Dappling, an electronic album (2025-26)
This album is my proudest accomplishment as a musician, a mix of electronic, computer-based music with acoustic piano, saxophone, and string sounds. I received a grant from the Youth Creativity Fund to create the album, and would like to thank them for the opportunity. It isn't fully complete yet, as I am still sourcing live recordings of the string parts to use, but even without the live strings, I think it sounds great.
1. Western Islands
2. Lake
3. Greenwood
4. Rhapsodomancy
5. Sun Machine
Sun Machine is one of my more synth-y sounding tracks, and another track from my album project. It is sort of a study in the style of Jon Hopkins without taking direct inspiration from any one of his songs, putting my own spin on his electronic heavy style, so to speak. I used a program called Composers Desktop Project to distort drum hit samples to get the same sort of digital, glitchy sound prevalent in Hopkins' tracks. I also achieved the glitchy 'melody' sound that fades in over the chords at the beginning and throughout the song by having a sustained synth sound linked to the level of a muted drum track so that it would have a percussive element to it. The song has a sort of raw intensity to it that was inspired by the sun, following the nature theme I have going for Dappling.
6. Forward, to Slow Dawn
7. Dappling
Dappling is an electronic music piece I created in Ableton Live, and it is the last piece I made for the album. All of the instrumental elements in the track I performed on my MIDI keyboard and recorded into Ableton. The ambient 'breathing' sound in the background throughout the track is actually a reverb trail for the snare hit that I've separated and looped. the track was inspired by an image I had in my head at the time of a forest floor with light dappling down on it through a leafy canopy. The harp was to convey a woody natural sound, and the tambourine part vigorously rustling leaves. The parts in the piece where the reverb sort of envelopes the other sounds is when the wind picks up, with the buildup at the end being the forces of nature subsuming the more structured and melodic sections preceding it.