It’s out!

It is with great pride and relief that I present to you At the Mountains of Madness, an orchestral suite in four parts. This music is offered in tribute to H.P. Lovecraft and Lovecraft fans, and directly inspired by the graphic novel adaptation by Gou Tanabe, so it’s also a tribute to his great work.

Released on January 8^th (one week before this post) to all streaming platforms, the piece was almost exactly one year in the making. That year of course was 2020. I find it pretty fitting to have a work of such ominous undertones and tumultuous upheavals as a keepsake for such a chaotic year.

At the Mountains of Madness is a culmination of my journey as a composer to-date, and I'm very happy to set it down as a milestone to look back on as I forge ahead. I hope it transports you in some small way to the enigmatic tale of horror in the antarctic, or wherever else your imagination finds itself.

The album is available on the streaming service of your choice. If you’d like to support my endeavors in a tangible way, consider purchasing the digital download on bandcamp, it means the world!

• Bandcamp
• Spotify
• Apple Music

The journey (2020)

The process of writing At the Mountains of Madness was fascinating. I learned to hold the inspiration for it over an extended period of time, and to stick to that inspiration throughout the process-- overcoming tedium, fatigue, self-doubt, and all of the other obstacles that keep us from the finish line.

The logistical challenges to creating in 2020 were significant. As our society went into quarantine mode, schools were closed. This made myself and my partner full-time caregivers and educators for our wonderful 6-year old. It's been a unique, unexpected time of bonding, learning, growing, and play. But it's also deprived us of our normal routines, and much of the time we would normally have to dedicate to our work. And to be real, parenting is a huge challenge even when kids go to school five days a week. So its been parenting on a level that demands so much more than what we're used to.

Even through all this, I found new levels of discipline to stay focused, patient, and productive on this and other musical endeavors. It was not easy, and I’m proud of finding my way through it-- not that we're through it yet, but I've got my sea legs now.

If you are a creator during this time, I implore you to be kind to yourself; cut yourself some slack. None of this is normal, nor should we expect ourselves to have a normal response to the stress and anxiety of this weird purgatory. These are extraordinary times, and we should explore extraordinary avenues of self-care. One silver lining of 2020 is that I learned new levels of self-compassion and patience. I had no choice but to reset to having sane, kind expectations for myself. My amazing partner also played big role in me finding a way to "be" this year, so I must give credit where credit's due. After all, it’s taken me a full year to produce these 18 minutes of music, (along with some other short film scores). And I'm OK with that.

Learnings

My first draft of this post was massive, because I tried to include all of the things I learned from this project. And the learnings were massive, but too much to include in this retrospective blog entry. Many of them warrant their own blog post, so I’ve dog-eared the topics and look forward to sharing more here in the coming months. Some topics I’ll want to touch on include:

• Orchestral voicing for clarity, power, and interest
• The art of mixing orchestral music-- taming and balancing the frequency spectrum and what works and doesn’t work with compression, with learnings from Adler’s Study of Orchestration and Joël Dollié’s Mixing Modern Orchestral Music.
• Related to the above, orchestral arrangement as mixing.
• Post-production: preparing masters of orchestral music, the many colors of orchestral music mastering from classical restraint to bowel-shaking trailer music.
• Staying the course on prolonged creative processes.

Side note, I’ve just created a mailing list you can join to stay abreast of my latest blog and music posts.

Enjoy!