SONIC EXPERIMENTATION
earlier years of my composing development
After I've tried something new — a musical idea, a new sound, whatever — I put it here.
This is not a collection of every little thing I've tinkered with. Many, many experiments I have begun yielded nothing I felt worth including here. I've also written lyrics for a billion songs that are best to never see the light of day.
Some of what you'll find here was worked on for half an hour. Others were messed around with for ten times that long, and a few others even longer.
In case you find something you like, they are all downloadable.
Just don't redistribute etc.
2018-2019
I got my first Macbook the year I started at the Australian Institute of Music. As soon as I got it, I bought Logic Pro X, and that opened up the whole new world of modern production.
My compositional style took a distinct turn towards more electronic elements as I was able to experiment with that for the first time. Over the year, I took much bigger steps in 'production' than in 'composition'. But my initial love for soundtrack-y strings and piano remained.
Before getting the laptop, I used Logic in production rooms at uni. I'd stay after class and sometimes take the hour-long trip into the city on public transport just to experiment and get my head around it all.
Once I'd gotten my Macbook and had a class task, I'd immediately buzz with anticipation to get into it. On a full bus going home, I set my laptop up on the luggage rack and stood over it while I worked. Got some funny looks for sure!
Scroll down over a playlist to see more tracks
EXCURSUS: PROCESS AND REFLECTIONS ON A COMPOSITION ASSIGNMENT
"Contrast and Unity" was the theme of an assignment in trimester one of 2019. I wrote a piece of music, and then expanded on it in a new piece using the same musical themes with a new sound palette.
Then, I did that again.
The last one is a bigger step away from the others. I think they're a bit odd, but they tell an interesting story altogether.
I've uncovered my documentation on creating these pieces. As the creative process is interesting to me, I've attached my reflection PDFs below.
My second year of uni saw me turn back to more melodic pieces. It was still also a time for trying some things closer to (though not fully) avant garde (see Salochin and NBMBAS in playlist).
Getting married meant only 1 trimester of study in 2019. As such, I wrote less music, finding that without the deadlines of classes, assignments or projects, I wasn't as easily motivated to make things. This was a disheartening realisation, and would not be 'remedied' per se even by now (January 2023). It would, however, become slightly better understood and managed over the next couple of years.
A few of the pieces I made in this era are some of my favourite things to date. I just don't write things as creative as 'Trinkle' anymore. Or maybe I do, I don't know.
2019-2020
2020-2021
Covid hit at the start of 2020, so I stopped with AIM knowing I wouldn't benefit much from online education. I then reflected on my overall direction and reasoned it was time to take the step I always knew I would eventually: go into theological study.
So no more assignments, group tasks, or one-on-one feedback from a teacher to get me making music. But I did buy my first sampled orchestra - the BBC Symphonic Orchestra by Spitfire Audio. This would allow me to write orchestral pieces with a vastly greater wealth of musical articulations, control and realism. It was massively exciting, and also another learning curve to overcome.
At this point, I settled most into the style that I still predominantly write now in January 2023: piano-led orchestral music with electronic elements like synth pads and sound effects - a very typical setup for modern films, but I've enjoyed finding my own vibe. Bon apetit.
MUSIC FOR FILM
I love films (you may have noticed from my official composer site) and soundtracks are largely what opened me up to composing music (as apposed to songwriting). Making my own soundtracks that people could associate with particular stories and experiences is a dream of mine. My earliest attempts at putting music to video happened in my AIM days. The first two videos below are not made by me and are copyrighted, but I wrote music over them, so they're here.
The Clue is a short film that went to a bunch of film festivals.
Muting its original audio, I scored it for my final composition unit at AIM, trimester one of 2020. At just under 10 minutes, it was the longest piece of music I'd written and still features the most leitmotifs I have put into a single soundtrack, wowee!
A brief reflection: I think there's an element of subtlety that's missing. I certainly approached it knowing it was being marked under certain criteria. You can't get many marks for silence, so I tried to make the most of the time. I think it comes across a bit busy. Some diegetic sound would help make the music feel less naked too, but that wasn't in my control. Anyway, enjoy!
Paperman is a short film by Disney and it's fantastic. I worked on it in a group in mid-2019, writing the music for the first few minutes. This is what I did! (Melody written by another group member at 2:00). I cut this video to end once my musical contribution is over, which I have to admit gives the whole video a humourously negative ending compared to the real one.
There's a quote that basically goes, "art is never completed, only abandoned." Some googling told me that this comes from a French poet named Paul Valéry, who wrote an essay in 1933 about his poem Le Cimetière marin (The Cemetery by the Sea). The original phrasing is less of a pithy one-liner, but I like it and relate to it, so here's an English translation done by Rosalie Maggio of the original context:
In the eyes of those who anxiously seek perfection, a work is never truly completed—a word that for them has no sense—but abandoned; and this abandonment of the book to the fire or to the public, whether due to weariness or to a need to deliver it for publication, is a sort of accident, comparable to the letting-go of an idea that has become so tiring or annoying that one has lost all interest in it.
I am trying to accept and embrace this inevitable sense of incompleteness. To not be paralysed by the thought plaguing creative minds, saying, "This creation is not good enough, it needs to be better. I need to be better."
While it is especially true on this website that the music here is not complete, only abandoned, the same could be argued with anything I put out into the world.
But I would never get to share these parts of myself or the things that I'm inspired by and want the world to see if I never release my grip upon my ideas and creations. It is when I let them go that they fulfil their purpose of getting across an aspect of my experience or my perspective of the world.