Music
Song: Unknown
This song is a byproduct of boredom in its purest form. Sometimes I find myself in a real rut with the direction my composing is going, so I’ll force myself to sit down and arrange whatever comes out of my brain first. I’ve always loved “Hall of the Mountain King,” so I figured I’d slaughter it by converting it into MIDI with a groovy drumbeat and strange background synth instruments. Grieg would definitely kill me if he heard this…
Song: Reign of Anarchy
This song is, in a word, random. Sometimes I get a bunch of ideas in my head and I can’t think up a whole song for each one, so I throw them together into one big mess…like this.
Song: Tiberian National Anthem
Here’s the weird thing – even though you’ve never heard this song before, I guarantee that if you listened to it without hearing the title, you’d associate it with some kind of patriotic event. I don’t know why that is, but it’s a real phenomenon. Music association is a fascinating tangent in the “nature vs. nurture” debate, after all…
Song: Faith (Love Remix)
I’ve played with many ideas for adding a melody to “Faith’s” original simple vi-IV-I-V (or i-VI-III-VII in natural minor) progression, but invariably none of them were epic enough to match the scope and majesty of the original arrangement. Eventually I settled on a couple ideas that I liked, so I decided to arrange the song in a more peaceful, quiet setting. Thus we get “Faith’s” Love Remix…
Song: The Haunting
“The Haunting” was my first composition after a two-year composing hiatus (2003-2005). After being away from music for so long, I didn’t want to jump back into composing too quickly so I used this simple piece to help get back into the groove. It felt great to sit at a piano and plink out such a simple but compelling theme. The rest of the song just kind of came together, and I’ve really come to love the subtle panning and velocity effects…
Song: A Memory Away
As soon as I wrote this song, I realized it would be a perfect female character theme for the lead character of Defiance, one of the story premises discussed by the video game team I was working with at the time. The protagonist of the story was a girl named Cara, who I see being comparable to the main character in “Underworld” (if you haven’t seen the movie, you should – it’s good). Cara was a strong, action-oriented girl who ends up falling in love with a man she thought she was saving. Thus the song is a mix of electric guitar and other rock instruments but with a very mellow melody…
Song: Faith
Technically, I don’t know where this fits musically; the main melody isn’t even a melody – it’s a simple chord progression. The 2nd section is a 4-part harmony (even correctly harmonized for the most part), and the final section is distinctly modern. The instrument mix is all over the place but was designed to be largely “churchy” in nature (hence the organ and choir throughout). The percussion was added as an afterthought because I felt it added some oomph to the epic sections of the song in a way only percussion can do…
Song: Defiance
Ah, sweet “Defiance.” I’ve gone through hundreds of variations and modifications of this theme, but still I love the original incarnation of this piece. Yeah, it’s repetitive; yeah, the layout is awfully simple; yeah, that’s a weird techno-ish sound in the middle of what should be a solid rock song. But somehow it works. I don’t know how, but this song still rocks (and I’ve heard it probably a thousand times)…
Song: Remember
“Remember” is a simple remix of the 2nd half of “Cyaron’s Gate” – which tells you how long ago I wrote it (~1999). Despite its age, I still find it to be one of my more majestic themes. I’ve not done much to change it from the piano version to the MIDI version, and I don’t know that I’ll ever change this theme much. There’s something invariably nostalgic about compositions from early in your career, and messing with songs from that era just seems…wrong…
Song: Purgatory’s Mansion
This piece uses a really simple mix of instruments – four pianos and a drumset – to create a driving yet haunting theme unlike anything you’ve heard before. The simplicity of “Purgatory’s Mansion” is remarkable, and I think that’s why it’s such a dramatic piece despite its lack of orchestration. With the piano being my favorite instrument and the one I’ve studied the most, you’ll notice it shows up in almost every one of my compositions for at least a cameo appearance. “Purgatory” is one of the few pieces that really uses it front-and-center, and I like it…
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