Coming January, 2022
It has been some months since I have attended to this blog but I have been busy working on a collection of pieces, some newly released on Spotify with YouTube music videos and more to be released in the new year (from mid January 2022 onward). If you are a fan of Nordic music and culture (and I somewhat controversially include Estonia in that), then I do hope that there will be things in this upcoming release that you will enjoy.
I started early in the year studying some of the minimalist works of composers like Arvo Pärt, Henryk Górecki and Philip Glass. At the same time, I fell under the spell of more contemporary media composers such as Olafar Arnolds, Johhan Johhanson, Max Richter and more ambient hybrid-orchestral composers such as August Wilhelmsoon, Martin Gauffin and many others. What touched me most was the space and calm in much of this music and I think it provided a balm to the wrenching disruption of life during the pandemic, the lockdowns and the interminable “work-from-home” orders. My Spotify artist page now contains a number of playlists that I have on rotation – I’m constantly adding and modifying these and there is a treasure trove of beautiful heart warming and serene music in there – at least to this heart and fevered brow!
Another key discovery for me was stumbling across the Neo-Riemannian approaches to harmony. I guess, in studying many of the modes of the common practice period (and extending into jazz with my teacher David White), I was becoming increasingly receptive to harmonic structures that lacked a clear tonal centre and so seemed to quickly “get” the idea of the sort of harmonic transformation from chord to chord described by Neo-Riemannian theory. Not that I abandoned common practice harmony but it simply provided another interesting way to think about the musical journey of a piece.
So my pandemic project was born – I wanted new sounds and collected many libraries recorded “on the edge of silence” as Christian Henson has put it. Worked on layering and morphing between layers to add a richness to the sounds but also trying to keep it sparse rather than filling up the space by calling out and reinforcing every note in the harmony. A new palette to complement the sonic landscape that was growing in my mind.
In addition to writing and producing the pieces, I also decided to try my hand at videography so as to make some music videos to visually compliment the musical ideas. I don’t have much photographic gear and I started with the free version of the video editing package Davinci Resolve. This has also been an amazing journey and I’ll write more about that in the Technology pages of this blog and link to early experiments on YouTube.
As always, thanks for reading till the end – in the coming weeks and also once the EP and the other tracks are released I will post short background pieces on the tracks. And keep an eye on the technology pages. A new DAW workstation from VisionDAW, Davinci Resolve learnings and much, much more.
Till then – stay safe friends.
