Hey Everyone, if you're here - thanks, I really appreciate it. Finding the confidence to share my work with others is a constant in my life, and it means more than I can say.

Note: These liner notes are a work in progress. This is a rough draft I wrote at 1:30 in the morning. I'll fix and update them as I go.

I've broken down the liner notes for this album into three parts: part 1 is for all listeners, part 2 deals with more complex musical concepts on the album and is intended for folks with some music theory training, part 3 is primarily technical, and should only be read by audio or computer nerds, or true Grover Neville sycophants (ha ha)


Endless thanks to Rania Adamczyk who has been a tireless performer, artist, and source of support and feedback both personally and specifically for this project.


Pre-ramble

As I sit here, at 11:56pm, listening to an ASMR video I've heard about a hundred times, waiting for bandcamp to upload my tracks and writing these liner notes (which I've rehearsed 100 times over in my head today) I'm still surprised. My usual operating mode after recording anything is to spend painstaking hours perfecting it, after which I promply chuck into the depths of some hard drive and stuff it into my closet. I hate my recorddings after they're done. But with this album, the process was the opposite - understanding this album has been a process for me. I was, frankly, bored with this music at first. This entire album was recorded in two, four-hour long sessions at Oberlin's Clonick recording studio. I was, in truth, a bit burnt out. The school year was over, my senior recital (which explored some wacky territory) was over, and I had been expecting my band to show up. I got one violinist for 2 hours. Musically, I was more preoccupied with stacked midi polyrhythms, and Brian Alegant's upper division theory course. These sessions were a fun break, something to divert my attention away from the chaotic red-jenny-party that was my commencement week. But here I am actually, well... actually kind of proud. It's a first for me. I hope you enjoy the album.

Part 1

I'll start off by saying I don't often think of my work, or any work - artistic or not - as being defined by one person. A single song can mean hundreds of different things to dozens of different people. I think of my own music in much the same way, meaning essentially, there is no right or wrong answer. In fact, I think of my own music from many different perspectives and moods. Instead of telling you what this album is supposed to mean, I'm going to offer a few perspectives and hopefully just enough behind the scenes tidbits to keep you guessing.

The first thing to know about this album is that the further I get form teh recording of it, the clearer it becomes. I often fall into the psychological trap of trying to be overly-intentional or controlling of my works' thematic messages. In this case, I searched for the meaning in the work after I had completed the recording session. It seems a bit counterintuitive, but my first real listen to the initial recordings I 'd made was done just after my inital writing session on a new book (I have even more unfinished writing projects lying around than albums, if you can believe it) The book is a kind of memoir/inspirational manual about my family, traumatic brian injury, and how I got through 18 years of school without studying a single day of my life. The most important thing about it though, is the primary idea I've been working with, and that is that our Intuitive brain (what most people call the 'sub'-conscious) is actually much more powerful than our conscious brain, and that it can and does pretty much all of the cognitive heavy lifting in our lives. I tried applying this to the album - what meaning could I make out of these sessions? What could the things that had been occupying my intuitive brain reveal to me about what was on my mind now? Not to navel-gaze too selfishly, but the idea intrigued me. Plus I'm not so into myself that I don't realize a solo piano album in 2017 isn't exactly groundbreaking stuff.

So what? Well, here are a few thoughts I had, some of them are very intentional products of the recoridngs and compositions, some are things I only noticed after extensive listening and mixing work was done. There are still things I'm disvoering about this music... which means you should either be really excited to listen it, or seriously questioning your motivations in listening to this thing (if you're this far into the liner notes though, bravo).
The pieces are littered with musical quotes, both from the album itself and from outside sources. The opening of 'Chrysthalize' is quoted in 'John Adams...' which also quotes the famous encore of Keith Jarrett's Koln Concert. The tune used in Blue Ocean is almost identical to the chord progression used in 'Hit the Road Jack' by Ray Charles and 'It don't mean a thing (if it ain't got that swing)' and a million other blues and jazz songs, although with the phrasing and harmony displaced in a specific way. Those of you who know my music (which isn't many of you) know that nearly everything I write is dense with this kind of subtle musical cross-pollination. It could be because I listen to a truly enormous amount of diverse music and hear similarities between all those musics, or perhaps that I love that sensation of hearing something that's almost familiar, but you can't quite place it. In any case, a significant amount of my experience of the album is wrapped up in the musical quotes.

Another interesting element is the titles, which are almost all very close to their original forms, and almost all assigned to different songs than in their first iterations. B A T M A N will be recognizeable to those who attended my senior recital, but none of the other pieces has been performed publicly for an audience larger than 2-3. There's a kind of mysterious power in that - these songs don't really exist as live music, only recorded artifacts. They inhabit this album specifically and especially. And each title has significane running a range of emotions. I've always had trouble finding just one concept to focus on artistically - the whole of life seems so full of vibrancy that only a single thing becomes quickly pedestrain. Every song title, whether it came from something historical or well known, is mirrored by a song title that is deeply situational or personal, and hopefully brings up many connotations for you that don't exist for me. The second half, particularly the last 4 songs fulfill this idea best in my opinion (I encourage differing opinions on this, obviously) The titles can be read as individual songs, or almost together a single sentence or poem, perhaps supported by the crossfades between each song, and the very short pause between the last two. And in that same vein, the idea of water, hurricanes, climate change, natural disaster and the like have been at the forefrunt of public consciousness in recent days, weeks, and years. I'm not making any claims that these are powerful, moving portraits, protest music, or anything like that. But I will say, that the title of the album and the very last song probably either encapsulate a feeling of light and hope, or one of deep sadness for most peole who hear it. For me, these feelings can exist mutually, and I guess I can best describe this part of the album less as a statement, and more as the sensation of the full complexity of real life. We can be joyous and hopeful at the same time that we are terrified and hopeless. We can work for exciting solutions even though we have questions that tear us apart. Life exists in such a unique multitude of places and creatures, and I don't think I can act artistically without acknowledging that. And that is something full of clarity, beauty and meaning for me.

Part 2

I've divided this section into bullet-like points, designed to draw your attention to musically or theoretically significant or interesting spots. You may decide to pay attention or ignore them as you find useful, these are just musical guidelines for my understanding of the music presented here. Note: some of these bullets are clues for the super nerdy who might be interested in picking things apart. If you get stumped, send me a message and I can help)

- Musical cross-pollination is everywhere.
- Batman is the only song with regulat 4-bar phrases (Note the <> inverted structure of the piece, in harmony and harmonic rhythm, rhythmic patterns, etc.) The other pieces use a kind of polyrhythmic phrasing that I learned from transcriptions of ancient greek and mesopotamian music, where phrases are neither 4-'bar' nor regular as we understand them.
- Notice how nearly every piece on the album transitions in a harmonically seamless way to the piece that comes after it. There is a significant motion to the harmonic starting and ending points throughout the album (good luck hunting for it)
- Notice the constant attempts to form a 12-tone row in 'Chaos after hurricanes' and the harmonic discomfort that results from not quite making it. This song is mirroring some other content in the album.
- Almost every song on this album with two exceptions was created using concepts of rhythmic and harmonic 'spaces' rather than being based on modal/chordal, or time signature/barline formulaes.

Part 3

This part primarilyl involves technical aspects of the production. It probably won't be all that interesting unless you're an audio nerd or really like reading about technical aspects of music production. Also arranged in bullets.

- This album was recorded with only 4 mics. 2 Stellar Cm-6s (LDC tube mics) and an ORTF pair of Schoeps MK4 cardiord capsules.
- A Decca Tree arrangement or a specialized M/S+ORTF array was used to make sure the recording has both time and phase information encoded.
- Instead of gating out background noise, a reverse dynamic EQ (iZotope Ozone 7) was run wideband across the treble and midrange. Noise problem fixed, and all musical info retained!
- Reverse compression (expansion) was used lightly to add transient punch instead of compression.
- The foot stomping on Bounce and John Adams was accomplished by adding a dynamic EQ to only the transient peak point of the frequency, enhancing transients without unbalancing frequency or disrupting phasing information.
- Mixed/Mastered in Reaper with iZotope Ozone 7 plugins.