New Original Music: Awakening

[Posted by Mark]

Ping has been experiencing some profound things recently and just being around her as she goes through this has a certain effect on me. When we remember that we're all one, that's not too surprising, but to experience it in such an uncanny way is ...well, uncanny.


One evening, I just opened a project in my music program, Reaper, and started composing. Within a couple of hours, I had the beginnings of a piece that, to me, seemed rather unexpected. Ping heard an early version of the basic themes and said: "That sounds very much like what I'm going through!"

Over the last five days, I've spent hours and hours honing the composition and refining the arrangement. Early yesterday morning, it was done. It's just under 4 minutes long. Click on the image (above) to hear "Awakening" on YouTube. I can hear some connection to other pieces I've written, but for me this one is in a class by itself.

Read more details about the composition process below.


This piece started out as a synthesizer experiment. On the first track, I opened Majken's "Chimera" in the key editor and found a patch I thought would make an interesting drone or chord structure on which I could base a composition. I decided that I should do something a little faster than I've been doing recently, so I set the tempo for 120 BPM.

Next I set up a track with EZdrummer and created a quick groove with kick, snare and high hat, looped it a few times and created a couple of fills. It needed a real driving instrument, so I created another track and chose the free shareware "Piano One" which has some pretty decent sound (at zero cost!) and just laid down some notes, whatever came to mind.

My keyboard wiz friend, Larry Benigno can probably play most of this blindfolded, but I'm a guitarist/bassist and my piano skills are quite limited. Plus, right now, I don't even have a keyboard controller. My process is more painstaking, but it works for me. For synthesizers and drums--or any other samplers--I create everything in the "piano roll" key editor in Reaper, one note at a time, setting duration and velocity as I go. Then I go back and tweak things. To put it another way, "no ivory was tickled in the process of creating this piece."

I used the original synth notes as the basis for the chord progression, but the piano was self-sufficient and way more exciting, so I ended up deleting the "Chimera" track entirely.

As usually happens for me, the composition takes twists and turns as I work on four measures at a time. When I go back and listen to a section, I may decide to change a transition, or vary the rhythm a bit. In a couple of cases, I completely redid the transitions which just didn't really work. As per feedback from my wife, I thickened up a few of the sections that have some higher notes by adding octaves below them.

Once the whole piece was laid out and the composition was essentially complete, I went back and worked on the dynamics, raising or lowering certain sections and adjusting each note as needed. As with all samplers, there is a threshold at each velocity range where the sample changes. In several cases, I had to find that sweet spot where the velocity was just within the right range to have the proper "sting" to it without being too loud. Without this effort, the piece bangs along without much touch or articulation--a sound which I find tiring after awhile.

During this process, I also reworked the drums--both the articulation and the arrangement. Putting the right cymbal in the right place at the proper velocity can really do a lot for the piece. I also changed the 13" Slingerland for a 14" Rogers snare in EZdrummer to give it a bit more depth. I also very subtly raised the volume on the snare's bottom mic. So great to have this kind of flexibility in such an affordable drum sampler! (I really like EZdrummer!)

All in all, it was about 5 days from "hey, I should do some music" to the finished piece. I really don't know how long it actually took to do the whole thing. On one of those days I know I was up and working on it by 5:00 AM and didn't really quit until around 10:30/11:00 PM with a few breaks in between.

I think "Awakening" might actually have to be a piano duet since some of those wide ranging chord clusters might challenge even someone with big hands. The drums are programmed to be actually playable with two hands and two feet--something I seem to do naturally, just because I love drums, I guess.

Larry suggested that it would be great with the Chapman Stick. I think he's right. He also said this would be cool played live with some extended sections and solos. Man, would I love to hear that someday! In the meantime, I'm just happy to have gotten it out in this form. Hope you enjoy it!