Category Archives: Music release

20.02.24 – Latest music releases

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Hello, everybody!

For a while towards the end of last year, I didn’t release much music, as I had so little time to practise/compose/record. Thanksfully, I’ve had a bit more time recently and have managed to release four videos, three of them original music and one cover.

The first release was a piano piece of my own called ‘Let the Scheming Begin’. It’s a character piece and is related to a piece I released at the end of 2022 called ‘Inexorable Force’. It shows a different side of the same character.

Next up was the orchestral version of the aforementioned ‘Inexorable Force’. It’s the music that would play for the final battle with the main villain of a game. It took me a couple of months working on it every night to get the orchestration sounding how I wanted. I expect if I return to it with more experience, I’ll make some subtle changes, but I’m very happy with how it turned out.

Before I started work on that orchestral version, I’d actually made a prog-rock version of the same piece, largely inspired by Emerson, Lake and Palmer, as are many final boss themes in Japanese RPGs. I ended up releasing it a week later than the orchestral version as I’ got so focused on working on that one that I hadn’t thought to release this one. I hope this, the orchestral version, and the original piano solo will serve as an interesting example of how multiple arrangements of the same piece can be made.

Finally, I just released a piano arrangement of Motoi Sakuraba’s ‘Majula’, from Dark Souls 2. It took a while before I was happy with this and there’s still one section that I’m, unsure of. Generally, I’m pleased with it.

While I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep up a schedule of one release a week, I hope to keep things more regular than before.

Re-release: An Ill Presence (orchestrated)

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Hello, everybody! While I’m not a huge Halloween person, I do like horror media, so thought I’d work on some creepy music this month. My first release is actually a re-release. Just over two years ago, I released a piano album and not long after I started to orchestrate some of the pieces from it.

One of the earliest was ‘An Ill Presence’. Listening back recently, it sounds excessively harsh, and at the same time, quite muddy. The panning of the instruments is also fairly arbitrary. I decided to remix it with the knowledge I’ve gained in the last couple of years and feel that it sounds much better now.

So here is ‘An Ill Presence’, arranged for piano, violin, flute, and oboe. There are two versions. The first has emulated tape wobble:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Y2_J9zy6PiY%3Fversion%3D3%26rel%3D1%26showsearch%3D0%26showinfo%3D1%26iv_load_policy%3D1%26fs%3D1%26hl%3Den%26autohide%3D2%26wmode%3Dtransparent

The second version has no tape wobble, as I know it can be disorienting for some people, especially if they’re listening in headphones:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=1gDfUBnTTA0%3Fversion%3D3%26rel%3D1%26showsearch%3D0%26showinfo%3D1%26iv_load_policy%3D1%26fs%3D1%26hl%3Den%26autohide%3D2%26wmode%3Dtransparent

Please let me know what you think!

New track – Life

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Hello, everybody.

It’s been a while since I last released any music. Here’s my latest track. It’s quite outside my usual style. It was an experiment to learn how to use U-he’s Zebralette synth, and also a chance to write in mixolydian mode, which is a scale I don’t often use. It comes in two different flavours, so you can pick the version you like the most.

It’s available to stream on YouTube: https://youtube.com/playlist…

It’s also available to download on Bandcamp, either free or pay what you want: https://nicholasowen-petch.bandcamp.com/album/life

Lessons update and new music release

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Hello, everybody!

It’s been a while since I posted anything here. The last couple of months have kept me relatively busy – with kids going back to school after the summer, I’ve had an influx of new pupils, both beginners and more experienced players. Evening lesson spaces are filling up – I’ve still got a few slots left, so if you’re interested in starting lessons, I’m sure we’ll be able to arrange something. I still have spaces available on Saturdays, too.

In addition to more teaching, I’ve also been composing. It’s been a while since I last released any music – my most recent was my EP about six weeks ago. After the relative simplicity of that EP, I wanted to go in the other direction and work on something much more musically complex. It took longer to write due to the complexity, but now I’m happy to present the results of that work in my latest video!

https://youtube.com/watch?v=qpL05jBguuk%3Fversion%3D3%26rel%3D1%26showsearch%3D0%26showinfo%3D1%26iv_load_policy%3D1%26fs%3D1%26hl%3Den%26autohide%3D2%26wmode%3Dtransparent

This piece, Inexorable Force, is my attempt to capture chaos in musical form without going completely abstract. For the average listener, there are still plenty of hooks, as I’ve gone by the adage of making anything that supposed to be clever also be catchy. For the theory loving musicians, I think there’s a lot of interest.

The main riff in this piece came about by a small challenge I set myself – to write a rhythm in 5/4 time that doesn’t split up the quavers into 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 1 2 groupings. I ended up going for 1 2 3 1 2 1 2 1 2 3 and started to think of the time signature as being 10/8. Then I was curious about adding one more beat into the next bar to add to the feeling of chaos. I built on this and ended up using frequent time signature changes, irregular numbers of bars for some phrases, plenty of chromaticism, and some quartal harmony for further strangeness. I’m really happy with the final result!

I’ll be releasing the track on Bandcamp as soon as I get the notation finished.

New EP released and anniversary of my first album!

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Hello, everybody!

Apologies for the lack of updates recently. Life has been chaotic recently, though should be settling down soon. I’m delighted to announce the release of my latest EP, Moments of Safety! It’s currently available to purchase on Bandcamp, and will be up on YouTube and Spotify in the coming days. Here’s the link to buy: https://nicholasowen-petch.bandcamp.com/album/moments-of-safety

This EP is something I’d thought about writing for a while. I love the ‘safe room’ themes from classic Resident Evil games and decided that I wanted to do my own take on them.

Additionally, the idea of safety took on new meaning to me earlier this year – I was living in Kyiv in February when the Russian military started its renewed invasion of Ukraine and I know the terror of waking up at 5am to explosions. Sheltering in an underground car park never felt entirely safe, but it was with trepidation that we ventured outside when the air raid warnings had finished. While two of these tracks were written in Kyiv before the invasion, they developed nuances of emotion that they didn’t have before in the time since.

An interesting aspect of these themes from the old Resident Evil games (and some other survival horror) is that they’re usually quite simple – just a few chords with memorable melodies (and orchestrated beautifully). At the same time, they capture both feelings of comfort and unease – for me, it’s quite incredible how effectively they do this. In my writing, I tend to go quite complex and often have to pull myself back from that. Here was a challenge for me – how could I simplify my writing for each track without making it boring, and how could I write multiple tracks without falling back on the same ideas and chord progressions?

I’m satisfied with the results – each track is quite different from anything I’ve previously written but still sounds like me. In the end, whether this music is effectively written or not is up to each and every person who listens. 

In addition to the new release, today is the anniversary of my first solo album, Let the Journey Begin! The last year has been a very long one and I barely remember frantically trying to release that before moving to Kyiv. I’ve learnt a lot about composition since then and plan to learn even more in the coming year. Thanks for all of the support thus far – I hope you’ll continue to find my music engaging and interesting!