Andrew Souter#2

Co-Composed with Nicolas Laget:

https://soundcloud.com/nicolaslaget

All things have hope. With patience and caring hands, even the delicate and vulnerable can survive winter and grow into maturity with strong roots and branches. With time and unconditional love, our tree may one day blossom and bear fruit in the joy of spring. We must remain patient.

ALBUM INFO:

"The Idea Of You" is the first of a trio of neoclassical solo piano albums composed, performed, and produced by Andrew Souter. These projects have been two decades in the making and represent a return to traditional music composition, engaging song-writing, and the pure passion of emotional story-telling. This Andrew's most personal and intimate music. It is quite literally a love project. We hope it may it help you on your journey, as it has us...

The Idea Of You Cover Art "The Idea Of You" is music inspired by the spirit of Eros and all of its blessings as well as its tribulations. It explores the vicissitudes of romantic love, the delicate seasons and contour of life, and all the lessons learned along the way. Themes of desire, passion, limerence, romantic love, idolatry, jealousy, envy, loss, regret, forgiveness, acknowledgment, appreciation, acceptance, and eventually glimpses of true understanding permeate the work. It attempts to communicate that which so many of us can never quite communicate properly with words. It is an open apology for the clumsy mistakes we all make when coming to maturity in learning how to care selflessly for another human being. It is a gentle reminder as to what is most important in life, as well as an invocation to continuously seek self-improvement regarding our understanding of such matters.

Andrew Souter & Nicolas Laget -- Solstice

New piano composition composed 9/11/2013.  Tentative arrangement.

In a time when the world is too easily focused on the differences between different people and cultures and fear of the unknown, online communities such as SoundCloud are amazing places for people from all over the world to come together and celebrate life and the gift of music.

Places like this allow artists to sincerely and honestly share their talents in an uncompromised manner with whomever would listen. This is possible regardless of who the artist is, where they are from, what level of marketing savvy they posses, or what degree of support they have from the entrenched entertainment establishment that purports to dictate what is cool, trending, and marketable.  It allows sincerity to triumph and for real people to find other real people wherever they are.  It allows people to potentially expand their concept of friendship and family from the microcosm of the self to the macrocosm of the global village. It allows us all to focus on our shared commonalities and better believe in the innate goodness in all humans via uniting in our shared passion for the universal language of music.

Special thanks to Loredana whose smile and free spirit can light up a room even from 5,000 miles away.  Of all the amazing people in the world, the D-Flat Major women are some of the truly special ones:

https://soundcloud.com/thesignatureseries/d-flat-major

Andrew Souter -- Smile From Afar

A castle fit for a queen is magnificent, but only if you are prepared to be a kind, humble, and loving king. Otherwise it is merely a stone prison, and you will spend your time worrying about loosing what is not rightfully yours.

ALBUM INFO:

"The Idea Of You" is the first of a trio of neoclassical solo piano albums composed, performed, and produced by Andrew Souter. These projects have been two decades in the making and represent a return to traditional music composition, engaging song-writing, and the pure passion of emotional story-telling. This Andrew's most personal and intimate music. It is quite literally a love project. We hope it may it help you on your journey, as it has us...

The Idea Of You Cover Art "The Idea Of You" is music inspired by the spirit of Eros and all of its blessings as well as its tribulations. It explores the vicissitudes of romantic love, the delicate seasons and contour of life, and all the lessons learned along the way. Themes of desire, passion, limerence, romantic love, idolatry, jealousy, envy, loss, regret, forgiveness, acknowledgment, appreciation, acceptance, and eventually glimpses of true understanding permeate the work. It attempts to communicate that which so many of us can never quite communicate properly with words. It is an open apology for the clumsy mistakes we all make when coming to maturity in learning how to care selflessly for another human being. It is a gentle reminder as to what is most important in life, as well as an invocation to continuously seek self-improvement regarding our understanding of such matters.

Andrew Souter -- Fiesole

It was seemingly a late Autumn season this year and the leaves held on to their branches a little longer than average this turn of the wheel. I watched as the final remaining members of the deciduous resistance proudly held their ground and clung to their branches, while the wind tried to seduce them to give up their futile attempt at immortality and surrender to the inevitable.  In bold defiance they refused and proudly flew their colorful flags of deep crimson, rust orange, and a shade of yellow so ineffably deep it does not even bare a name. They danced gallantly and gracefully with the wind as they moved in asymmetrical rhythms and flowing tempos - the mathematics of which seemingly beyond human intelligence, boarding on the divine. The eb and flow of the motion together with the beams of sunlight that would burst through the branches and cast a glimmering shimmer onto everything was truly an epically cinematic sight to behold! If I were a cinematographer this is what I would film.  As I am only a composer, I did the best I could with the tools available to my disposal...  I hope you may enjoy it...

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"Autumn Rains" is the second installment in a trio of neoclassical solo piano albums composed, performed, and produced by Andrew Souter. These projects have been two decades in the making and represent a return to traditional music composition, engaging song-writing, and the pure passion of emotional story-telling. This trio represents Andrew's most personal and intimate music. It is quite literally a love project. We hope it may help you on your journey, as it has us...

"Autumn Rains" is music inspired by the spirit of Agape. It is an album dedicated to the concept of spiritual love and universal compassion clothed in the metaphor of transcendental natural beauty. It is an album that simultaneously expresses deep love for both the creator as well as the creation. It is said God gave us music so that we could pray without words. It could be added that nature was provided as an example of exactly how to do this effectively. In this spirit, Autumn Rains is a prayer of gratitude for the opportunity to learn from the natural beauty of this world, and an expression of a sense of respect for the inescapable universal equality that nature imposes. It humbly attempts to capture deep feelings of awe, granduer, idealism, and a belief in the innate goodness of the world even when we all face exceptionally hard lessons.

Andrew Souter -- The Wind Whispers To The Trees

In existence there are ideal forms and there are imperfect manifestations of these forms.  It is a matter of philosophy which is more real to us in our experience of the world:  the perfect idealized form of an apple, or the imperfect manifestation of this form that is said to "participate in apple-ness".  In fact we don't ever see the real idealized form of an object or an idea. It is as if, as Plato said, we are prisoners of a cave, where the objective form sits outside the cave and casts shadows on the interior wall of the cave.  We see only these shadows that are subject to the limitations of our perception and influenced by the collection of our emotional beliefs and past experiences.  More abstractly, these shadows may represet a potential relationship, any of our desires or goals, our self image, or a myriad of any possible other more mundane things. We reach towards these shadows trying to understand as best we can, trying to refine them to be one step closer to perfection.  Sometimes magic happens here. Other times it does not.  Sometimes we fail to realize when it has happened.  Other times we fool ourselves into believing it has happened when it has not. The best we can hope for is to remain humble and patient, and continue to believe our perception will eventually converge with reality if we continue growing and reaching for shadows...

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"Autumn Rains" is the second installment in a trio of neoclassical solo piano albums composed, performed, and produced by Andrew Souter. These projects have been two decades in the making and represent a return to traditional music composition, engaging song-writing, and the pure passion of emotional story-telling. This trio represents Andrew's most personal and intimate music. It is quite literally a love project. We hope it may help you on your journey, as it has us...

"Autumn Rains" is music inspired by the spirit of Agape. It is an album dedicated to the concept of spiritual love and universal compassion clothed in the metaphor of transcendental natural beauty. It is an album that simultaneously expresses deep love for both the creator as well as the creation. It is said God gave us music so that we could pray without words. It could be added that nature was provided as an example of exactly how to do this effectively. In this spirit, Autumn Rains is a prayer of gratitude for the opportunity to learn from the natural beauty of this world, and an expression of a sense of respect for the inescapable universal equality that nature imposes. It humbly attempts to capture deep feelings of awe, granduer, idealism, and a belief in the innate goodness of the world even when we all face exceptionally hard lessons.

Andrew Souter -- Reaching For Shadows


December is a special time of year for most of the world. As children we look forward to it with eager anticipation of all of the shiny new toys and presets we will get this season.  As adults our priorities hopefully shift some and we worry more about the gift of giving than the act of receiving.  We imagine making friends and loved-ones, new ones as well as old, happy in some small way. We envision participating with them in their life for a moment or two and sharing some form of intimacy.  We celebrate the opportunity to give love with the intention of building lasting relationships, and if we are wise enough, we let go of expectations of immediate reciprocation and realize the act of giving is itself its own reward...

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"Autumn Rains" is the second installment in a trio of neoclassical solo piano albums composed, performed, and produced by Andrew Souter. These projects have been two decades in the making and represent a return to traditional music composition, engaging song-writing, and the pure passion of emotional story-telling. This trio represents Andrew's most personal and intimate music. It is quite literally a love project. We hope it may help you on your journey, as it has us...

"Autumn Rains" is music inspired by the spirit of Agape. It is an album dedicated to the concept of spiritual love and universal compassion clothed in the metaphor of transcendental natural beauty. It is an album that simultaneously expresses deep love for both the creator as well as the creation. It is said God gave us music so that we could pray without words. It could be added that nature was provided as an example of exactly how to do this effectively. In this spirit, Autumn Rains is a prayer of gratitude for the opportunity to learn from the natural beauty of this world, and an expression of a sense of respect for the inescapable universal equality that nature imposes. It humbly attempts to capture deep feelings of awe, granduer, idealism, and a belief in the innate goodness of the world even when we all face exceptionally hard lessons.

Autumn Rains

Waiting For December

Andrew Souter -- Waiting For December

I'm away from the piano at the moment, so I thought I'd share this with everybody...

Compositional sketch for a modern Pastoral Appassionata String Quintet.  Primary composition sometime in November 2013.  Work in progress.

Somebody asked if this is a "sad" song.  Here is my answer:

It is not a "human emotion" song.   It is more a divine/nature/universe  song.  It does not have human emotions like happy/sad.  It has only what is.  It has only pure beauty. Like a waterfall.  Or a mountain.  Or a star. A waterfall is not sad.  Or happy.  It only is. It is simply pure beauty.

Pastoral = of or referring to nature or the creator

Appassionata = with passion  (but in this case, it is not passion like between a man and woman.  it is more passion of the creator for his creation or created for his creator.)

It is more of a spiritual music.  This is what I will do more of later in life. Like these guys:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_minimalism

I aspire to follow in their footsteps one day.

Somebody asked about the plug-ins used:

Solo Bass, Cello, Viola, Violin 1, & Violin 2 from NI Kontact (standard set from Komplete) for this sketch.  Sometime later I will ideally record the real thing... (Or at least use more advanced string libraries.) 6 Instances of 2CAudio Breeze (which I am the developer of) are used here to make the Kontact Strings sound reasonably good. 

http://2caudio.com/products/breeze

The strings samples themselves are not that good.  The reverb is!  :)  That's the trick here.



Many new solo piano compositions to share with you all soon!  Happy New Year!

Andrew Souter -- Pastoral Appassionata For String Quintet (Sketch)

This is your song. I wrote the main parts of it in the first month of our relationship as we were falling in love. I've played parts of it for you before many times, but I had never finished it. I have now evolved it into its complete form. This is how I choose to remember you. I focus on the positives; I idealize and romanticize you. My idea of you remains loving and longing even if we are not meant to be. My idea of you persists and looks past challenges despite how difficult they may seem. I believe our ideas and our ideals create our own reality and therefore it is always best to imagine perfection however we may desire it to be. This song is reflection of all the love and gentleness we shared during good times. Ultimately it is a song of optimism even in the face of adversity. Its verses and chapters moves sideways like the astrological crab that you are, but there is deep beauty in it, and in the end it gets to were it wants to go and finds happiness and peace. Thank you for this song. I hope it may comfort you.


ALBUM INFO:

"The Idea Of You" is the first of a trio of neoclassical solo piano albums composed, performed, and produced by Andrew Souter. These projects have been two decades in the making and represent a return to traditional music composition, engaging song-writing, and the pure passion of emotional story-telling. This Andrew's most personal and intimate music. It is quite literally a love project. We hope it may it help you on your journey, as it has us...

The Idea Of You Cover Art "The Idea Of You" is music inspired by the spirit of Eros and all of its blessings as well as its tribulations. It explores the vicissitudes of romantic love, the delicate seasons and contour of life, and all the lessons learned along the way. Themes of desire, passion, limerence, romantic love, idolatry, jealousy, envy, loss, regret, forgiveness, acknowledgment, appreciation, acceptance, and eventually glimpses of true understanding permeate the work. It attempts to communicate that which so many of us can never quite communicate properly with words. It is an open apology for the clumsy mistakes we all make when coming to maturity in learning how to care selflessly for another human being. It is a gentle reminder as to what is most important in life, as well as an invocation to continuously seek self-improvement regarding our understanding of such matters.

Andrew Souter -- The Idea Of You (Part)

A new joyous composition composed, performed, and recorded the last week of April 2014.

Inspired by the beauty, grace, wisdom, and simple pleasure of the feminine spirit and the joy of spring.

I am doing an experiment with this one.  It is only a few days old -- literally completed yesterday -- but as it is a timely song and this is the perfect season for it, I have made it available immediately on iTunes.   If this proves to be a popular decision I will do this for future songs as well.

Special thanks to all of the wonderful women in all of our lives: our mothers, our sisters, our wives, our girlfriends, our female friends...  You all make the world a better place with your kindness!

Photo Credits:
Loredana Maria Pricopie: Model, http://dailylook.ro
Dragos Asaftei: Photographer, http://www.dragosasaftei.ro

Andrew Souter -- Sundress

It was sort of a gloomy day weather-wise yesterday, so I took an excursion into pure minimalism.  :)

Thoughts?

Andrew Souter -- Missing You

Take comfort in the small things. Be humbled by their persistence. Be inspired by their courage. Give thanks for the opportunity to learn from their example.

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"Autumn Rains" is the second installment in a trio of neoclassical solo piano albums composed, performed, and produced by Andrew Souter. These projects have been two decades in the making and represent a return to traditional music composition, engaging song-writing, and the pure passion of emotional story-telling. This trio represents Andrew's most personal and intimate music. It is quite literally a love project. We hope it may help you on your journey, as it has us...

"Autumn Rains" is music inspired by the spirit of Agape. It is an album dedicated to the concept of spiritual love and universal compassion clothed in the metaphor of transcendental natural beauty. It is an album that simultaneously expresses deep love for both the creator as well as the creation. It is said God gave us music so that we could pray without words. It could be added that nature was provided as an example of exactly how to do this effectively. In this spirit, Autumn Rains is a prayer of gratitude for the opportunity to learn from the natural beauty of this world, and an expression of a sense of respect for the inescapable universal equality that nature imposes. It humbly attempts to capture deep feelings of awe, granduer, idealism, and a belief in the innate goodness of the world even when we all face exceptionally hard lessons.

Andrew Souter -- The Great And The Common

Be careful to sow wisely the good seed, for one day you may have to eat its fruit.  Perhaps grace is not demanding to receive everything that we think we are entitled to by our own merit or position, but rather to instead give thanks for not receiving everything we may deserve for our failures and folly. Let us be diligent year round to do the best we can to nurture our crop. Let us be humbly content to accept result of these efforts, whatever it may be, at the time of the harvest.

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

"Autumn Rains" is the second installment in a trio of neoclassical solo piano albums composed, performed, and produced by Andrew Souter. These projects have been two decades in the making and represent a return to traditional music composition, engaging song-writing, and the pure passion of emotional story-telling. This trio represents Andrew's most personal and intimate music. It is quite literally a love project. We hope it may help you on your journey, as it has us...

"Autumn Rains" is music inspired by the spirit of Agape. It is an album dedicated to the concept of spiritual love and universal compassion clothed in the metaphor of transcendental natural beauty. It is an album that simultaneously expresses deep love for both the creator as well as the creation. It is said God gave us music so that we could pray without words. It could be added that nature was provided as an example of exactly how to do this effectively. In this spirit, Autumn Rains is a prayer of gratitude for the opportunity to learn from the natural beauty of this world, and an expression of a sense of respect for the inescapable universal equality that nature imposes. It humbly attempts to capture deep feelings of awe, granduer, idealism, and a belief in the innate goodness of the world even when we all face exceptionally hard lessons.

Andrew Souter -- The Harvest

Overview of "Autumn Rains".

Full Info:
https://www.galbanum.com/music/autumnrains

Available on iTunes & Apple Music here:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/autumn-rains/id1063015335

Alternatively, "CD Quality" uncompressed WAV format is available for purchase immediately directly from me here:

http://www.designersound.com/product_info.php?cPath=34&products_id=117

"Autumn Rains" is the second installment in a trio of neoclassical solo piano albums composed, performed, and produced by Andrew Souter. These projects have been two decades in the making and represent a return to traditional music composition, engaging song-writing, and the pure passion of emotional story-telling. This trio represents Andrew's most personal and intimate music. It is quite literally a love project. We hope it may help you on your journey, as it has us...

Autumn Rains Cover Art "Autumn Rains" is music inspired by the spirit of Agape. It is an album dedicated to the concept of spiritual love and universal compassion clothed in the metaphor of transcendental natural beauty. It is an album that simultaneously expresses deep love for both the creator as well as the creation. It is said God gave us music so that we could pray without words. It could be added that nature was provided as an example of exactly how to do this effectively. In this spirit, Autumn Rains is a prayer of gratitude for the opportunity to learn from the natural beauty of this world, and an expression of a sense of respect for the inescapable universal equality that nature imposes. It humbly attempts to capture deep feelings of awe, granduer, idealism, and a belief in the innate goodness of the world even when we all face exceptionally hard lessons.

Andrew Souter -- Autumn Rains Album Overview (Available Now!)

New Video:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti-GfCM5-zk

If You Would Only Let Me:

I would put you first; I would never be too busy. I would tell you daily how important you are to me. I would hold you every night and kiss you every morning. I would explore every inch of your soul and still long to know more. I would hold your hand on long walks. I would break patterns of ineffective communication, admit my own weaknesses, and let go of male pride which deludes me into mistakingly believing I need to know everything about everything. I would listen more actively to any frustrations you may be experiencing and avoid feeling blamed for them. I would avoid offering solutions when all you really need is empathy and friendship, not a super-hero who thinks he has to fix everything. I would learn to work together effectively as a team and value deeply your strengths without feeling threatened by our differences. I would learn to forgo power and choose grace. I would forgive us both for all of the clumsy mistakes we made along the way. I would learn to value what is important. I would give thanks to the universe for the gift of your presence in my life. I would help you become all you are destined to be. I would learn how to love selflessly, and be of service, both to you, as well as to whatever higher power wished to use our example.

ALBUM INFO:

"The Idea Of You" is the first of a trio of neoclassical solo piano albums composed, performed, and produced by Andrew Souter. These projects have been two decades in the making and represent a return to traditional music composition, engaging song-writing, and the pure passion of emotional story-telling. This Andrew's most personal and intimate music. It is quite literally a love project. We hope it may it help you on your journey, as it has us...

The Idea Of You Cover Art "The Idea Of You" is music inspired by the spirit of Eros and all of its blessings as well as its tribulations. It explores the vicissitudes of romantic love, the delicate seasons and contour of life, and all the lessons learned along the way. Themes of desire, passion, limerence, romantic love, idolatry, jealousy, envy, loss, regret, forgiveness, acknowledgment, appreciation, acceptance, and eventually glimpses of true understanding permeate the work. It attempts to communicate that which so many of us can never quite communicate properly with words. It is an open apology for the clumsy mistakes we all make when coming to maturity in learning how to care selflessly for another human being. It is a gentle reminder as to what is most important in life, as well as an invocation to continuously seek self-improvement regarding our understanding of such matters.

Andrew Souter#2

Fourelle