So this time round I started off with an echoey piano to stimulate the thoughts of a barren but large wasteland. I threw in the bells and the vibraphone next as many people associate these metallic bells with cold or Christmas whilst the vibraphone filled in the empty spaces created by the bells and created this general "blue" feeling associated with the coldness of winter. Standard soundtrack instruments includes the strings and horns playing in unison...but this time with the flutes and higher registers taking the lead so as to create a lighter feel throughout the piece. Not too sure if that made the song less "movie-like" but it seems to fit in nicely with the mood. The harp in this piece is meant to describe the falling snow along with the descending appegios played on the piano. They're used in the second half of the piece to illustrate snow falling gently while mixing with the warm tones of the strings which represent the sunlight of the scene. The song ends with a recapitulation of the opening but this time split up between the bells and vibraphone while the piano plays the full motif in the background. This is to create the sense of loneliness and hollowness as winter fades away and the year draws to an end. At the same time it sounds like the last snowflake landing on the ground before melting away. A nice touch as an ending scene in my opinion.

Well to wrap it up this song will mark the end of 2014 for me as a musician. It's been fun starting this blog and noting down the different techniques I've tried so far. Hopefully 2015 will yield many more different songs and opportunities to compose. This is Sevian signing off for now~

Dragon Hunting COMPLETE!

It's been a full month now since I started on this song....and it's finally complete! Pour the wine and celebrate with me as I commemorate yet another leap forward in my musical journey! The past few weeks have been packed with composing music for a tiny horror game project (which I haven't received permission to share here yet!) and other meaningful distractions. However it is heartening to see this song grow from a few measly whimsical notes to a full fledged movie-soundtrack-like theme. I still have ways to go in the area of composing and making full use of my DAW...but I'll get there eventually. For now this is one small step for me and another hopeful dream to nurture.

Song Write Up (note if you've read my previous posts, you might want to skip to the last paragraph):

The song's about a band of heroes who undertake the nigh impossible task of hunting a dragon. I based my inspiration for this on the various MMO's I've played and some movies I've watched about struggling against tragic outcomes. Dragons come from a very medieval setting and as such you'll notice the constant use of gothic themes throughout the piece. One common method of indicating a struggle that I've noticed is to make a lot of use of Strings on staccato. Somehow the short, striking tones of the strings gives this impression of hard breathing, strenuous effort and grim determination. Thus I gave the voice of the humans over to the staccato strings and the strings playing the higher notes. The voice of the dragon lies with the horns and brass as together they give a very heavy, overbearing effect. Accompanied by the strings not only do they echo like a dragon's roar but also build this large presence that seems to squash the air out of your lungs. Lots of movies use this technique when describing a insurmountable task or vast environments such as space, so I thought I should give it a go this time.

After the encounter between the heroes and dragon comes a brief period of respite for the heroes. This is meant to build tension and to sort of describe the difference in standing between the powerful dragon and the meek humans that try to overcome it. The lack of the dragon's voice in this phrase also indicates the wariness of the dragon towards the humans after the initial encounter, as it is now searching furtively for the humans who have gone into hiding. I thought this was a good way of describing how the combined efforts of the heroes had actually been effective enough to pose a threat to the dragon...while at the same time making out these heroes to be human as they could not keep up such efforts continuously.

The next segment of this song involves the humans standing up against the dragon shakily...almost as though they have been reminded of how small and human they are, but yet still filled with the will to surpass the insurmountable. The instruments come in one by one, repeating a motif that changes slightly each time it's repeated to represent the individual heroes these people are made out of slowly standing up and altering the spirit/effort of the battle. This scene describes how an insurmountable task is conquered by the individual taking the first step and the group contributing to create a strong will and hope enough to achieve what the individual cannot.

The last segment is the final engagement between the dragon and the humans...in which a confronting but slightly sorrowful phrase enters. This reflects the lost of life as the hunt reaches it's final stages and the dragon falls. I decided to use a sorrowful tune here as I felt that even when hunting a great beast, the lost of the life of such a magnificent and grandiose creature was kind of a loss in the world I visualized. To me the fall of the dragon signifies the fall of a great monument of this medieval world and thus although the final efforts of the hunt are strenuous, they are also marked with a hint of sorrow as we bid the dragon goodbye. The humans then proceed to deal the final blow as the strings end of with a chain of C notes, similar to the final strike in a battle.

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Well it's been a huge load of fun tinkering with the DAW to create a more movie-like environment for the song to thrive in...as well as putting notes together to form a decent song. Hopefully the next one will be more magnificent and amazing!

This is Sevian, signing off for now~