To The Forest! And the structure of music. (Patreon)

Helllooo Patrons! I've been thinking a lot about To The Forest! and I thought I would share some of those things with you.

Technically, To The Forest! is my favorite song that I have produced, and there's a couple reasons why. Of course with all of the music and sound I design, I learn something new with every creation, and I am able to carry that knowledge forward into the next project. With the PROJECTIONS OST, I wrote an awful lot of music that helped push me forward as a producer, but also opened me up to different sound design possibilities.

One thing that concerns me greatly as of recent years is the structure of music and how it can be improved. When I say "the structure of music", I am speaking directly about what the song is, from start to finish. A naïve set of structural components might be things like "intro", "verse", "chorus", "bridge" - these are old and almost universal musical structures which countless songs spanning hundreds and perhaps thousands of years might adhere to. From old folk melodies to modern pop music, these structures not only describe musical form, but in large part dictate its form as well. As creative concepts evolve and become refined, simplicity is often the direction which they take. While simplicity itself is not the issue, the condensing of concepts into homogeny is dangerous and must be recognized.

With much of the music I have made in the last few years, I have attempted to create new internal systems by which to define the structure of my own work - not at random, but with explicit purpose and harmonious function, regardless of the context in which it is used by me or found by listeners. Much of this is for the conveyance of emotional or conceptual meaning. The specific thing I want to mention here is the concept of Actors, or, more broadly, how Actors play a part in the building up and breaking down of a track like To The Forest!

To The Forest! takes place in what I consider to be four acts. The first one establishes a baseline - it sets the stage and introduces you to the Actors. The second one adds new Actors to that stage while retaining its basic form. Then there is a shift in the structure, which signifies a major change. Following that, the third act corrupts the expectations set by the first and second acts, and finally the fourth one lets you "behind the scenes" to witness its actors without the context of the stage itself. I'd ask that you listen to the song and try to see it from this perspective, if you haven't already!

This concept of "behind the scenes" is something that I find very beautiful, and I work it into songs wherever I have the chance to do so. I think on a more abstracted level, what I'm really talking about here is Eadem Mutata Resurgo, which is a perfect musical way of thinking. The things which make up music (structural components, chosen scales, proportions, etc) are, in this way, ideals - and the music itself (the individual sounds, melodies, words, etc), the forms. The ideals have infinite shape and potential, and when they collapse to forms, they are necessarily limited, yet echo clearly the shapes of their ideal selves.

So on an individual song level, the actors in a piece of music establish themselves and then show up in unexpected or new ways, so their context (and meaning) change. But also, those actors take forms, which stem conceptually from ideals, and those ideals are present throughout my work. In that way, too, the meaning and contextual relevance of the ideals (and their forms) change, yet remain the same. Those patterns over time weave themselves into a lexicon of meaning which is uniquely mine, and that lexicon informs each thing that I do, music or otherwise.

It's because of all these things (and way more that I couldn't possibly string together into this post) that the structure of music is always on my mind. I hope that now when you listen to my work you will think of these concepts. 

Going forward I plan to be making more posts like this here on Patreon, as well as posts that introduce you to special content (like source files for certain music, synth sounds, clips from in-development projects, stuff like that) on as regular a basis as possible. I will also be posting Commissioned Music here on Patreon. Eventually that music will be available on my bandcamp in sets, but individually, music which is commissioned that I have finished will be posted here first. So I hope you look forward to that!

Thank you for supporting me and thank you also for reading.