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~
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