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Traces: Origins

Thanks to everyone who’s been listening to Traces, and thanks to everyone who’s decided to subscribe! I just hope that you’ll enjoy what else I’ve got in store for the rest of the year 🙂

I figured now would be an opportune moment to go into a little bit of depth as to the origin of each of the tracks, both for my own sake (I think getting everything down in one place would be a good thing) and so you can have a better understanding of where all of these tracks came from.

I’m normally a little loathe to talk about the exact meaning behind my music, but in this case – being primarily made up of production tracks – I think it makes sense to talk a bit about each track individually.

So, let’s start from the beginning- track 1!

You Can See The End From Here (2014)
This is actually the newest track on the record, and was written for a pretty charged pivotal moment in a short film with a sci-fi twist. I actually wrote a couple of revisions, but this is the one I preferred. Unfortunately, it didn’t click with the film-makers for whatever reason and it went unused… hence its appearance as the opener here.

Insignificance (2009)
In late 2009 I had only recently finished university and I hit a bit of a creative funk. To counter this, I started a practice which has become a regular trend for me. I decided to try writing one “sketch” per day, just to run with any idea as it formed regardless of my own perceived satisfaction. This is the first such sketch, written after a night of stargazing and feeling a little insignificant (hence the title).

Midnight Spirit (2011)
I’d only recently started working on music as a full-time venture at this point, and was in the process of writing production music as a means to sharpen my skills a bit. I was trying lots of different ideas and genres, and figured I should have an attempt at something with a more atmospheric, almost dubstep-y feel to it. I liked the idea of pitching my vocals down a bit to see what would happen, and was delighted with how un-cheesy it sounded!

Survival (2013)
An acquaintance of mine was studying video game design at university and needed to make a pitch of his game concept to some industry heads. It was a cool idea, and I thought it’d be a unique way to get my music heard by some people in the gaming biz (and I love me some video games), so I decided to write some music for it. I ended up with two tracks – this is the first…

Beneath The Surface (2013)
…and this is the second. While Survival was more of a thematic piece, I wanted this track to be a more atmospheric/background piece. In retrospect, it’s a little more overbearing than I had first anticipated, but I was really happy with both of these tracks. They never really found a home outside of the initial pitch – and now they have. Nice!

Behold (2011)
This was written during the same burst as Midnight Spirit. After writing a fair amount of downtempo/atmospheric music to try and beef up my output a bit, I figured a change was in order. I wanted to write something production-friendly with a more dramatic flair to it, and this is what popped out.

Tread Carefully (2009)
An unusual one, this. I had recently finished my university degree and was due to graduate in a month, so I decided to visit my parents at the other side of the country. I’d brought my laptop with me and this popped out while goofing around in the living room one day. I seem to recall playing quite a bit of F.E.A.R. at the time, so I guess that explains the ominous mood.

The Old Tower (2012)
I was working on a production album with a focus on really chilled, downtempo numbers – all of the tracks I wrote for that project were picked up, except for this one. I suspect it may have been a little too ominous for their tastes, but it’s always been one of my favourites from that project so it’s nice to give it a bit of attention here.

Sweeping Junk (2011)
Yet another track from my 2011 production music binge, I’d recently picked up some nice acoustic drum loops and thought it’d be fun to chop them up and play with silence in my music a little bit more… hence the stop/start/stuttering nature of the drums. This one was a lot of fun to work on!

Counterbalance (2012)
In 2012 I wrote a lot of music with a view to using it as production music, though a good chunk of it would later end up on what would become Pieces. This track didn’t really sit well with me in either camp – it was too scatter-shot to work as production music, and didn’t seem to fit the flow of Pieces… but I really liked it, so I thought it deserved a proper place on Traces.

Traces (2009)
Ahh yes, the title track – and a continuation from my sketch-a-day session which spawned Insignificance. I really felt like I hit upon the central theme of my 2009 sketches with this particular track, which is why I thought it was particularly fitting for the title of the entire release. The entire sketch-a-day sessions form a very personal diary-of-sorts for me, as it was written at a particularly pivotal moment in my life. In many ways this track represents the introverted precipice before a particularly joyous point in my life.

Picking Up Where We Left Off (2010)
This is another continuation of my sketch-a-day exercise started in 2009 with Insignificance. I had a break over the Christmas season, and came back to it in 2010 for a brief spell. This was the first track from the second session, hence the title – I was trying to re-connect with the feeling I had during the first session, despite a lot of things having changed for me in that interim. It was nice to re-connect and, well, to pick up where I left off.

Communication (2009)
This is an odd one. A friend of mine was running for student union president at university at the time, and was focussing on a neat digital campaign. He asked me to write a track and overlay some audio from an interview over it, and this sort of popped out. After the campaign was over I removed the speech, sent it to a few non-exclusive libraries and it got a bit of use. Which was rather nice, actually!

Another Yesterday (2011)
The final track written during my great 2011 production music writing binge. Structurally it’s very simple, but I wanted something that just built up to a really nice finish, and I think this is a nice showcase of a lot of my habits (good and bad) of late 2011, so I thought it would make a fitting end to Traces.

…and that’s it! If there’s anything you’d like me to explain in more detail or anything, feel free to drop me a comment or send me a message 🙂 Don’t forget that you can still grab Traces by subscribing to my Bandcamp page here.

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