Beautiful Village

Quite some time ago, I woke up one morning thinking about this beautiful girl that I had recently gotten to know and I couldn't help but imagine what it would be like to wake up next to my future wife for the first time after we had gotten married. In my mind I had painted this scene of waking up before her and pulling the covers over her shoulders. I could then envision her waking up to an empty bed with a trail of flowers leading to a dinning room table with breakfast on it, covered of course. On her empty plate was a folded note that read "Good Morning Beautiful". That morning I decided that it had been a few months since I had written anything new and so I decided I would work on something. I started with my guitar and created the accompaniment that is played by a harp in the recording. The harp was obviously lonely and so I added a few piano lines. I was nervous about creating a melody and so to stall I wrote a part for a string section to embellish the accompaniment. After listening to it a few times I decided that I like the string part so much that I felt it should take the role of the melody. For whatever reason I had this desire to have this piece capture the sound of home and so to create the feel of wooden floors I added a bass drum at the close of the main line (00.29). After the beginning part repeated I obviously had to allow the music to flow into something. This part really wrote itself as I couldn't imagine the piece going anywhere else. Before it was finished I could almost hear the piano echoing with slight variation the melody to add an almost dream-like feel to the composition (00.46). For the final part of the melody (01.19) I started with the relative minor of the key in which I was playing and started again with my guitar to pick out a very basic accompaniment. I then added the piano and all that was left was creating the final melody. Since I had already created an accompaniment I just listened to the music until I could hear in my head what I felt the melody was meant to be. I didn't want the sound to become bland so instead of putting strings on the melody I added a brass section (01.30). Since I wanted the final melody line to repeat I needed to add something to make it different from the first time it was played. To accomplish this I brought the strings and the bass drum back into the picture. For the second time the beginning melody is played (02.26) I decided to make it a little more powerful by putting the brass section in unison with the strings. I at the very end the brass section drops out to make for a delicate end (02.45). I originally entitled this piece "Waking up to the Sun" but later found the title "Waking up
Next to You" more appropriate.

Searching for Higher Ground

Ever since I started composing I always wanted to write a piece of music that would illustrate in the minds of the listener an intense battle. Towards the end of my mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints while riding in the backseat of a truck I hummed a melody to myself that began the creation of the piece entitled "Searching for Higher Ground". After I came home I always had in the back of my head a desire to write my "battle song" but I was very afraid of doing so as I could tell it would be a long and hard task. With faster paced music it's often necessary to write more than you would in a slower song in order to fill any decent amount of time. I decided to start very slow, and so on my way home from work I would try to hum out a melody that I thought would be good to start the piece of music. The result was the opening line played by a chinese flute known as a "Dizi" (00.07). Later I added a piano line behind it to add a little more sauce. I had planned on the opening melody being rather short as it would only be an introduction to the actual piece. Since this was an intense battle I could also hear an electric guitar striking chords along with a drummer hitting the crash. To lead into the first part of the song, I heard in my head an arpeggio going backwards except for a few notes that would increase in pitch rather than decrease (00.14). To allow the lead into the song to build up I had the drums start hitting the crash and then go to a roll. At this point I was clueless where I would go next so I went ahead and put in two parts that I wanted to eventually be implemented into the music. This is when I finally got the chance to put that melody from my mission onto sheet music. I also put down a guitar solo that I could hear fitting into the song. I also recorded the guitar solo as a piano and when I couldn't decide which I liked more I decided to keep them both almost as "dueling instruments" (00.57). When I went back to where I left off I felt a little bit more confident and so I decided to experiment putting down a track of an electric guitar strumming some power chords (00.18). Since it's a sin to strum power chords the same way through an entire a piece of music (provided you aren't playing punk music which is a sin in itself) I decided to have the guitar cut back (00.22). I then added strings to give it a symphonic rock sound. This ended up being another situation where I decided I liked the string part so much that I wanted it to take away the melody. After listening to this a few times I made the good mistake of accidently leaving on one of the guitar tracks on which ended up cutting into the end of the melody. This gave me the idea that maybe halfway through the melody there would be a ridiculously fast guitar solo to add some serious intensity to the fight (00.21). I think that guitar riff alone is what really makes this piece music. The second time through the power chord progression I varied the melody on the strings and the guitar solo (00.28). I then decided it was time to take this piece through clouds of beauty by bringing the dizi back embellished by some fast muted strumming and a piano that dances from right to left speaker (00.32). After repeating this part twice I decided to revert to the main line with the guitar solo halfway through. This was the perfect spot for the dueling piano and guitar and then all that was left was to add that melody I had hummed in the backseat of a truck 3 years earlier. The first time that line is played I wanted the guitar playing it to be completely alone and so I added a sound of wind blowing to give a real solo flight feel. The second time I reintroduced all of the instruments except for the dizi and had the guitar play the melody with thirds. At this point the song was practically finished except that it was incredibly short. To fix this I extended the introduction by not bringing in the dizi until after the guitar, drums and piano had set the stage. The name "Searching for Higher Ground" comes from the idea of trying to get the upper hand on your opponent.
When I first started working on it I asked one of my roommates for his opinion. He told me that it sounded ok except that the instrument quality made it sound like it was from a video game. It was a point I had already acknowledged but I was pretty ticked hearing it second hand. My roommate was going on vacation that week and so I made a goal to completely finish the composition by the time he had returned. I actually finished it the day before he came back. I was pretty thrilled when he said he didn't even recognize that it was the same piece.

Wilderness

The piece entitled "Wilderness" is another one of those pieces that I somehow just woke up and wrote. While I was in the shower I heard in my head 2 arpeggios that seemed to compliment eachother. (For those of you that don't know, an arpeggio is like a walk up or down a chord.) As soon as I got out of the shower I picked up my guitar and played each line twice. Immediately I started up my computer and wrote out the musical notation. I sensed the song would have a fantasy feel to it. I assigned a harp to the walks and then I decided to add a pulsating cello to give the piece an intense throb. I then picked out the melody on my guitar and assigned a "Bottle Blow" to be the instrument of choice as it seemed to have a very ancient sound to it (00.16). The piece needed percussion and so I used a wood block frequently knocking on the off-beats to add to the ancient rustic sound. I then decided to change the tone of the piece from what I felt was a dark sound to a much lighter more delicate tone (00.32) by playing an arpeggio of the relative major. I put the cello on the melody which wrote itself pretty easily and then picked out on my guitar another melody to put on top of it. I then allowed the cello to drift into the background (00.48) while still playing it's part as I introduced the new melody which was played by a chinese flute called an "Erhu". It was then easy to hear how the melody was supposed to end. I wanted to convey an almost lonely feel to the end as the piece would drift back into the darker sound and so I dropped the strings and wood block. Then I repeated everything that I already had, the result being the piece entitled "Wilderness". The entire piece I think I wrote in 2 days.

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