Diary of a Song: Toccata and Fugue

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.

So for those of you wanting to get the sheet music, you can do so HERE:  http://jenniferthomasmusic.com/store/productdetail.php?product=175

If you would like to purchase the single MP3, you can find it HERE on Amazon, or HERE in my store.

UP NEXT:  After the Storm, Track #2 from Illumination.

My CD Cover Art: A Picture is Worth a Thousand Hours of Preparation.

As most of you have probably seen and heard, I have a new album out – as of today actually. Monday, July 16th, 2012 *insert happy dance*.

This album took me roughly four years to complete.  I’d like to think it’s sort of like being pregnant for 4 years and finally giving birth to this amazing baby that I can’t wait to share with the world and shout “Look what I made!! See, look – isn’t it just so grand?? You know you think so.”

Of course every mother thinks their children are the most beautiful and amazing children – and so naturally that is how I feel about this baby.

And I can make that analogy because I am a mother of two and that is a big reason why it has taken me four years to complete this album.  Things. Just. Take. Longer.  And I’m okay with that.

Let’s talk about the cover photo

If you haven’t already seen the cover for my new album Illumination, here it is…

Yes that is me standing next to a 100 year old antique player grand at the historic Paramount Theater in downtown Seattle, but I must say the real credit to this photo goes to the two guys who made it what it is:  My dad, Ron Southworth, was the photographer, and Ryan K. McNeal was the graphic artist that designed the cover.

If you’re thinking Ryan’s name sounds familiar, then no you’re not dreaming.  Ryan K McNeal wrote and directed the short film Minuet for which I composed the original score for (which won the Park City Film Music Festival Gold Medal of Excellence for Original Music in a Short Film).  He is also a talented artist, graphic artist, photographer, playwright, the list goes on and on…

And Ryan also happened to win my Cover Art Design Contest.  But before I tell you more about Ryan, let’s talk about the cover and how it was achieved.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Hours…

With all of the people involved, I don’t think the culmination of 1,000 hours is too far-fetched.

First, the location:  How did we get so lucky to be able to shoot inside the historic Paramount Theater?

Last fall, as I was dreaming up album design concepts, I came across this Dior perfume ad:

Being the girly girl that I am, I just loved this whole concept – with the lighting, the gaudy chandeliers, Charleze’s amazing sparkly dress and the way it moved, and then the light coming in from behind her.

I wanted this. All of it. But my own version of it – of course.

But being that Dior shot this ad at Versailles, France on probably a pretty nice budget – obviously I was going to have to get a little more creative.

So I started brainstorming and looking into venues within my home town of Seattle that had rooms similar to the Dior ad. I was thinking ballrooms, big reception centers, antique homes, etc. And on top of this – it had to be somewhere that also had a grand piano (not having a piano in the picture on my first album has brought up WAY too many “So you’re a singer” comments over the years).

My first idea was the Fairmont Olympic Hotel in Seattle. I spent weeks communicating with the events coordinator – explaining what I wanted to do, what would be involved, making sure they had a piano, and getting them to be on board with cooperating with me.  It seemed like a rather perfect venue…as you can see from the photos below.

Perfect, that is until they gave me their price tag, which I could probably by myself a used car for.

Obviously my budget was much, much smaller than that.

So weeks of research and brown-nosing went to waste, and I had to start over.  I did find a few other venues, but again, the rental fees were beyond what I was able to pay for this.

And then I stumbled across the Paramount Theater.  I’d been there for a couple of different plays I’ve attended, but had forgotten how beautiful and ornate the lobby and theater were.

This last photo (above) really captured my interest because of the 9 foot grand piano to the right of the bottom of the stairs.

I contacted the Paramount, and it seemed to take a couple of months before I actually got a reply back from someone there (which is why I am always trying to think way way ahead of schedule for things).  But I was persistent, and once I finally made contact – I found their events coordinator, Debra, to be kind and easy to work with.

Eventually, I made an appointment to come down to the theater to check it out and talk with them.  So my dad and I went down and met with the Debra, and spent about an hour walking around the theater taking test shots and checking out the place.

 I thought it was simply beautiful – and so incredibly perfect for the vision I had in my mind of what I wanted my photos to look like.

I got VERY excited.

And then I got very nervous.

I already knew it would probably not be within my budget given all the research I’d done on other venues.  But it didn’t hurt to ask.

After our tour of the theater, we met up with the events coordinator to talk and the big question was asked “How much would you charge us?”.  I’m not sure if God was smiling down at me that day or if this woman was in an incredibly generous mood, but I got lucky.  Her answer was, “Well, since you are an independent artist and not some big corporation or media event, I think we could probably do this on trade. You can take your photos here, and you come perform at one of our events sometime to even it out.”

*jaw drops*

You need not ask me twice.  It was a double opportunity!

So I left the theater that day on cloud nine.  I could not stop smiling for the next few hours, or stop bouncing off of the walls.  To get an incredible venue like this on trade was just simply a miracle in my book.

So it never hurts to ask, people.  Never hurts to ask.

The Dress

My next big hurdle was figuring out what to wear for my photo shoot.  If you are anything like my husband, then you pick something out of your closet that you already own and you wear it.

But if you know me, you know I am a bit more detail-oriented than that and usually have very specific ideas in my mind of what I want. And it always involves some sort of shopping

I had originally ordered a white gown with beautiful jewels on the sleeve, but it just wasn’t fitting right on me and I wasn’t feeling comfortable in it.  So I looked around and stumbled across this photo of actress Blake Lively:

This dress was pretty far from the style I normally like, but it really struck me.  I just loved it.  So I started Googling this dress trying to find out who made it and where I could find it, or one similar to it.

I did find it from a dressmaker, but when it arrived it was unfortunately completely different than what I expected.  I was really really disappointed.

So then I did what I just should have done in the first place – which was to ask my mother-in-law to make me the dress.  She is an amazing seamstress who has sewn wedding dresses for over 20 years and I knew she was more than capable.

Lots more hours went into finding the material, the right color, and alas – the lace!  It’s embarrassing how much time I spent online searching for the right lace.  I can now say though, that I have a vast knowledge of lace and it’s different styles, types, and qualities.

The lace on the bodice of the dress I found in a teeny-tiny little sewing shop on Queen Anne Hill in downtown Seattle. It was vintage French lace ($180 per yard!) and I snatched up the very last piece of  it. The lady there warned me that I might not be able to find more lace to match since the ivory color of this vintage lace was a bit darker than typical ivory.  However, after more hours of searching, I found a seller on Etsy selling an exact match of the lace – which took almost 5 yards of it to complete all of the lace around the trim of the dress.

I was very happy with out it turned out…

Styling/Makeup

Another person who spent hours and hours helping me with this Cd cover was my dear friend, Noelle Jensen.  She is an amazing makeup artist, and also does styling.  She drove 4 hours to come help me out with my shoot – and coordinated all of my jewelry, hair, makeup, and even the poses for the photos. I honestly couldn’t have done this without her!

The Photo Shoot

Once all of these things were in place, we were ready to shoot. The entire Paramount Theater shoot took about 5 hours, and again we were just so grateful to have the time at the theater to do this. The staff was more than accomodating.

The antique player piano that we ended up choosing to use for the shoot (instead of the black 9 foot grand), was HEAVY. It took 3 to 4 people to lift it and move it just 3 inches.  I felt very fortunate to have such a beautiful piano in the photos. Apparently it is owned by a Seattle resident who has allowed it to be featured at the theater for years, but no one is ever allowed to touch it.  Except me….ha ha.

Last but not least…

The Cover Design by Ryan McNeal

This is really the amazing part about this whole process.  I don’t know that people really know what all goes into the editing of photos to create that “magic” in the final version.

Here is the original cover photo from the camera, original coloring and all.

You should know that the lighting in this photo is coming from the wall sconces, the chandeliers behind me, two soft box lights in front of me, and a spotlight behind me on the floor (my mom is actually under the piano holding it and shining it up at me).  That is why you get a faint “glow” effect around my hair, and along the piano lid, and also through the sheer sleeve of my dress.

When I gave the photo to Ryan to work on, we went through several drafts and options.

Draft 1.0 – the lighting was coming from above my head with a little lense flare.  Nice, but not a realistic approach, because it makes one wonder then where is the light behind my sleeve coming from?

Draft 2.3 (each .point something is a draft, so you can see we are already onto many many revisions) – This is where we started getting the light source more of where it should be coming from.  We wanted me to have an illuminated effect, obviously because the title of the album is Illumination, but wanted to be sure it looked like the light sources were directionally correct.

Draft 3.1 – Still tweaking the “illuminated” effect around my hair, and trying out different fonts and effects for the lettering.

Draft 6.1 – Playing around with the colorization, contrast, etc.  Also tried a lense flare (which we didn’t like and took out later), as well as the font, size, spacing of the title and where it should go.

FINAL DRAFT:  And here is the final draft, which we used for the cover (this was draft 7.1).  This is uncropped.  Now compare this to the original, and let’s see how many differences you can name…

I really love the vignette that was adding (the shading around the edges). I also love how the colorization of the photo really brings out some contrasting in my hair. I love the lighting coming through my sleeve  and up behind my head.  I think it all turned out so well.  And the font and swirls were just perfect as well.

Ryan – thank you. You spent a lot of time on this, and your hard work is so obvious. It’s beautiful.

More about Ryan…

Now if you’re wanting to know more about Ryan, I asked him some questions and he so kindly took the time to reply to them.  Here they are…

1. What is it you do?  Do you work, or go to school?
   I currently intern for the Producer’s Guild of America (PGA) and Jennifer Lopez Enterprises (JLE).  I am pursuing a career in filmmaking, and ideally I would like to write and direct feature films.  I’m also an artist and pursue oil painting, digital painting, 3D animation, photography, and graphic design.
2. What is your specialty, or what do you love to do?My specialty is storytelling.  For all of the mediums that I work in, it is my common motivation to create art pieces that communicate beyond simple images.
3. What are your goals for your future?My goal for the future is to write and direct meaningful stories that have a resounding impact on my audience.
4. What would you say is a project that you are most proud of?The project I am most proud of is actually my wedding.  I designed everything, from the wedding invitations to the table centerpieces.  Of everything that I’ve done, it turned out the most true to how I had envisioned it.  I wanted to have amazing invitations, for instance.  And so, I handcrafted the invitations, including the envelopes, designing all of the included elements myself (tickets, direction cards, etc.).  I even individually crafted the typography for every guest’s name on the outer envelope.  I am big into presentation, and the invitation would be the first thing our guests would see – it would set the tone for what kind of wedding my wife and I were having.
5. Top 5 things on your bucket list?The top 5 things on my bucket list are:  travel through Asia, direct an award-winning feature film, write a novel, build a sailboat, and own a top-end Apple computer.
6. If you could meet anyone, who would it be and why?If I could meet anyone, I would want to meet J.K. Rowling.  Jo Rowling’s books, for me, have been a keystone in my life. They came to me at a time when I had no one and became my closest companion. I read them regularly and often relive the halls of Hogwarts in my mind’s eye with Pensieve-like clarity. Thanks to Rowling, I have walked those halls, I have been down the third-floor corridor, won the triwizard cup, and even had courage in the face of pure evil.  (Before he died, I would have also loved to meet Steve Jobs, who became an inspiration to me while I was in college).
7. Favorite dessert?My favorite dessert is apple dumplings.Ryan’s Bio

   Biography

   Ryan’s childhood was spent in many different places until he graduated from Evansville High School (Evansville, WI) in 2008.  He then attended Columbia College Chicago (Chicago, IL) to pursue a BA in Film and Video, which he received in 2012.  His passion for art is what led him to film, which he believes to be a combination of elements from nearly every other art form.  Ryan pursues every art he can find time for, and is highly interested in using his artistic skills to create and enhance compelling stories.

   Ryan is available for hire. Due to his busy schedule, he may be unavailable for hire at certain times. If you are interested in hiring Ryan, contact him.