This is the seventh of a series of blog posts entitled “Diary of a Song“, where I share the stories behind each of the songs from my new album “Illumination“.
At the end of each post, I also include a link to buy the sheet music, and the MP3 download.
Gymnopédie No. 1
(From the artwork in the CD booklet)
Gymnopédie No. 1 is Track #4 on my new album, “Illumination”.
Gymnopédie No. 1 is the first of three songs (all named Gymnopédie) composed by French composer Erik Satie, who lived from 1866 – 1925 in Paris, France. He was sort of a revolutionary in his time - as he was breaking molds from the Classical form of music and taking a minimalist and repetitive approach.
This song has been a favorite of mine for a very long time, and in my opinion is one of the “must-learns” on any pianist’s reportorial list. It is such a hauntingly beautiful, yet simple song.
When I was a little girl I was a huge fan of the movie The Black Stallion. Not only did I love the movie but I also read the books, and often times found myself carried away into a dreamland of Arabia with horses races, romance, and suspense. I loved the scene on the beach when Alex (the boy stranded on the island with the wild stallion) finally befriends the horse and the horse allows him to ride him. The music in this scene, at sunset, carries a very strong resemblence to Gymnopédie No. 1, and perhaps that is why I have always loved this piece – because it reminded me so much of my favorite movie as a kid.
You will see here in this video -if you skip to about 4:40 you will hear the music I talk of. There is something I really long for in this scene – perhaps it’s the isolation, the beach, being one with nature and no distractions. Whatever it is, it calls to me.
As this song is such a peaceful song to me with meaning, I really wanted to include it on my album.
Ignoring the dynamics that the editor from Schirmer’s had included in my copy of this song, I recorded this piece how I personally felt it. I added much more dynamic range to it, including some FF’s which are not in the original. I also took the 2nd half of the song and added more notes, making it more complex and driven.
And finally, I added orchestration to it. Which, funny enough, I thought was so original in – but turns out Claude Debussy also orchestrated Satie’s Gymnopedie’s as well (except for full symphony, whereas mine still has the piano as the lead). I personally find my version much more dynamic and emotional.
Here is Claude Debussy’s version:
I can’t tell you what great care I took in recording this piece for my album. I was so OCD about it – every detail had to be perfect from the way I played the piano, the expression and dynamics, to every last note that the violins lifted off of the strings.
Here is a clip from the finished song, starting about half way through:
I’m happy to let you know that the sheet music is now available for this song, which you can find below…
You can purchase the sheet music (as well as other songs from Illumination) from my web store HERE.
This is the sixth of a series of blog posts entitled “Diary of a Song“, where I share the stories behind each of the songs from my new album “Illumination“.
At the end of each post, I also include a link to buy the sheet music, and the MP3 download.
Illumination
“Illumination” is track #3 and the title track on my new album.
The story behind this song is this…
About two years ago, I saw an ad on one of the many TV/Film 3rd party company licensing websites where a European luxury car commercial was looking for music for a commercial. I don’t normally compose from scratch for opportunities like these (usually just submit already finished works), but the payout on this one was quite substantial and therefore I made an effort. Okay, it was VERY substantial. This one licensing opportunity would have paid me more than my music made in one year. AND the description of music that they were looking for basically almost perfectly described my style of music. I knew I had to try.
I spent a lot time imagining a fast sleek car winding down a highway with curves. A BMW perhaps? Mercedez? Who knows. In my mind, I pictured a sort of Bond car, or luxury sedan. Aston Martin perhaps. I imagined the wheels turning and turning and the rhythm it created with its movements.
And thus the opening 16th notes of Illumination were born:
Because I knew this has to be a 1 minute clip of music, my attack on the composition of this song was quite different than how I normally compose. I was crunched for time and needed to get to the main melody of the song from the get-go, so right after that short intro I immediately went to the theme of the music. Again….imagining a fast car zooming by.
And then, the next portion of the song, is me imagining the car driving off into the distance, sparkling clean, shiny wheels and a nice logo and a man’s voice coming on (sexy English accent) to say something about the car or whatnot…
That was basically my entire composition for the car commercial, which I then added orchestra to. I wanted it to be simple, yet powerful.
So I only added: Violins, French horns, Percussion (Glen Gabriel designed the percussion, which also includes some synth effects). And the final end result for the 1 minute commercial version of “Illumination” ended up like this:
I proudly submitted the song by the deadline and waited to hear back.
Waited…
Waited…
What Happened With the Car Commercial…
And finally, heard back. My song did NOT make the cut for the commercial and yes I was super sad. Especially because I spent a lot of time and effort on tailoring (what I thought) was the perfect song for this car commercial.
So the funny part about this story, is several months later, I was online watching new movie trailers on Yahoo’s movie section. Before one of the movie trailers, a car ad came on. I immediately looked up and took notice, because the song sounded an awful LOT like my song “Illumination”. It was even weirder that my husband came in from the other room to find out what it was, because his response was also “Hey, isn’t that you?”.
But it wasn’t me. But it was so incredibly close to my song that I almost thought it was mine.
I was in such shock that I didn’t catch the name of the car. I thought I had seen Land Rover on the commercial, but I wasn’t certain. Will and I must have refreshed the browser a hundred times trying to find that commercial again, but it never popped up. We also searched YouTube and the Lexus/Landrover websites trying to find this commercial, and yet we could not find it. So annoying. So I just forgot about it.
But as I was in LA last year and met with my sound engineer, Rob Beaton, who deals a lot with sound libraries and companies that scout music for commercial work – I told him about what had happened with my song and that car commercial. He told me that often times these ad agencies that scout music for commercials will find the music that they DO want, but they won’t want to pay the fee for it, so they will actually hire composers to write something very similar to it.
I don’t want to start drama or whatever, because I have no proof and I’ve never been able to find the commercial since then, but I have this little inkling that my song was heard by the ad agency (that I submitted it to), and perhaps replicated by another composer and variated ever so slightly so they could not be accused of plagiarizing. I have no way of proving this since I used a 3rd party to submit my song – I don’t know the name of the ad agency, nor the name of the car company.
BUT the story does not end badly.
The GOOD news in all of this was that I still owned the rights to the song. It was mine to do whatever I wanted with.
I let it sit for a long, long time until I finally came up with the inspiration to work on it again. It was kind of hard – as I had the first version really stuck in my head. But eventually I was able to go back to the drawing board, dissect it a bit, and start over.
What I ended up with was a 4 minute long extended version, a couple key changes, a major-keyed section, and a pretty dramatic ending. You can hear a sample of how I changed the transition of the short clip to extend here:
My album “Illumination” was actually originally going to be called “Portraits”, but as I kept working on it – the title Illumination just seemed more fitting for the vibrant cinematic music evolving for it. And as I was choosing photography to go with the song (as this was an art-based album with my Dad’s photography), I chose this photo as the perfect representation of Illumination.
You can purchase that beautiful photo of Ruby Beach, Oregon Sunburst directly from my Dad at his website.
More Illumination Projects
As if the song hadn’t evolved enough, there was still more to come.
In the summer of 2012, I met with the conductor of the Evergreen Philharmonic Orchestra and arranged for me to perform with the orchestra in December of 2012. It was a lot of hard work to transcribe the song for a full live symphony orchestra, but it got done. I had the help of a couple transcriptionists (Travis Tagart, Daniel McBride). While I did a lot of the notation myself, I wasn’t familiar enough with the various clefs of brass and woodwind instruments and wanted to be sure I got it exactly right. I was so thankful for the help.
I should also note, that as I said, I originally only wrote the song for Violins, French Horns, Percussion and then later added Celli as well. Transcribing it for a full symphony meant adding MANY more additional parts that were not in the original, and also dividing up the violin parts among the various string instruments. For example, in my recording, there are about EIGHT different violin sections playing various harmonies. But in a real orchestra, there are only TWO violin sections. So I transcribed some of the parts over to the violas, and then had each stand within the two sections playing different parts. Usually there are 2 violinists to one music stand and they play the same part, but instead I had them each split with different harmonies.
The end result was obviously NOT the same as the recording, but still very fun and surreal to hear my music performed LIVE with an entire symphony! Here is the video if you care to watch. I made a few blips here and there, but overall it was a really great concert and experience.
I’m still planning to shoot a music video for this song, but the plans for it have undergone many changes and I’m still waiting for the stars align for it to all work out how it’s supposed to.
Sheet Music
And now for the moment many of you have been waiting for, here is the link to BUY THE SHEET MUSIC for “Illumination”. I’ve noted in the music that there are a few measures where when I play it live, my part is minimal and the orchestra plays a lot. But for the solo piano version, I have done some “orchestra reductions” into the part.
This is the fifth of a series of blog posts entitled “Diary of a Song“, where I share the stories behind each of the songs from my new album “Illumination“.
At the end of each post, I also include a link to buy the sheet music, and the MP3 download.
Across the Starlit Sky
This happens to be the only solo piano song on my new album. It was among the last of the songs I was recording and preparing for the album, and as I listened to it over and over to try to get orchestration ideas for it (as well as listening to it in a mix with other songs), I decided this song was better by itself and the naked piano.
I wanted the listeners to create their own atmosphere for this song, and to feel like they were small beings amongst a huge universe. Keeping the song piano-only was one way I felt that could be accomplished.
This song does not have any remarkable story behind it – other than I was just feeling very ponderous and melancholy while writing it. I did write this song while my piano was positioned right in front of a rather large window in my living room – which at night I could see the starry sky (hence the name of the song). I really enjoyed putting the major/minor transitions into the song. It is a song that I really enjoying playing, because it helps me to connect to my feelings and whatever I might be thinking about at the time.
The photo that I chose to go with this song for the Cd booklet, is a picture my dad took of Mt. Rainier just before sunrise. The funny story about this picture, is that he must have taken at least a half dozen trips to Mt. Rainier to get the perfect timelapse starry sky shot. I really loved this particular one, but he was not happy with it – saying that it was not up to a professional photographer’s standards. I won’t tell you all of the “flaws” he seemed to find in it, but I personally find it to be a beautiful photo and just perfect the way that it is.
A bigger view of the photo:
Upon staking out a spot next to the mountain to capture this photo, I believe my dad said he met a hiker who said he had been stalked by a cougar that night and so every little noise my dad would hear, he was very nervous about it being a mountain lion.
This song has received a high number of requests for the sheet music, and so pianists here it is:
This is the fourth of a series of blog posts entitled “Diary of a Song“, where I share the stories behind each of the songs from my new album “Illumination“.
At the end of each post, I also include a link to buy the sheet music, and the MP3 download.
After the Storm
As most of you know, last night they announced the Grammy nominations. I was really hoping to see my name on the list of 5 nominees for Pop Instrumental, but alas I did not. I had worked very hard for the nomination for the past several months – lots of hours were spent on trying to secure this nomination, and I was told by many that I had a real shot at this.
I know that having a Grammy nomination does not define who I am, and does not mean that I am any more or less talented. Sometimes these awards are very political as they are peer-voted. But as I tend to always try to have the best of faith in people, I had hoped that my album would simply wow everyone and they would just have to vote for it. Even despite the tremendous support from my fellow Recording Academy friends, it didn’t happen, and yet I have received an outpouring of love in the past 24 hours from my fans who have told me over and over that I won in their books, and that my music has inspired them and that it means a great to them.
Despite whatever accolades you may read in my bio, you also must know that I have had my share of trials and let-downs as well.
For every award I have won, there are many more that I have been turned down for. For whatever film licensing or commercial work I’ve gotten, I have probably submitted my music to dozens more and not gotten a licensing deal. I have performed as soloists with symphonies, but have also had many many auditions where I flopped and was turned away.
In the midst of all of this and the news of the Grammy NON-nomination, and with a promise I made earlier this week to release more new sheet music this week, it couldn’t be a more perfect moment to release AFTER THE STORM, track #2 on my album Illumination.
I tell you this, because it is a very appropriate intro to the story behind After the Storm.
How “AFTER THE STORM” CAME ABOUT…
On very special and rare occasions, I feel propelled by pure Divine inspiration to write a particular song. This happened with The Red Aspens, Eventide, Will’s Song, and yes, After the Storm.
Composing does not come fast for me, but when Divine inspiration happens, the music usually always flows like an outpouring of love from my fingers to the keys. I just know how the song needs to be written.
I don’t often write much about my religious beliefs, but most know that I do have them and am very close to my Savior and have a very strong belief in God. It is a central part of my life, and my family’s life. I owe everything to Him, especially my talents and abilities. And for some reason, even though I am not perfect and make oh-so-many mistakes in my day to day life, God still continues to bless me and watch out for me.
Last year was not an easy year for me.
Sometime I will tell you more about it, but for now I’ll just say it was not an easy year. Despite that, somehow I was able to write some very great songs out of that period in my life. It’s true, that out of hardships come some of the history’s greatest art. Not saying that my music is part of history’s greatest art, but for ME personally, some of my best music has come out of hard times (also great times too ).
As I started composing After the Storm (which I had not named yet), I imagined myself walking on the beach with my Savior, talking to Him, and telling Him about some of the things I was struggling with. The ocean has always been a big part of my childhood and adult life, and brings a lot of inspiration for me. And as I wrote the song, I thought about the poem about the footprints in the sand….and how the poet talked about going through some of the darkest times in his life and feeling so alone, seeing his lonely footprints in the sand. Later God told him that it was not his footprints but God’s footprints and that He had carried the troubled man through his hardships.
I continued to work on the song more and more…
And in the midst of this, I kept thinking about my friend Dixie. Some of you may know her, she comments on my Facebook posts quite often and has been a long time fan of my music. But in recent years she has also become a close friend. She is one of the most spunky personalities I know – just very feisty, honest, a real hoot. And she has very good taste in music, if I do say
Anyway, one day, I saw a Facebook post from her where she mentioned having to go to the hospital. I was surprised, and asked her what was wrong and what had happened. She replied and told me that she had breast cancer, and she thought that I knew. Well, no, I did not know. I would have had no idea either, because she was always so positive and spunky and never complained about anything.
Dixie also loves the ocean, and I also happen to know that she loved lighthouses as well.
The more I continued to work on my song, the more I knew that this song was for her. She was in my thoughts as I finished up the song, and as I worked with my dad on choosing a photograph that would go perfectly with this song, I ended up choosing this one:
My dad (Ron Southworth, who took all the photos for Illumination), took this photo at Bandon Beach in Northern Oregon, at the Coquille Lighthouse right as a storm was passing over. I think the colors are amazing in this photo, and to me the lighthouse represents safety and hope after and through the storm.
I named my song “After the Storm” and dedicated it to Dixie. I felt so amazed by her attitude through her struggles, as she made her way through her personal storms and conquered them.
MY OWN PERSONAL STORM…and OTHERS TOO
Even though I originally started writing this song by way of inspiration through a hard time in my life, I would say the majority of the song was written with Dixie in mind. This was was always FOR her.
Shortly after releasing my album, I also received a very long email from a young woman who told me she had been going through a very difficult time in her life over the past couple of years, but after hearing “After the Storm” and “New Life” from my album, she felt hope for the first time. She told me that she listened to the song several times every single day and it gave her the energy and peace to make it through each day.
I can’t tell you how much hearing something like that effects me and makes me feel so fulfilled. I am so happy to know that I was able to help someone else through my music.
This song also helped heal me through a hard time this past August when I had surgery…but instead of writing about it, I uploaded a video of a house concert that I did in Salt Lake City in September – where I told the story to the audience and then performed it.
You can view it below.
Here is a photo from me at my CD release concert, just a few weeks after that surgery that I had.
Also, here is a photo with Dixie, her husband, and I at the house concert in Salt Lake City.
So, to say the least, this song has a special place in my heart.
I’ve prepared the SHEET MUSIC for release, and feel that it is just as compelling as a piano solo (without the orchestration).
This is the third of a series of blog posts entitled “Diary of a Song“, where I share the stories behind each of the songs from my new album “Illumination“.
At the end of each post, I also include a link to buy the sheet music, and the MP3 download.
Pachelbel’s Canon (A Duet)
This past year, as I was finishing up composing the music for my Illumination album, and figuring out the balance of the tracks (how many original songs vs. covers, fast vs. slow, etc.) I went to my fans to ask them for suggestions for one more Classical song to put on the album. The song that had the most requests was Canon in D by Pachelbel.
I cringed.
Pachelbel’s Canon is probably one of THE most overdone songs, and as a classical musician I have had to perform this song countless times for concerts, weddings, Christmas, and church. I know that people just absolutely LOVE this song, but usually for musicians we sort of groan when requested to play it. And for me personally, I also sometimes cringe when I listen to others perform it as well. I say that not because I don’t like the song – it’s just that for me it had become a broken record and I had grown super tired of hearing it over the years. If were a non-musician and only listened to the song a select few times, then of course it would probably be one of my favorite songs too.
But to be honest, when I asked my fans what Classical song they wanted most, I actually did think in my head “Please don’t say Canon, please don’t say Canon…”
And of course, they all wanted Canon.
One fan, though, mentioned doing Canon as a piano duet.
That got me thinking. If I were able to arrange Canon as a duet and make it different enough so that it was fresh and new, then I would totally do it.
So I started messing around on the piano and trying to figure out ways to arrange Canon in D so that it was a whole different approach to the run-of-the-mill versions that I always hear everyone doing. I also wanted to keep it true to the original form of the song too though – so it was a bit tricky. How do I make this song different, but still the same? I learned the hard way with “O Mio Babbino Caro” from my first album, that taking very uber popular classical songs and making them strikingly different is not always loved by purist classical fans out there.
What I ended up with using most of the traditional Canon chords but adding some close 2nds to modernize the progression. You can hear this here:
For those who want a quick lesson on what a “Canon” is, it’s a song where one instruments begins doing something and then another instrument comes in and repeats the same thing. Kind of like when you would sing Row, Row, Row Your Boat as a round when you were a kid in school choir. I didn’t really feel like spending an entire minute of the song expanding the traditional Canon rounds and so while keeping the chord progressions going, I skipped ahead to the resolve section (which normally doesn’t happen until quite a bit later in the song).
Right after the resolve section, I brought it back down to the simple chords and then after 4 bars, brought in some synth beats to bring an modernized feeling to the song. I really wanted the song to still resonate emotionally with fans, but I wanted to also give it some “umph”. I think I was able to accomplish through both the orchestration and piano part to keep an authentic “Canon in D” feel, yet have a freshness to it.
Listen here:
I might add, that it was a challenge trying to write a duet. I’d never done this before, and it took a lot of cross checking to be sure that I wasn’t writing one part that was stealing another part’s piano keys. This would have been so much simpler to write for two separate pianos, however, most people do not have access to two pianos and I wanted to be sure my fans could download the sheet music and perform this as a duet. Thus, I wrote it for ONE piano, TWO hands, and TWO bums on the piano bench.
I just thought this part turned out really pretty
By this point we’re already 2 minutes into the song and we still haven’t heard the famous melody.
Ah, bam. There it is:
It’s in a different key too, I might add. Which is why I ultimately decided against calling the song “Canon in D”, because it really was not in D. So I called it “Pachelbel’s Canon”.
After the melodic section, I of course had to amp it up because it just wouldn’t be one of my songs if I didn’t have some sort of major climax in the middle of a song, and you can hear that here:
After the big to-do, the song goes back to the same chords from the beginning and really tones it all back down to un-hyper levels. I think the song ends on a very traditional note, reminding the listener that they did just hear one of the great Classical pieces of music in all of history and so let’s show some respect.
I would say, while my attitude towards the song at the beginning was not the best, I ended up actually having a LOT of fun composing this and orchestrating it as well. The orchestration actually really turned out a lot differently than I had originally planned on too. Definitely much bigger and fuller.
Anyway I hope you like my version of this popular classic. I have actually received some really great comments from people saying things like how this is the best version of Canon they have ever heard, or that when they saw this track was on the album they pre-judged it but after listening to it they found that it was completely fresh and it has become one of their favorites. I would say my goal of trying to make this song unique was accomplished. Thanks for all your awesome kind words everyone.
Piano students – if you would like to perform this song with a duet partner, you can go to the link below to get the SHEET MUSIC. I purposely wrote this song so that it would be able to be performed 100% okay WITHOUT the orchestration. There are no lulls or blanks spots, it’s all filled with both piano parts.
You can DOWNLOAD the MP3 from any of these links below, depending on your online store of choice. Personally, I recommend people to buy from Amazon or iTunes because it helps my rankings go up on those websites.
You can listen to and download the FREE SOLO PIANO VERSION here:
Finally, here is a LIVE performance that I did of the song at my August CD release concert (8/24/2012), featuring my piano student Kristen Yose as my duet partner.
This is the second of a series of blog posts entitled “Diary of a Song“, where I share the stories behind each of the songs from my new album “Illumination“.
At the end of each post, I also include a link to buy the sheet music, and the MP3 download.
TOCCATA AND FUGUE
While it is 2012 as of writing this post, I actually composed Toccata and Fugue in 2009.
I would say that this piece is one of the more edgier songs on my album. I had spent all of 2008 and most of 2009 writing lullabies for babies for my 2nd album, “The Lullaby Album”. That album was inspired by becoming a new mother and the joy of singing and playing sweet little songs for my little bundle of joy. Most of my time was consumed with new motherhood, diapers, binkies, bottles, naptimes, toys, and more.
However, after writing, orchestrating, and recording lullabies straight for a year – I have to say I was growing super tired of them. I am a composer of fire, and my inner fire was yearning to burst out. I HAD to do something a bit more complex, a lot more dark, louder, and way more intense.
I NEEDED something that was essentially the complete opposite of a lullaby.
Thus, Toccata and Fugue was born.
This song has really got gritty sound to it, and a beat that is referred to as a “glitch” beat. You can hear what I mean by a glitch beat by listening here (a sample of the beat track from the recording).
It is a similar genre of beats that is popular in Linkin Park’s music, for this particular sample – from their song “In the End”. Listen below.
THE COMPOSING PROCESS
Toccata and Fugue in D minor (BWV 565) by Johann Sebastian Bach is a piece of music that is traditionally performed on a full pipe organ. I went through the videos on YouTube, and really enjoyed this version:
A traditional Toccata and Fugue is a two-part piece, never having one without the other. This type of Baroque music is typically an exercise for fingers to showcase great technical ability – most often two voices woven and intertwining together. Bach was the master of this. His songs are very mathematical if you ask me. And because of this, his music also makes for SPECTACULAR crossover versions because they yield to beats so well.
But this particular song is quite lengthy, and I had to figure out how to arrange it so that I could squeeze both the Toccata and the Fugue into one movement, while skipping about 50 other pages of music. It wasn’t easy, and I can tell you I spent numerous hours trying to figure this out.
The most memorable parts of this piece are without a doubt, the beginning and the ending. I spent some time trying to figure out how I would start the piece, because to be honest, this piece just really only sounded super impressive on a pipe organ and trying to make it work on a piano sounded very wimpy. This is where I had the idea that I would have violins start the piece out and do the whole introduction, while the piano would make a grand entrance with an arpeggiated scale before beginning the traditional Fugue.
You can hear this here:
You then hear the actual Fugue – straight as it is from Bach’s music.
As with arranging any piece of classical music, I try to put my own twist on it and own part of it. So I added trail-off section with a violin part, accompanied by vocals that take the piece away from Bach’s original. Listen here:
The rest of the song is more of the same story – trying to go through the original music and dissecting it apart to fit into a 4 minute piece of music while adding my own flare to it. The Fugue portion of the song is not too lengthy, only from timestamps 1:06 – 1:25, which you can hear here:
After the short Fugue, it returns to the Toccata and ends with the traditional ending of the Toccata, with the exception that I made it major, instead of minor. Listen here:
ORCHESTRATING TOCCATA
I wrote this piece with specific predetermined places in the music where the piano would not play at all, but where the orchestra would take the melody. And while I am a violinist, I however did not perform the violin in this recording. At the time of orchestrating this piece, I had just purchased a sound library from Eastwest called “Gypsy”, which I had specifically bought because they had a violin sample on it that was outstanding. It took a lot of tutorials and playing around with to figure it out, but in the end I think I was able to accomplish a pretty realistic violin recording.
You can hear here, first all by itself, then with the rest of the orchestra:
Once I had most of the orchestra done, I sent the song to my talented colleague Glen Gabriel in Sweden. He then added the glitch beats, symphonic percussion, and a few more bells and whistles. Literally. Here is a sample all by itself, then with the rest of the orchestration.
MASTERING THE SONG
Not sure how many of you know very much about mastering, but it is a very important part of the finalization process of a recording. ”Mastering” is the process for which a song goes through to equalize sound levels, polish things out, tone down anything that tweaks ears, etc. The piano is particularly a fussy instrument to master because it has very high notes and very low notes. Usually an instrument or voice has a particular range of a few octaves, but the piano has 7.5 octaves to be exact. So it’s not easy. Mix an orchestra in with it, and there is just a LOT going on that an audio engineer needs to attend to.
I actually had this song mixed and mastered by three different engineers. The reason for this is, when I originally completed the song in 2009, I did a lot of the work at Zak Dewey’s studio – he was the sound engineer for Key of Sea, and I still use him all the time for whenever I need to go and record live audio. We did a very quick mastering session on the song because (I don’t remember why), we were limited on time and I needed the song done to submit to some competition or something. Even Zak wasn’t completely happy with it, but for what I needed it for – it was good enough at the time.
Then, the next year, I had Paul Speer remix and remaster the song (He did The Lullaby Album mixing/mastering for me). And THEN, in 2011, as I was getting more serious about completing Illumination and was on the look out for a sound engineer for it, I gave the song to Rob Beaton to mix and master as a trial to see if I wanted to use him for Illumination. Don’t get me wrong, I love my other sound engineer’s work and will give them the highest praise. But for Illumination I was really trying to go for a certain sound – a big cinematic sound to be exact. And so I was looking at sound engineers who typically mastered music for movie trailers and feature length films. Rob Beaton ended up mixing and mastering my entire album for Illumination, and it is important that all songs on an album are done by the same engineer to get a fluid sound (which is why he remastered Toccata for me).
All three versions of the masters sound really great, but I thought it would be fun to let you compare how different a song can sound when mixed/mastered by three different people. Each clip is the first 30 seconds of the song.
Mix #1 – Zak
Mix #2 – Paul
Mix #3 – Rob’s mix (the one on my Illumination album)
Anyway, in 2011 Toccata and Fugue was nominated for a Hollywood Music in Media Award, for “Best Classical Song”. This was exciting – as it was my first awards show. Will (my husband) and I made the trip to Hollywood and attended the event, and had a really fun time. My song did not end up winning, but it was a really great experience.
And then in 2012, I decided to include the song on Illumination. It is track #9 on the album. Some people have told me that it is their favorite piece on the entire album! This of course makes me very happy.
SHEET MUSIC
With that said, people have also been asking me for a long, long, LONG time when I am going to publish the sheet music for this song. I had actually never wrote the piece down! But last year I did a small house concert in October, where I thought it would be only fitting to perform that song since it was so close to Halloween. The song does have a total Halloween vibe to it, and the traditional version is often used this time of year for Halloween events and concerts. It’s a bit of a scary song, what can I say. Even still, I hadn’t put the music into sheet music though.
However, this past week I worked really hard and FINALLY sat down at the piano and wrote it all out. Now remember a lot of the recording has orchestrated parts with no piano, and so what I did was just transcribe those parts into a condensed piano score. I think it actually sounds really killer and I think a lot of pianists out there who play it will be really excited about it.
This is the first of a series of blog posts that I will be writing – with the stories and details behind each of the songs from my new album Illumination.
ETUDE FOR THE DREAMER is track 1 on my new album. This song took me about a year to finish – reason being, I don’t often write songs in one sitting. I will start something, let it peculate for a while, and then come back to it. I’ve found this the most effective way to compose for me, because a) my skills improve over time, b) I find new inspiration, and c) the piece develops more maturely than it would otherwise.
I knew when I started composing this piece that I wanted it to be the opening track to the new album. With this in mind, it helped me develop a theme that would grab a listener’s attention from the get-go. With the way I created the opening sequence of the song, you hear a minored keyed pattern being repeated- which I really wanted to make someone feel anxious or excited for what was to come.
You can hear the opening sequence here:
When I was writing this piece, my family and I were living in a home that was out in a wooded area with lots of evergreen trees. In my mind, I saw a foggy mist over a forest of trees and someone walking through that mist, perhaps lost in the surroundings. This is also where I got the idea that this piece was sort of a dream-piece in nature, hence the title.
Not only was I mentally/visually inside of a deep forest when writing this piece, but technically speaking I was very much wanting this piece to be a show piece. I can say that it is one of the hardest pieces to play on my entire album, and possibly one of the hardest pieces of music I’ve ever composed. When recording in the studio I have the luxury of starting over if I make a mistake, but in a live performance this is not so. I have had to really practice this piece a LOT in order to perform it live – and I have yet to have a perfect performance of it in a live setting.
With wanting to really showcase my classical training and ability in this piece, I drew my inspiration from one of Classical music’s greatest composers: Frederic Chopin. He was the king of writing pieces that were skill-strengthening and yet so creative, fresh, and beautiful. He wrote 27 Etudes in his lifetime. If you aren’t familiar with what an “etude” is, it is a piece composed to concentrate on a specific skill; an exercise, basically. Each of Chopin’s etudes concentrate on perfecting finger or technical ability on the keyboard.
The piece that particularly inspired me was the Etude No. 12 in C Minor, Op.25, which you can hear a marvelous recording of this by pianist Maurizio Pollini here…
I had learned that Etude shortly after graduating from college (thought I did not play it quite that fast). Lots of arpeggios, and though it might sound like both hands are playing the same thing but just in different octaves – not so! Each hand is playing different notes, thus making it all the more difficult to learn yet fun to play. I remember the first time ever hearing this etude – was while I was in school and in the music building playing with another one of my pianist friends. He had been studying the etude with his professor and performed it for me while my jaw then dropped to the floor in utter awe of both the song and his skills. I knew I had to learn it Funny how many of the songs we long to learn are simply from witnessing a friend play them in front of us.
Back to Etude For the Dreamer, after the opening sequence I then added a very technical section – which I like to refer to as the criss-cross section because both hands are playing thirds from each other and crossing up, down and around on the keyboard. You can hear it here:
Following this section, I then incorporated some of the same technical runs/arpeggios that Chopin used in his Etude No.12:
The nervous buildup of the piece keeps going until we get to a section where you finally reach a climax. All of the pressure of the piece has built and built until you reach this place where all lets loose, themes are combined and it is a very grandiose place of the song. I combined both the Chopin-esque arpeggios into my right hand while doing a contemporary arpeggiated left hand. One big collision.
After this big collision happens, I bring it back down and back to 2012 in terms of styling. I almost ended the song here, and sent it to several musician friends asking if it sounded like the song should indeed end like this. Almost unfinished. Some said it actually sound good ending there, but after letting the song sit for a while and going back to listen to it – I realized it was not the ending. So I returned to the beginning sequence (now in a new key) and played that section again but this time building it up to the Chopin arpeggios shortly after the start and then ending it that way in a true “Classical” ending.
You can hear here:
ORCHESTRATING ETUDE…
I was so in love with the solo piano version of this piece, that it took me some time to figure out how to orchestrate this for my album. The solo version of this song is so very Classical, yet when you hear how the orchestrated version on the album ended up – it sounds COMPLETELY different. Much more modern and edgy that is for sure.
Etude was actually one of the very last songs I orchestrated on this album, simply because it DID take me so long to be inspired with the orchestration. Actually that’s not entirely true. I had orchestrated it several months before others, but at the time did not feel it was going in the right direction. So I pushed it aside for a while. It wasn’t until I sent the song to Glen Gabriel for the beats where I felt the song finally came together, and it ended up being one of the last 2 that we finished. Glen put the amazing drums and beats to the song, and then also added some additional string sections during the “climax” section. This is why I enjoy collaborating with him so much – he really adds things to my music that sometimes I either would have never thought of, or sometimes they’re just extensions of my own ideas but better.
As I was preparing for the concerts that I recently put on, I had a really cool moment while practicing with my backup tracks and thinking “These are so cool!”. I never really got to hear them alone without my piano with them, and it was a neat realization to hear them just all by themselves. Short clip here:
In the end, Etude For the Dreamer has turned out to be one of my favorite pieces on the entire album. LOTS of hard work went into composing this piece and also orchestrating it, so I won’t lie – everytime I hear the song I get a very satisfied smile on my face.
GET THE SHEET MUSIC!
For advanced pianists out there who want to learn the piece, this is the FIRST piece of sheet music that I’m adding to the Illumination collection. It’s up on my website as of today – which you can download for only $3.95. I’ve also posted the solo piano version of the song as a free MP3 download from soundcloud – which might be helpful to have to learn the piece so that you can here is sans orchestra.
I’ll be continuing to add new sheet music from Illumination as I finish them, and in the order of the tracks on the album. I plan to write one of these “Diary of a Song” posts with each song so that you can learn the story behind each of them. The next song up will be track 2, “After the Storm”. There is really a beautiful story behind this one and I’ll be really excited to share it with you all soon. Thanks for all your support for my music – it means the world!
BUY THE ALBUM:
In an effort to get my digital rankings up on Amazon and iTunes (which report to Billboard), please purchase my album from either of these marketplaces. Of course you are certainly more than welcome to buy my album from me directly if you are wanting an autograph, but otherwise let’s help my music make it’s way up in the online charts!!
I finally, finally, finally just put the very first song I ever wrote into sheet music form. It was tucked and buried in a box of old music stuff never to be found – but alas, I found it. I must say my composing penmanship was quite remarkable then – every note is so very clear. Now it seems like my manuscripts are scribbles as I write so much faster these days.
In honor of me finally notating this song, please enjoy the free download! Just click the link below.
Just a quick note to let you know that I’ve just added two new pieces of sheetmusic for sale on my website. “Will’s Song”, and “Suite Dreams” are available now via digital download (PDF file), and “Pure” will also be up in a few days as well. Click here to visit my Sheet Music page. Happy playing!
As most of you know, last night they announced the Grammy nominations. I was really hoping to see my name on the list of 5 nominees for Pop Instrumental, but alas I did not. I had worked very hard for the nomination for the past several months – lots of hours were spent on trying to secure this nomination, and I was told by many that I had a real shot at this.
Even despite the tremendous support from my fellow Recording Academy friends, it didn’t happen, and yet I have received an outpouring of love in the past 24 hours from my fans who have told me over and over that I won in their books, and that my music has inspired them and that it means a great to them.
And of course, they all wanted Canon.
Piano students – if you would like to perform this song with a duet partner, you can go to the link below to get the SHEET MUSIC. I purposely wrote this song so that it would be able to be performed 100% okay WITHOUT the orchestration. There are no lulls or blanks spots, it’s all filled with both piano parts.
Just a quick note to let you know that I’ve just added two new pieces of sheetmusic for sale on my website. “Will’s Song”, and “Suite Dreams” are available now via digital download (PDF file), and “Pure” will also be up in a few days as well. Click 
