The inspiration for this piece comes from the fusion of two of my passions; music and linguistics. How can you combine those two? Well, there exists a very special constructed language known as Solresol, wherein all words are made up of musical notes. This means you can hide messages in your music! So what's the hidden message in this piece? Well it's nothing exciting really. The Ostinato in the Cello is made up of the notes G, B and A (or Sol, Si and La in French Solfège). The word Solsila in Solresol translates to the verb 'to bounce' or 'to jump'. The repetition of the last note (A / La) turns the verb into an adverb, hence Bouncingly (which isn't a word in English obviously, although bouncily is, but I guess I didn't realise it at the time so now I'm stuck with a pretty dumb name...) So that was the basis for the piece. There may be a few more words or messages hidden within the piece, I honestly can't remember.

A lot of the music I write is based on whatever is going on in my life at the moment of writing. I likely wrote this piece after attempting (and failing) to study some Poetry for an English exam. The subject of this fugue for a string quartet is based on the first line from 'The Forge', a poem by Irish poet Seamus Heaney: "All I know is a door into the dark". I thought maybe writing music to one of the poems I had to study would be a fun and creative way of learning (It didn't work out, Heaney wasn't even in the exam). Some of you may have initially noticed the spelling error in the title of the piece, however this typo is indeed a very bad pun. The piece is very forgettable and is based on 'The Forge'

I don't just write music for string quartets. I have also written a few pieces for piano. These piano études are the results of my experimentation with some pretty rare scales. Even if you don't know much about music theory, chances are you've heard of the major and minor scales. If you're a musician, you might know a few other scales like Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian and Locrian. But unless you're an obsessive geek like me, you've probably never heard of the Aerogian or Bofian scales. As it turns out there's almost 1500 different possible scales (in our 12-tone equal temperament western world). This awesome website by Ian Ring has a page with a bunch of information for every single one of these scales. Every now and then I like to pick a scale at random using Ian Ring's website and challenge myself to compose something using only the notes in that scale.

The two scales showcased here are the only two that have resulted in pieces I'm actually proud of (as of September 2020). In fact, these are probably the only 2 pieces I've written that I don't find cringy to listen to. They're extremely dark and dramatic and I'm sure a human performance of them would be even more powerful than a MIDI one. Unfortunately my piano skills are nowhere near good enough to even attempt to play these pieces and even if they were, some of the passages would require more than two hands to play...

This is the biggest, longest, most complex piece I've written to date. My Magnum Opus, if you will. This 43 page score for a full classical orchestra tells the story of La Cumbrecita, a small mountain town in the heart of Argentina, which my family and I visited a few times when I was younger. Just reading the town's Wikipedia article makes me want to go back:

"La Cumbrecita is a small picturesque, secluded alpine-like hamlet, located amongst spruce and pine, at 1,450 metres above sea level, where it is not unusual to see a blanket of snow in winter time. It is completely pedestrian and reminiscent of the small German towns of the fifteenth century. One can hike up through the town and then down to the waterfall, a truly paradisiacal experience. Teahouses specialize in Apfelstrudel and Chocolate cake. Alpine-style hotels, lodgings and cabins are available."

The piece contains three main subjects which are developed and woven together alongside multiple other motifs and musical ideas. I began writing the piece in early 2019 and 'finished' it a few months later. However I've gone back and changed several parts multiple times or added entirely new sections altogether. Even as I was writing this (around a year after I first completed it), I went back and made major changes to a section I thought could be improved. The piece begins in the key of D♭ major and travels through 7 different key centers before arriving to the key of B major in the form of a Picardy Cadence. Unfortunately the MIDI playback doesn't do this piece justice and leaves a lot to be desired. The percussion in particular sounds very robotic and underwhelming at times, but if you put on some headphones, close your eyes and imagine you're in front of a real orchestra, it'll probably still sound the same :/