The Far Reaches

why yes i DID just finish Hyper Light Drifter, why do you ask :DD

A submission to the 2nd Impressions Composing Jam, hosted by @KaleOverlord. The theme was 'The Far Reaches' accompanied by a Katsushika Hokusai illustration - 'The Amida Falls in the Far Reaches of the Kisokaidō Road', c. 1832. The shape in the back of the illustration looks vaguely humanoid, which led me to imagine it as a being from another world. I then interpret the theme of 'The Far Reaches' as a cliff where our world 'ends' and another 'begins'. You can look across the rift and see them. They will look across the rift to see you, too. The music is written to represent this 'Far Reach'.

My vague initial thought: I wanted the music to sound 'neutral'. Since my interpretation of the illustration centered around otherworldly beings, I decided I would neither interpret them good nor evil. I wanted this 'Far Reach' area to sound mysterious and vast, but not bad - just the sound of a completely different world you don't entirely understand and might never understand. After fooling around on the piano a bit, I latched onto a cool little voicing placing the 1st and 5th on the left hand and extending a 9th, 10th, and 13th on the right. I thought moving this voicing back and forth between a root of C and B (Cb) sounded intriguing and unknown, and I built the rest of the progression and track off of that.

The first section only uses these two chords, but the second develops them into a 'progression' - harmonically grounding the B as a V chord in the key of E Major and stepping its root down to Bb (making it diminished and awesome) before continuing to an A chord for an IV. 

The synth tones are definitely inspired by the soundtrack for a certain game I just finished recently (HLD's abstract presentation is really alien to me from a composing standpoint and I love it!). I'm relatively inexperienced in composition and production, let alone synthesizers, so I spent a good hour fooling around in Alchemy building each synth from scratch. It was good fun and good practice. I hope I learnt something I can put into my future projects.

The only other composition project I've done was in an orchestral style (which, of course, requires a bunch of instruments and sounds and whatnot), so composing with only a few synth tracks felt really interesting. It forced me to distill a bit more what I needed and stopped me from adding way too much at once (because then it'd just sound bad. The BBC SO Discover plugin can make absolute dumpster fires sound 'cool' and 'orchestral', but saws and squares won't hide your insecurities that way). In doing this track, I also began to consider more things I hadn't before - specific voicings, tempo automation, really messing up the synth envelopes...

Once I'd put together the planned arrangement (the piano + the synths), I added a few more things and obsessed over the mix and EQ for the afternoon. I also made the wise decision of stopping before I messed it up even more with my tired ears. To that matter, I'd appreciate feedback regarding my mix/synths/sound as well! I'm always looking to improve and I probably missed some bits that could be better.

After a good day's worth of work - you can finally hear it. Disasterpeace at home.