As the name entails, this piece is meant to reflect the warm summer breeze that moves over your skin and through your hair. The piece travels through a variety of moods, like a warm summer breeze would throughout the day. It begins as a calm and inviting gentle breeze that is comfortable to sit in and then it begins to take off as it moves into the following sections. After a tumultuous journey, the breeze finally settles again and returns to a gentle breeze in the afternoon.

When writing this piece, I wanted to keep it simple and easy to listen to, but I couldn’t help but explore where the idea wanted to go. I think that this is a recurring theme for most of the pieces in this album as they have a section that is calm and of a reflective nature but then there are other sections that are more active and agile.

It’s something I find difficult to write a piece that sticks to the one style, theme, or mood and really explores it deeply, but something that I’m inspired to do in my future compositions.

I had a lot of fun writing this piece. The idea came from one of my composition friends from my time at University. He enjoyed writing a lot of anime style music - especially using the anime chord progression which is what I use in the composition. I didn’t want to the piece to sound too much like an anime opening so I did alter the chord progression a little here and there just to make it’s own thing.

I am quite happy with how this piece turned out though, the chord progression does provide for some really nice and smooth voice-leading which makes the whole composition more seamless. There are a few different melodies in this piece although I did try to use the one melody and create the other ones based off of that. That is a skill I’m still working on and it really pays off when it’s done well.

This is probably one of my favourite pieces, it really turned out how I wanted it to. The opening bars at the beginning of the piece introduce us to the style of the piece and provide short fragments of the motifs that are to come later in the piece. In bar 9, the main theme of the piece is introduced which is a arpeggiated open-voiced chord starting in the left hand followed by the right hand. That ope-voiced chord is one of my favourite chord voicings as it just has a beautiful airy sound and that’s what I wanted the focus of this piece to be.

I wanted to change things up in the middle section as you can hear with the left that takes the melody and the right plays a chordal accompaniment. This is actually a little homage to a piece I learnt on the piano when I was younger, there was a section similar to this that I really liked the style and writing of so I decided to use it in this piece. One last thing, this piece was originally called ‘Cloudy Day’ and it was a standalone piece but I changed the name when I added it to this album to keep it one word like the other pieces.

I rarely start by writing a composition with the name in mind but it’s something that I try to do more often and it’s something that I for this piece. When I came up with the name ‘Bloom’ I really wanted to write a piece or at least an opening section that sounded like that word, where the music blooms out like a flower. The first and last section are the same and are just a chordal pattern that rises up from the left hand into the right hand. This kind of writing is simple but quite effective as it slowly evolves over time as the chords change and allows for reflective mood.

The middle section does go in a bit of a different direction but I still wanted to infuse elements from the first section into this section as well as use the gesture of ‘Bloom’ in some way. This sections still evolves in it’s own way but I would say I wrote it in a more through-composed style with different little themes that come and go. I hope you are able to image the music ‘Bloom’ when you listen to it.

This piece is in a bit of a different style compared to the rest, I wanted to try writing in a time signature that I’ve never written in before: 10/8. While 5/8 would be more common and practical, writing in 10/8 provides a longer bar to write new rhythms in that might be tricky to conceptualise in 5/8. The rhythmic ostinato that continues through the whole piece is kind of like 6/8 and 4/8 combined, and that’s how I divided up most of the bars to keep it consistent and lay a foundation for interesting rhythms.

As for the melodic material, I wrote in a sort of improvisatory style by with compositional devices as well to make sure the melody didn’t change too much and had some repetition and variation. The name of the this piece came after I wrote it as I began with the 10/8 time signature and then came up with the rhythmic ostinato. I feel like the title matches the feel of this piece though, I mean that was my goal for the title. ‘Spritzer’ has an active and springy sound to it, like this piece.

How the name came to be for this piece is actually a funny little story. When I created all the folders on my computer for each track, there was one that I already had an idea for in that key and so I simply labelled it as ‘Taken’ so I knew that key was taken already. Then when I came around to writing this piece, I thought “Why don’t I just use this word as the title?”, and that’s how this piece was born.

The name then inspired the rest of the piece and I think the story in a general sense is the feeling of someone or something being taken away from you. The feeling of grief, mourning, and loss that underlies your day to day life from that point on. As the piece progresses, it moves through sections that are brighter or darker which reflect the up and down nature of these life experiences, sometimes you feel more hopeful and other days you don’t feel so great.

Repose means to be in a state of restfulness or tranquillity. As with most of the pieces in this album, it is meant to be calm and peaceful - something you could listen to when you want to relax and unwind. This piece is definitely a lot more chordal than melodic, although there are some melodies that come in in the second half of the piece.

It’s funny, when I write these program notes I am listening back to the piece I have written and I am able to see the full picture as I am able to stand back and look at it as a whole piece. I think the last 7 bars with the quaint melody quite high on the piano is where the piece finally found where it needed to go. Everything else before it is just noise. Then as soon as that melody comes it only lasts for a very short time and then the piece ends. Maybe that is a reflection of the time we take to rest or go on a holiday. We take a lot of time to get into ‘relaxation mode’ and then by the time we are fully relaxed and disconnected, we need to get back to reality or whatever we were doing before.

The title of this piece came from the use of swing in the rhythm. I wanted to write a piece with swing and that’s how this piece came to be. I wanted the piece to reflect a swing hanging from a tree branch on a summer evening with the sun starting to dip down below the horizon. The piece begins with a simple pattern that follows a chord progression which appears through most of the piece.

As you listen to this piece, I want to relax and just imagine a place where you are alone or with someone you love, on that swing in the warmth of that summer evening. The swing is gently swaying back and forth in the breeze and the clouds are starting to set in as the night settles in once again.

The title of this piece also heavily influenced the direction of this composition. I think I began with the ostinato idea that is heard at the beginning and then thought of the title as I was continuing to write the piece. The ostinato is meant to create a sparkly sound that ebbs and flows slowly and quickly throughout the piece. The piece slowly evolves as it goes on with new additions in both the right hand and the left hand and the melody toward the end of the piece is slowly revealed after many iterations from the very beginning.

I think one of the really important aspects of this piece is the phrasing as it really is one continuous idea that doesn’t stop until the very end. The phrasing is essential for the piece to make sense and breath naturally. So the dynamics, use of rubato, and accents are all very important tools to be used in order to bring out the true nature of this piece.

When I wrote this piece - I actually decided to base it off a piece that I learnt when I doing piano exams when I was a lot younger. I used the structure of the piece to inspire my writing, copying things like the phrase lengths and the general style and feel of the piece. I find that’s a really good way to go about writing a piece when I’m not feeling too inspired. Taking a piece you enjoy listening to and copying some element that stands out to you like the structure, harmony, melody, rhythm, texture, tone colour, etc. I mean the options are endless.

Once you have a part of the piece that you want to copy you can really go from there and just make the piece your own. As long as you don’t copy too many aspects of the piece then you will come up with something original because no one is you. I highly recommend trying this writing technique if you write music as it really helps you to just get started on your music.

I wanted to write something a bit simpler which is how this piece came about. I remember one of my composition lecturers teaching us how to write a melody with a strong structure that a lot of film composers use for film scores. It was a really good way to write something quickly and it allowed me to come up with this piece a lot quicker than the other ones. While the overall structure of the piece is important to have a balance between repetition and variation as well as new ideas, the smaller structure of a melody is quite important too for the same reasons. You don’t want to just repeat the same melody over and over again or else it gets boring, but you also don’t want to just have 10 different melodic ideas because then the idea of the piece becomes lost and it’s hard to follow where it’s going.

As for the name of the piece, I came up with it after I had written it so it didn’t influence the composition process in any way. I listened back to the piece a few times to come up some ideas and write some different names down but this word stood out to me. It has a gentle feel and a kind of curious mood to it as well.

This is the final piece of the album and also the final piece I wrote. The composition has three distinct sections that are quite different from each other in the feel and style but are all tied together through the harmony. I really like the first of this piece though as it just has time to breath and is really open which is something I don’t explore as much as I’d like, I always feel like I need to keep the piece moving and something happening.

The energy ramps up to the next notch in each section but I still tried to maintain the original harmony that was used in the first section. It’s definitely a different way to approaching the composition process and something I don’t do very much but it was a good way to try something new.