Now Playing: Pangaea
Topic: Original Music
First, I should acknowledge that this is the first entry here on The Thirty-Second Note. I know I have two blogs already on another website, but I decided that I needed one specifically for music-related stuff -- especially since I may be headed back to college for formal training in music theory and will probably be writing a great deal of music as a result. Since I like to write about stuff, this will be the place to read about really nifty music (gangsta-rap, hip-hop, and R&B excluded).
Okay, then -- on with today's entry.
I've recently been inspired to upload a new song to YouTube, entitled Pangaea. This is an unabashedly new age meditation piece made entirely with the Fantom X. Here's a bit of it...
Pangaea (sample version)
The entire piece is actually nearly nine minutes in length.
Its semi-choral melodic line is reminiscent of something from SimCity 4 God Mode and its windchimes are similar to Koji Kondo's Water Temple theme from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Although "magnum opus" is not necessarily the term I would use to describe Pangaea, I do consider it to be one of my better works.
"So, what's the problem, then?" you may ask, "Why isn't this on YouTube yet?"
When I listen to the song, I see Earth as it was in the Precambrian period -- the first plants are starting to sprout, the first reptile stops swimming and starts walking (sorry, creationists), and all of what are now called "continents" are all starting the billion-year trek to their current locations. The air and water are pristine, the land has a few plants and stray boulders about but is otherwise totally empty. Everything is new and completely unprecedented -- just a few thousand short years prior, the Earth was little more than a ball of lava floating in space. Now, though, it's a verdant utopia for upstart lifeforms.
If I were to stick a title onto it and toss it onto YouTube right now, that symbolism would be lost, which would make the song less effective. See, I can envision what the accompanying video would look like, with dynamic CGI views of Pangaea, itself, drifting apart. However, with my level of expertise in computer animation (which is animating a videogame sprite with stop-motion), I could never hope to achieve it.
The main reason why Pangaea isn't on YouTube right now is that I'm trying to come up with an alternative to the CGI planet thing. I've considered paintings, Microsoft Office 2010 gradient effects, stop-motion, and photo montages, but nothing seems as though it would work. I really don't want to have the song play behind a title screen for 8.75 minutes -- that's just a Windows Movie Maker cop-out if you ask me.
Thank you for reading my first TSN entry. Visit frequently or subscribe to the RSS feed to find new entries as they are posted.
