This is a tribute to Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 14.

Piano Ride

I wanted to show the importance of the identity that comes with a name and the role it plays in your life. A name gives you meaning. Without a name you have no reference, you are just a breathing piece of meat. So in my project I show the naming process that I went through. This piece has two sections. The first 35 seconds represents my birth and the period where I had no identity (for two weeks I was without a name). I made the birth dramatic to make the listener feel uncomfortable and scared, to reflect the emotion a woman goes through during birth and how a baby must feel waking up for the first time. I quickly bring the piece back to a peaceful setting to show the calm that follows birth and the period that I lacked an identity. I represented this by thinning the layers and by mainly having ambient morning sounds coming through. I then had my parents speaking in their native languages, Finnish and Italian, describing what they should name me. After they named me, I show how an identity builds. I tried to do this by organising sounds that reflect my childhood, such as bikes, skateboards and the beach, into a moderate beat that builds up to show the growth of the identity.

Aristo Risi