This was my first piece of music that I created in Logic along with my music teacher (at the time). There was around a 2 year gap since this piece and the last one, and my knowledge grew much more since. I used several techniques from several different pieces of music that I liked (Can You Hear The Music & The Mandalorian by Ludwig Göransson, The Ecstasy of Gold by Ennio Morricone, etc), along with some music theory that I learned.

This was the piece of music that brought me back from the composing hiatus.

Journey

This is the first piece of music that I created that I was genuinely proud of. This was also the first piece that I created all by myself, as all of my previous compositions were from music class, where I had to collaborate with my peers. I originally created this piece for an English Project relating to the BLM movement, but it turned out really well.

I do not consider this exactly great now, as I created this piece with no regard for playability. However, I still hold this piece close to my heart as this was the piece that started my composing journey.

Conflagration

This was the first piece of music that I created in the Berklee HSCI summer camp, and was a piece for solo piano. When I created this piece of music, I was incredibly jet-lagged, and we had to make this piece in around 24 hours. As a result, this piece of music was very rushed. The title is a callback to the first piece of music I've ever created, with the same name. I still thought it came out all right, but I do wish that I could have spent more time on this project.

Serenity

This was the second piece of music that I created in the summer camp. For this piece, I was tasked to create a duo piece for marimba and bass clarinet. I was pretty disappointed at this choice, as the other options (saxophone & Bb clarinet) were much more appealing to me. I originally struggled to create any ideas for this piece, and even pulled an all-nighter to create a piece I thought was decent. Thankfully, the ideas came in due time, and I was able to create a piece that I liked much more than the piece above.
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While composing this piece, I decided that I wanted the three pieces of music I created at this camp to be linked, and wanted to show different levels of anxiety with each piece.

Everything's Okay

This was the third and last piece of music that I created in the summer camp. This was the piece where I was able to spend the most time, which was around a week. This piece was also for a string quartet, which got me very excited, as string quartets sound phenomenal if done right, and I love listening to different string quartets. Before I started to compose, I wanted my piece to have the same feel as Shostakovich's 8th String Quartet Mvt. 2, as it displayed the emotions of "despair" and "panic" extremely well. However, I was able to listen to a live performance of the exact piece, and that confirmed my decision. 
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This is probably the piece that I am most proud of, as the quality of the music was great. I was able to capture the emotions I wanted to display perfectly, and in the allotted time, I was able to create a piece that I was very satisfied with. This piece was also played at the concert on the final day of the camp, which was also a very enthralling experience.
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(Art was created by me using Adobe Illustrator)

Murphy's Law

This was a composition I created for a music organization. I was asked to create a piece of music that raises awareness on gun violence. Thus, I created a composition/story that covers the Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting of 2012. 

This was a piece that I felt was very rushed, due to the (reletively) short deadline and lack of ideas. Thus, I feel like I can create a much better version of this composition, which I did create.

Trigger Warning

This song is a bossa nova piece with elements of samba as well. This piece was aimed to be a project that uses more of the technical features of Logic. I utilized several different plugins while learning how to mix & master for the first time. 

In addition, I recorded myself playing my clarinet as the melody of the piece. This was done to enhance composition quality, making the piece sound better overall. Recording my clarinet also allowed me to learn the manipulation of audio files and how it is different to traditional MIDI manipulation.

Dança de Mar (Dance of the Sea)

This song is an experimental piece with soundscape being the focal genre. Making music of this genre was a new experience for me, and it was both challenging and fun to navigate how to compose a piece without a familiar song structure. I also recorded myself playing the clarinet for this piece, and I also used a noisebox to create some of the percussive sounds in the piece. 

This project leaned much heavily towards manipulating audio files and utilizing plugins, which was an interesting experience that allowed me to tinker around with the sounds of different instruments. Overall, I learned how to compose untraditional pieces of music, along with utilizing more real-life instruments and manipulating audio files.

Existential Introspection

This song leans more towards mainstream music, with rock being the main genre. I utilized several drum plugins to create the exciting feeling of the song, and I’m especially proud of the drum part in the bridge section. 

In addition, I used much more unconventional instruments in this piece, utilizing pianos and string instruments that you don’t typically see in a rock song. This song didn’t use a lot of audio file manipulation compared to the previous two, but it was still fun mixing and mastering this song.

Exhilaration

This is my personal favorite composition created with the use of AI (Suno). I tested to see how well the AI can replicate more niche instruments, and how the AI can combine two genres into one.

Combined swing and pop to create an instrumental song that has some resemblance of a bebop.

Serenity

Brian Lee (Sonic Architecture)

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