"Engage" is a track that builds up until it "engages," then keeps on pushing harder and harder all the way to the finish. It has been quite a labor of love for over 5 years. I started the track in 2010 with Reason 4. I had composed 2 other tracks in Reason over the months prior, and found that each one naturally seemed to wind endlessly from one place to the next, and always lasted over 10 minutes. It occurred to me that, although there was nothing "wrong" with long tracks which take the listener on a journey, it might be advantageous intentionally write at least one very simple song which concludes in under 5 minutes. I was messing around on a keyboard one day and started playing the extremely simple motive heard in the piano at 0:45. I liked it, but thought it was too simple to be of any value in a composition. My little sister, Grace, however, overheard what I was playing and encouraged me to record it. That encouragement led me to start fleshing out the electronic track, which came to completion in its first form that same day. In the composition process, I decided to explore that simple motive (minor scale descending from tonic to 6th, then ascending back to tonic), and see how much diversity I could bring to something so simple. The song evolved to contain 3 different tempos, each of which brings a new character to the simple progression. I started to realize that the average listener likes a track to be simple enough that they feel like they can understand it without tremendous effort, yet my natural musical tendencies lean heavily toward intricate arrangements, so I set out to produce music that was accessible to the average person, yet simultaneously intricate enough to keep a more sophisticated listener engaged, and have everyone hearing something new with each new listen. With this in mind, after writing the electronic part, I set out to compose a dynamic violin solo which would give continual interest to the simple harmonic base.
I felt inspired by the way a concise track came together so fluidly, but as my ear for production began to sharpen, I started to realize that I enjoyed the composition of the music I was making, but the production quality left much to be desired. This began the long and continuous journey of music production self-education. During this time I started using Ableton Live 8, whose interface just felt more intuitive to me, and whose 3rd party VST capacities opened up many more possibilities. For a a few years all my old tracks sat pretty much untouched. I would occasionally get a burst of inspiration to get them ready for release, but was always quickly overwhelmed by the gap between my original disorganized production and my improved, yet still underdeveloped production skills. Eventually I exported all of the original audio stems from Reason and imported them into Ableton. From there I processed them further and then resynthesized some of the parts and layered the old and new sounds. I had fully composed and even notated the violin part pretty early on in the process, and eventually made the recording heard in this recording at the end of 2012. I made an arrangement of the piece for piano and violin that I could perform at my college senior recital, then incorporated parts of the new piano part into this track. I hope to have make a good live acoustic recording with piano and guitar sometime in the near future.
I pretty much finished mixing all the parts a few years ago, but have been sitting on the track for reasons largely unknown to me. I brought in Chris Cox for the mastering, and he did a great job bringing the track’s production just that extra bit further, into the realm of what I would consider acceptable. I am extremely grateful for his help throughout the process.
It is with great relief that I finally release the first of my original set of electronic fusion compositions. At various points I’ve thought to simply leave them all unreleased and just make new and improved music with what I now know, from the ground up. I feel, however, that these compositions represent an important era in my discovery of the joy of composition. There’s a real authenticity to them, and I want to share this part of my musical journey with all who care to hear. Thank you for your support and love!