Some Small Descriptions

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SEPIA

The first track I wrote for HEX and still one of my favorites. Heavily inspired by the cue Miltons Tower from What Remains of Edith Finch. Mostly I stole the wandering duplets in the melody (In short, duplets fall between the normal beats of the song and feel a little off rhythm) because that gave me a strong sense of nostalgia, almost like how your memories are never quite the same as the actual experience but you might not be able to pinpoint what changed in how you remember it. After that I just added a ton of ear candy fading in and out to add to that dreamlike quality of a Polaroid photograph.

 

TANGLE

'Tangle’ is a callback to 'Tanglewood' (the original musical I wrote and produced in college) and the main repeated section of this track was used as transition music from a marketplace into a secluded cabin in the woods where a whimsical magician lives. I was pleased with how it became more of a journey, like a joyous jaunt through the woods, as I expanded it, and I enjoyed adding a slow building “bridge” section cause it mirrors the bridge to Jolly Ol’ Jig. (my favorite song from Tanglewood) I like comparing this one and Frog because they’re very similar colors (and therefore songs) which means the differences between them stand out more.

 

SUNFLOWER

It's really the melody (or motif) of this one that sounded “yellow" to me. But yellow is such a versatile color, and to me it never feels settled. Like, yellow always seems like it's about to shift into a different color, so I tried to capture that by never staying with any set of instruments for very long. And I sandwiched that, on either side of the song, with a piano I tried to make “bloom” out with an ethereal beauty like a flower in the spring sunshine.

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NEON GLARE

I almost titled this one "Violent Purple" (A fun callback from a memorable line is one of the Harry Potter books, I think describing someone's hair) and honestly that would have worked just as well as the title. This track is bold, in your face, and starts with a fricken tornado siren. It pounds through each measure like a giant purple rhino breaking through brick walls.

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NAUTILUS

This color made me think of sea foam, and darker shades of a deep body of water. I took the idea of a submarine and ran with it including bass beeps and boops that sounded like a submarine's equipment to me, mixed with very "island from super mario brothers" melodies overtop of it.

 

FROG

This is the only song from Hex I can actually play. In fact, I couldn’t tell you a single chord in any of these tracks cause I compose entirely by ear. But stringed instruments (minus piano) have always been green to me (I’ve no idea why) so I sat down and wrote a whimsical melody for guitar, then put in some “croaks” from a cello and double bass that I hoped would sound like they’re kind of “hopping” along underneath the melody. (Cause…frogs, get it?) The stripped down versions of Frog (Toad) is maybe my favorite on the album for it’s simplicity and soothing nature.

 

ANCIENT GREY SLAB OF DARK FOREBODING

I started with an organ playing an incredibly full and gothic chord with a #*@! ton of reverb, and from there simply asked, "how grungy can I make this?"

 

PALE WHITE HOLLOW

Inspired heavily by the White Lady from Hollow night, this color insisted I use a harp, though HOW I used the harp was less majestic and more haunting, like the uncanny nature of an environment stripped of color but still very bright. I tried to make it ethereal without sounding "heavenly".

 

BLOOD MOON

The shortest submission because I truly have never loved red, especially fire engine red. This song literally just captures the feeling I get whenever I'm faced with copious amounts of this very aggressive color.

 

AZURE

Producing Azure was like…if I went to scramble some eggs but I dropped one on the floor then proceeded to sloppily scoop it up with my fingers into the pan but then I got distracted and burnt them to a crisp so I covered them in salt and slapped it on some bread because gosh freaking darn it I’m eating these eggs!! And then I took a bite and was like…I mean, I’ll eat ‘em I guess. It was a mess. I think I exported it 17 times and it’s still not exactly what I was trying for. I do really love the bass drop at the end though. This blue is a little darker than sky blue, for me it kinda existed in both an airy elevated place and an electrical, computer-y energy to it. Maybe that’s just because it seems like a very energetic color especially for a cool color. This song taught me that if it’s so loud that you have to compress it a bunch…that deteriorates the sound quality. Which honestly was a pretty unique sound but it wasn’t what I wanted.

 

CLOCKWORK FACTORY

This was the last one I wrote, and you can tell I was impatient to finish. It's not as polished or as thought out as the others, but it still holds place in my heart as the one that focused more on sound design than music.

 

FRACTAL ICE

I love winter. Snow levels were always my favorite in the video games of my childhood. I tried to capture both the joy and danger that extreme cold can contain. The first version of this song was missing a lot of the middle, I kind of leaned into the idea of cracking ice under someone's feet, but them as I played with it I liked bringing a lot more of the color's brightness into the sound, so the second repetition of the main melody got repeated with a lot more percussion, more jingle bells, and a good ol' shaker. It made the transition into the unsettled ending more pronounced.

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GOLD

This is a very rich and vibrant color. I can't look at it without thinking of a crown. I tried to make the music sound like maybe we're riding into the courtyard of a large royal palace, and later on in the song perhaps the king has arrived and is making his way down the large, cavernous throne room. This one taught me a lot about mixing for orchestra. There are so many textures competing in an orchestral setting, the mix honestly kind of has to start with the writing. That's what makes orchestral composers a lil' different lol. You have to know how to weave instruments in and out so you get little appearances of them instead of all of them trying to talk at once. That's also what makes composing for orchestra so rewarding to me. It's a fun sonic puzzle.

 

LAVENDER DAYDREAM

This color has a gentle overcast-day type feel to me, definitely needed some rain. I imagine a cup of tea steaming from where it sits on the windowsill. I like this one for its utter simplicity. Frog was composed on guitar, but other than that there are only two songs I wrote on an instrument and THEN transitioned to a computer, and those are Sepia and this one. In fact, this one was so analog I actually wrote all the sheet music before recording anything in the music software. A nice gentle and simple way to close out the album.