I’ve noticed that in the past couple of years I’ve been writing piano parts in quite a distinctive way. My piano parts have a lot of common elements. Um well, when I say “writing”, I don’t really mean “writing” because I never actually sit down and write any of my parts - I’m an improvise-in-the-moment-around-these-basic-moods-and-harmonies-and-see-what-happens sort of girl. I may record the same song with seven different piano parts and then pick the one that communicated the most. But you know what I mean. So maybe I mean that lately I have a distinctive PLAYING style?

In songs written before 2004, I think the piano parts are less developed. All my music has grown up but especially the piano parts, which are much more sophisticated these days and in some parts quite fiddly (keeps my fingers nimble! Hehehe).

What comes in the moment is a kind of piano dancing - my fingers seem to want to play things that are flowing and always moving. Sometimes when I’m editing things I’ve already recorded I think of the piano in waves, like water, that’s how it seems to me. I can write more static parts but usually I don’t, because when I play, the things I play are rarely sitting still, they are dancing all over the place and my fingers are trying to sing the song all on their own! Greedy little things… I think I like playing that kind of piano music because it’s easy to get lost in, it’s expressive and it’s complex but simple at the same time. I use different registers for very specific purposes… I can always feel when the piano part needs to be higher or lower on the keyboard to get the right feeling for a particular section of a song - you’d be amazed at how much difference it can make! Sometimes it makes or breaks it, just having the piano part sitting in the right pitch range!

When I first began writing songs, I had the ability to play the piano (though I was not as capable as I am now), but whenever I wrote songs I would sequence the piano parts with the mouse, entering the notes manually one at a time - I never used to actually physically play any of the instrumental parts, and yes, I know that’s quite an insane thing to do! You don’t have to tell me that I was crazy. xD I knew. But I got quite good at crafting realistic parts after a while. I was a speedy little clicker! (’Dream of the Innocent’ - mouse clicking! ‘Waiting for the Snow’ - mouse clicking! ‘Shine’ - mouse clicking!)

Even though I grew up learning Beethoven and Mozart and Bach and Bartok, as soon as I didn’t have to play it anymore for exams (OK, if I’m honest, I am not the type who gets much pleasure from playing the same pieces that everyone else plays, the same pieces from the same books… it just wasn’t what I wanted to play) I stopped playing that music and - shockingly - I haven’t touched sheet music for years! Since I left secondary school I have played the piano exclusively by ear and I play only the things that I want to play, in the styles that I want to play. And that, I think, is where the piano-dancing came in. ;)

I love playing the piano. I mean I really really really really love it. I am a much better pianist than I am a singer. Oh I wish I could sing with the confidence that I can play. But no. ALAS. Maybe one day. :) If I keep practising!

<3

She knows no scar is erased
she knows the morning gives grace
to the mermaids imprisoned in sand
to the winged ones who fell to the land

~

Today was good! I wrote and sequenced the instrumental parts for another new song. ;)

Helen is an unstoppable missile this week… (she’ll crash at some point, you’ll see.)

I just need to write the last few bars (beginnings and endings are always the hardest for some reason - I often start songs from the middle!!) and tweak the string parts, which sound a bit fake and amateurish at the moment because they are straight samples - I think if I record the parts with my violin and dump that on top, it will make the whole lot sound more real. At least that is the THEORY………

I’ve been waltzing around to it all day (not that I know how to waltz… xD well, the clumsy Helenish version of the waltz I can do!).

There is no vibraphone!
You may or may not have noticed that I have a slight obsession with piano/vibraphone pairings in songs. I’m weaning myself off it. ;) But it’s probably still one of my favourite instrument combinations ever.
Anyway.
Oh such a dilemma about this CD!

What do I put on it?!

Do I mix up the styles and put on whatever I like best?

Do I try to make it more samey?

I just don’t know!

Awakening and The Message go together well because they are both acoustic (well, not ACTUALLY acoustic because I don’t have the means to record all the instruments, but I think you know what I mean).

I’m still not sure, so I’m still putting off the decision!

Anyway,  back to work. :D

Today I was trying - again - to rearrange Sorrow’s Ocean because I had thought once again about the possibility of including it on the EP. Oh goodness. I swear, there is something about this song that rejects every single thing I try to do to it! I think it probably won’t be going on!

The funny thing is, I did start and finish a song today.

But it wasn’t Sorrow’s Ocean. ;) It was a song that came to me in a little whisper while I was failing at Sorrow’s Ocean, it was saying to: “Hey… pssssst… I will work for you if you put me in another shell…” ;)

And so, I gave up on Sorrow’s Ocean, deleted most of what was on the screen, kept the little bit that wanted to go off on its own adventure, and renamed the file. Ha. And that, my dears, is how I came to write Blood-coloured Roses. Which, actually, I am totally in love with and I think it could beat Sorrow’s Ocean on many levels. It’s a similar sort of mood, with similar sorts of harmonies, but it’s decidedly its own song. With its own lyrics. And it turned out to be something I have needed to write for so long… I cried so much while writing it. I hope that this song will help me deal with the one issue that comes back to slap me in the face again and again and again. I hope it will make me stronger and more compassionate about it.

Music is magic, people. :) I mean, really and truly, it is.

And yes, this song is most definitely going on the EP.

Hah.

Is finished! :) Finally.

MP3 link - ‘The Last Unicorn’ cover by Helen Trevillion

In all its imperfect glory. ;)

For those who are baffled, ‘The Last Unicorn’ is a book by Peter S Beagle, which was turned into an animated movie some years ago. The movie features a soundtrack by Jimmy Webb - in particular, it features a song called ‘The Last Unicorn’ (funnily enough) performed by America. The book is one of my most-loved books from childhood, I adore it still today, and a couple of years ago I was introduced to the movie. I fell in love with that, too (inevitably).

Thus, I decided to put together my own arrangement of the song, to reflect how this wonderful story feels to me. :)

Watch in high quality!

(Not amazingly exciting, because my DVD broke *sad* so I couldn’t get animated footage. I had to make do with some stills instead. But it’s still pretty.)

For reference (cos some of you won’t know the original song) here is America’s version:

As you know, it was my task to compose the soundtrack to this sweet little graphic adventure game.

It’s taken rather longer than it should have, but these last 2 weeks I’ve been working very very hard on it, and now it is complete!

The soundtrack is not exactly earth-shattering stuff, but I’m proud of it (mostly!) and I hope at least that it suits the story, which is its purpose after all. People said some nice things about the music in the first testing round so I’m feeling encouraged. :)

I’ll upload the whole soundtrack together with some information about the game when it’s released. There is a final round of testing to be carried out first.

For now, here is a little selection of various bits and pieces from the soundtrack. :)

~

Some words about what I did with this project…

As for the music suiting the game - I’m in two minds about this point, actually. The graphics are very minimalist, adorably quirky sketches in bright colours that look as if they’re coloured with crayons (maybe they are?). It’s all very stylised. The way I see it, the graphics provide a “feel”, a base for the story and help to define its character. There is a lot left to the player’s imagination.

At first I wasn’t sure how to approach it. I think that I could have gone two different ways with the soundtrack:

1. Minimalism

2. “Filling in the blanks”

As you will discover, I went for number 2. :)

The soundtrack doesn’t match the graphics - basically I’ve just taken note of the feelings that I perceived from the graphics and the humourous little textual/descriptive details Jonas put in, and I attempted to create a kind of “musical wash” with more sophistication, to give the bare-bones more depth, I guess, and provide cues for the imagination. I saw a vibrant story with a lot of detail. My own imagination had no trouble filling in the blanks, but of course the music reflects my vision of what Desert Bridge feels like, and it may differ from someone else’s. ;)

Hmm, does this make any sense?

Well, I’m still quite undecided about the wisdom of my creative choices… As long as Jonas is happy with what I’ve done, then I’m happy, but I’m going to take careful note of what other people say about the music when the game is out there. It’s very difficult to assess how well I did from where I’m standing, on the inside.

The style of the music is more towards the “old-school” (my dad remarked that bits of it made him think of Day of the Tentacle…!) so generally it’s quite structured and melodic, with very little of what I like to call “atmospheric waffle”! i.e. There are silly melodies and simple but vibrant harmonies and textures, it’s all quite sweet and pleasant sounding. :)

A hint of magic. Magic is an important element of the story so I’ve tried to put a splash of it into the music.

Since the game is set all in one house, I decided to use the same basic instrumentation in every track (and every track is also predominantly in the same key) to connect everything and make it cohesive. I also wrote a few main themes, which appear in several of the tracks in slightly different guises. The differences between the pieces are mostly in the moods - the downstairs of the house, for example, is quite humourous and fun with all sorts of bizarre experiments, inventions and creatures, while the upstairs is more reflective and with a tinge of sadness. The generator room is a bit more sinister. The desert is nothing but a soundscape of wind and atmosphere (vast, empty). My personal favourite, I think, is the end theme, but I won’t say anything about that for fear of ruining the story!

So while they don’t all sound EXACTLY the same, there are definitely a lot of similarities between the tracks.

I am so looking forward to playing the finished game and seeing how everything works together. :)

It now exists.

It is singing.
It is dancing.
It is amazing.

Yes.

Move into light into colour
& life for my eyes to discover
& sound of unfolding & I feel
wings on my back for the first
time

We are stars
We are stars
Silent stars

I thought the tide had spoken
I thought the light had woken
me into a new day
Did my shadow find reflections?
Did the river change direction?
It did not say a word…

Sirens swallowed
in dark mirrors

These moments pass

These days become an ugly fiction
a fairytale addiction
beneath a lying sky
& I, betrayed by false horizons,
I fill my page with silence
& leave it open wide

Sirens swallowed
in dark mirrors

These moments pass

Peel me open
Peel me open & give me grace
Peel me open & leave no trace of this

Did my shadow find reflections?
Did the river change direction?
It did not say a word…

These moments pass
These moments pass
Just like before

THINGS WITHOUT CAGES.

~

These are the dreams of Things Without Wings
& veins running heavy with armour and sin
& Things that do not belong to the ground
but lie here in prisons away from the clouds

You play with your demons
& swim underwater
Swallow your poison
See through the walls
& crawl through the wreckage
Of cast iron cages
& count down the seconds
Til the shadows converge:

Tonight
I
Am
A
Bird

These are the dreams of the Glittering Things
the whispering dolls & the creatures that sing
& dance in the dark & ache for the light
& veins running skyward with beautiful fire

You dance with your demons
Travel the distance
Between exposition
& beautiful lie
The soul hears a new sound
Of splintering metal
& Things Without Cages
& severing ties:

Tonight
I
Am
A
Bird…

~

I’m in love with this one. <3 It’s very close to my heart right now, this is where I am…
Things Without Cages, I think, is another I will have to add to my Cocoon metaphor list because I adore the imagery. ;)

Today I discovered a song lurking on my hard drive that I’d forgotten about. :)
It was my first draft of ‘Cinderella’ for Once Upon A Time, but this version is completely different (and it really is wildly different) from the one that actually ended up on the album. Cinderella started out as a chip-pop cutesy thing, inspired by various retro video game sounds, and then I got frustrated with it (and to be fair it doesn’t remotely fit the tone of the album! Hee hee… so I’m not surprised I abandoned it) and gave up and began writing the much darker and more ethereal Cinderella that you hear on Once Upon A Time.

I wanted to share this one because I think it’s quite adorable. :)

Unfortunately it was never finished but most of the vocals are there (it’s just missing a couple of the chorus sections and some bits of the final verse near the end.)

~ CHIP-POP CINDERELLA ~

And the lyrics:

Somewhere just around the corner there’s a pretty girl
Locked away inside her shadow, she’s invisible
Keeps her thoughts to herself afraid to let them show
Afraid that she might disappear and nobody would know

Out of place in the street she keeps her eyes on the ground
Doesn’t want to be lost — not ready yet to be found
Likes to imagine all these people will remember her name
One day when everything is different — it’s always the same

Trapped on the edge of conversation, but she’s listening
Trying to work out how the others always seem to fit in
Can’t shake the feeling that she’s nobody cos that’s what they see
It’s so frustrating but she doesn’t know what else she can be

Where is the girl that she sees
When she closes her eyes to a grain of a dream?
Where’s the love that she needs like she air that she breathes
To become who she’s meant to be?

She’s afraid that she might always be invisible
Lost forever beneath the feet of the exceptional
And she wants just for a moment to be beautiful
Standing out in a crowd of shining faces, aglow

With the sun in her hair and the stars in her eyes
“Who is that girl?” all those people would cry
And: “Isn’t she lovely! Isn’t she fine!”
“See how she smiles and the whole world shines?”

Alone with these echoes
They say I must live for myself when there’s nobody else
A ghost frail and severed
Years many more than my eyes are able to tell

And while she’s sitting in the shadows of her lonely room
Likes to imagine that she’s shining like the stars and the moon
If only miracles could happen in the world she knows
Crying up at the sky, where all the wishes go –

“Can anyone hear me? Can anyone hear me?
Oh what I’d give to have somebody near me
Someone who needs me, who’ll never leave me
Someone who’d give up the world just to see me”