I wasn’t planning on making an album but here I am. I’ve spent the last three years since I got into this composing thing dropping the occasional single. I’ve been wanting to make an album for quite some time with many false starts, ideas that went nowhere and some good old imposter syndrome telling me that I’m not up to it.
2022 has been an interesting year for me. I only managed one release, ‘our hearts have always been here’. I’m quite proud of that one and it’s the piece that made me feel like I might really have something to say.
This piece, and the many before it, were my training ground. As many writers try their hand at shorter fiction before attempting their first novel, I wrote a number of things in different styles and genres testing the waters and finding out just what it is I like to make. Turns out it’s sort of film score-ish and dramatic.
I spent my time from October to February planting seeds, experimenting with different themes and instrumentation, and generally getting a feel for what I wanted to make and what I wanted it to say. Looks like we’re going for the sound track to an unsettling sci-fi TV show that doesn’t actually exist.
Finding what it is you want to do is really half the battle for any creative. This directive I’ve given myself allows me to focus on the pieces and parts of the album, trace their narrative arc, and maintain a vision for a coherent whole instead of a jumble of unrelated bits. So it’s a concept album? Maybe? I don’t know, I just work here.
I part two, I’ll wax poetic about how excited I was when, to paraphrase Hans Zimmer, “I found the tune”.