I wasn't planning on doing another programme notes so soon but due to the album release I felt it would be a good idea to break down the title track.
"From A Third Perspective" (I'll shorten it to FATP) is actually a reworking of another one of my compositions ingeniously named "From A Second Perspective". I was teaching a student and they accidentally hit an odd chord. It actually wasn't that weird, it was an inverted B flat major chord without the 3rd note but I liked the sound of it. I told my pupil that I thought it was cool and that I might take the chord and put it in a tune. He then told me that he wanted me to make up a tune using only those notes as a challenge!
I took the chord and rolled it around over the top of different left hand chords and he was impressed so after he left I decided to go further with it. I eventually moved the hook around the piano a bit more but I didn't quite know where to go with it until I started messing about with other rhythms and evolved it to become more energetic. I got the idea from a piece of music from the piano collections from a video game.
This piece then became a favourite with my pupils and I liked how something so simple at heart had morphed into a new piece of music.
When I started writing the music for "Third Perspective" I knew I wanted to experiment with new techniques and because of the structure of FASP I found this a nice entry point into working with different layers. I got the idea for this experiment after hearing Olafur Arnalds "Only the winds". I loved how he used strings along with electronic synths to great effect.
To do this I reworked the piano part to feature a stripped back intro pattern, I lost some of the rhythmic work on the end and created a new middle section. Over this, I first added a drone note and some pulse work from synth patches to establish some sense of pulse and ambience. Gradually new layers were added. These included a clarinet synth sound which played a counter melody, a submarine radar sound which arpeggiated with fade ins and outs and some crystalline effects to add to the chords. Finally I added a kick drum which I deadened with compression and then a softened cymbal crash for some percussion and also some sweeping string parts to build strength and dynamics.
These then moved from the theme to the drop and then the bridge part which uses different chords. This built to climax and then I started to gradually remove these instruments again whilst the piano rolled over a new note sequence until only the piano was left. The piano then played a more melodic phrase and then the instruments were brought back in quite quickly to crescendo into the climatic ending which used more rhythmic piano before dying away to a final chord.
Although I would have liked to push things a bit more, the technology I have is very old and was struggling to handle what I wanted to achieve. Saying this, I am incredibly proud of how this turned out and it has taught me some valuable lessons on the frequency space instruments use as well as how they sound in the mix.
I will definitely be revisiting synths in the future but probably for more long term projects where I can dedicate more time to them.
Just so you know, there isn't a "From A First Perspective"! Maybe I need to devolve Second Perspective back to basics for that!
Thanks for reading and have a great day