Opening track in the "Seven Dreams of the Orb Weaver" album https://soundcloud.com/skai-eriksson/sets/seven-dreams-of-the-orb-weaver.  The album has been reworked, remastered, and released in collaboration with the charitable music project Playing to Pitch In.  Spotify link:  https://open.spotify.com/album/3GSMJAS4OA22ECx4wq7jDN?si=CzEcd-b_TU6Gktqukfvr2Q

This track serves as a prelude to the rest and for the subsequent track "Ocean Star" in particular.  The rest of the album is rather dark and emotional, so in this prelude I aimed for something light, calm, and peaceful with just a hint at some of the later darker themes.  The impressionist-style waterfall just after the middle of the song is indeed Debussy-inspired (it is just a simple pentatonic pattern similar to ones that appear in plenty of songs, but for me this type of pentatonic run is iconic of Debussy's Arabesque).  The 6/4 time signature gives a little extra space to elaborate on this riff, and I was pleased with how it sounds as a resolution to the cadence leading up to it.  While the song has a shifting tonal center, it is certainly not as tonally destabilized as Debussy's music, and this (along with the simplicity of the locomotive rhythm) affords an opportunity to prepare the listener for a climactic sense of arrival as the pentatonic run appears.   I wanted the middle section of the song to offset the minimalism that is present at the beginning and end of the song, and this Debussy-style riff serves as a nice centerpiece for that.

Ripples In Spacetime

This is the 2nd track in the "Seven Dreams of the Orb Weaver" album https://soundcloud.com/skai-eriksson/sets/seven-dreams-of-the-orb-weaver.  The album has been reworked, remastered, and released in collaboration with the charitable music project Playing to Pitch In.  Spotify link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3GSMJAS4OA22ECx4wq7jDN?si=CzEcd-b_TU6Gktqukfvr2Q Among the songs in the playlist, it was written first (around 2011 while the rest were written in 2021-2022).

Ocean Star

This is the final track in the "Seven Dreams of the Orb Weaver" album https://soundcloud.com/skai-eriksson/sets/seven-dreams-of-the-orb-weaver.  The album has been reworked, remastered, and released in collaboration with the charitable music project Playing to Pitch In.  Spotify link:  https://open.spotify.com/album/3GSMJAS4OA22ECx4wq7jDN?si=CzEcd-b_TU6Gktqukfvr2Q

This track is partly a reprise of "Ocean Star" and "Waltz of the Pelicans" with some additional elements.

Windswept Wilderness

This is the 3rd track in the "Seven Dreams of the Orb Weaver" album https://soundcloud.com/skai-eriksson/sets/seven-dreams-of-the-orb-weaver.  The album has been reworked, remastered, and released in collaboration with the charitable music project Playing to Pitch In.  Spotify link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3GSMJAS4OA22ECx4wq7jDN?si=CzEcd-b_TU6Gktqukfvr2Q

The ending of the preceding track "Ocean Star" (the section after it changes to 4/4 time signature) resolves to a new key (E-flat major) serving as a lead-in for the current track.  

One may notice a "tempo rubato" in comparison to the other tracks on the album.  I played along to a metronome throughout most of the other songs, and I found it to be very challenging.  So, it was a liberating experience to not use the metronome for most of this song.  In the future, I will reconsider the benefits of a metronome and perhaps utilize a hybrid approach breaking free of the metronome more often.  Using the metronome makes editing much easier, but one of the powerful expressive tools unique to solo piano is the limitless control one has over the tempo.

Little Blackwater Sound

This is the 4th track in the "Seven Dreams of the Orb Weaver"  album https://soundcloud.com/skai-eriksson/sets/seven-dreams-of-the-orb-weaver.  The album has been reworked, remastered, and released in collaboration with the charitable music project Playing to Pitch In.  Spotify link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3GSMJAS4OA22ECx4wq7jDN?si=CzEcd-b_TU6Gktqukfvr2Q

One intention with this track was to have something (relatively) upbeat and playful to follow the more emotional previous tracks "Ocean Star" and "Little Blackwater Sound" before diving into the subsequent dark and indulgent tracks.  The upbeat mood winds down and darkens before concluding in a counterpoint sequence (with some hint of the melodic minor) intended to set the mood for the subsequent track.

Sheet music available on request.

Waltz of the Pelicans

This is the 5th track in the "Seven Dreams of the Orb Weaver" album https://soundcloud.com/skai-eriksson/sets/seven-dreams-of-the-orb-weaver.  The album has been reworked, remastered, and released in collaboration with the charitable music project Playing to Pitch In.  Spotify link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3GSMJAS4OA22ECx4wq7jDN?si=CzEcd-b_TU6Gktqukfvr2Q

Wonders of the Underworld

Remastered version on Spotify and other streaming services https://gyro.to/StrivingforSimplicity

Let me first stipulate that I am not a minimalist :-) ...but after joining SC I have heard a lot of interesting music tagged as #soundtrack and became inspired to compose some music in cinematic style.  When I think of piano music in movie soundtracks elements of minimalism come to mind, and so that is the direction I decided to go--toward something simple, subdued, and mildly rhythmic--at least initially; I exercised some restraint in this track, but once I got the rhythmic arpeggios the way I liked them, I couldn't resist adding a bit of melody by way of turning it into a piano duet.  Perhaps “minimalist piano duet” is an oxymoron, so in the end I'm not sure if I succeeded in the original endeavor, but I hope some fellow non-minimalists may enjoy this "minimalism with a melody on top".

-photograph for the song art taken by Melissa Lehman (the photo is of a droplet of water on the leaf of a succulent)

Striving for Simplicity ( minimalist piano duet )

Written in 2019 after the bittersweet experience of dropping my daughter Ivy off at her first day of daycare.  This is a short version.  I have some rough recordings of a 10-minute version that I might break into separate songs and further develop to post in the future when I have time to tackle a bigger project.

For the music theorists: The opening theme is in A-minor, there is a somewhat jazzy middle part starting around 0:38 that is in G-mixolydian (I guess), and the last part starting around 1:00 exchanges between A-minor and C-lydian (with a lot of pedaling off the root to assert the Lydian mode).  The final chord is half-resolved (as it ends on a C power chord after a Lydian arpeggio that, due to its tritone, wants to resolve to a G triad).  

In hindsight, I think it would make more sense to transpose the song a half step down as it would have eased the jumps in the left hand to involve the black keys.  The initial version of the song had a very simple left hand, and so was fine in A-minor.  By the time I started making the left hand more elaborate, I had kind of settled on playing the song in A-minor.

The artwork is one of Ivy's watercolor paintings from the same time period when I composed the song.

Sheet music for the song is available on request.

Sonatina for Ivy

This is my first foray into orchestration involving more than one instrument.  In this track, I added a virtual choir to my piano track "Windswept Wilderness" https://soundcloud.com/skai-eriksson/windswept (the last track in the "Seven Dreams" album soundcloud.com/skai-eriksson/sets/seven-dreams-of-the-orb-weaver).  

I used the "Gregorian swell" virtual choir in Logic with extra reverb.  I also added extra reverb to the piano for consistency (except at the piano solo toward the end where I put a smaller reverb).  Mixing was a challenge--my dad helped with that by making a simple game-changing (and fog-lifting) suggestion to cut out a few dB from the mid range on the piano to make space for the vocals.  

This was a fun project--it is nice to keep the piano as the lead instrument while highlighting certain notes and harmonies with a complementary instrument (and hammered strings seem to go well with a swelling vocal), but there are a bunch of additional challenges in working with more than one instrument, so this gave me new respect for the SCers that do full orchestrations!  Comments/criticism are welcome!

The art is just a color inversion of the "Seven Dreams" art (the procedure for generating the "Seven Dreams" art is summarized in the album description https://soundcloud.com/skai-eriksson/sets/seven-dreams-of-the-orb-weaver).

The title "requiem" is an afterthought prompted by the cathedral effect of the piano and choir combo.  I didn't choose the Gregorian vocals because I wanted this sound but rather because it happened to be the vocal I liked best among the options in garageband/Logic. While tragedy and loss (of friends and family as well as the horrible things happening in the world lately) have influenced some of my compositions including the base track "Windswept Wilderness", this cathedral sound I think is too vintage and over-the-top to feel like a sincere requiem (and for that reason I decided to tag it as #soundtrack).

Requiem

This is a collaboration with my brother who wrote and recorded the acoustic guitar track first, and I then added the piano to it (and later added a piano interlude and ending).   

As a piano player, I find that it can be a challenge to share the stage with another instrument without being too obtrusive.  Additionally, piano and acoustic guitar are both rich in frequencies making mixing a challenge (especially for my novice mixing skills).  I don't think I would have even attempted this project if I hadn't heard a bunch of wonderful and inspiring acoustic guitar and piano duet examples on SC from @debra_buesking and @david-dunhamuser589535203  https://soundcloud.com/debra_buesking/sets/dunham-buesking-collabs
This song is in a different style than their work, but nevertheless it was very helpful to listen to Deb and David's songs while thinking about how to try to fit in the piano in a complementary way.

Song title: The rugged sound of the flat-picked dreadnought together with the spaced out melody of the piano gives me an overall impression of desert/Western combined with sci-fi/fantasy.

-photograph for the song art taken by my wife Melissa Lehman

Desert Odyssey (acoustic guitar and piano)

Look for a remastered version to be released on Spotify (and other streaming services) on October 25, 2024.  Spotify artist page: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6C0SntKljTLs56EFvZzvzS?si=U4MiCwnBRFGYDlRDcp4XuA

Happy Piano Day!

Impressionist piece inspired by the experience of free diving--wandering and peaceful with a tinge of anxiety in the back of the mind.

Some musical elements are borrowed from my album "Seven Dreams of the Orb Weaver" https://soundcloud.com/skai-eriksson/sets/seven-dreams-of-the-orb-weaver.

Some inspiration from Debussy may be heard in the shifting tonal center and more overtly with the pentatonic runs.

To convey the irregular undulations of the sea and the uneven activity level of freediving I fully indulged in tempo rubato--I think I ended up with tempo rubato e rotto :-)

-photograph taken by Melissa Lehman.

Freedive

This is a collaboration with Taylor Brysiewicz.  Upon discovering an adequately functioning upright piano in the basement of the conference room at the Banff Centre (where we were both visiting for a conference on Random Algebraic Geometry), we decided to play some improvisational piano duets which led to this collaborative composition.  Taylor had the foresight to take a quick audio memo on his phone where we recorded a few excerpts alongside some commentary about the chord progression.  After returning home from the conference, Taylor turned our fragments into a completed piano part.  I then added a flute part while trying to maintain the impromptu spirit of the original, namely, by locking in some of the improvised phrases from my early takes (as opposed to indulging in my normal habit of making dozens of rounds of revisions).

Composed by Taylor Brysiewicz and Skai Eriksson
Piano performed by Taylor Brysiewicz
Flute performed by Skai Eriksson

Song art created in Mathematica (it is the level set of an algebraic function with randomly sampled coefficients, hence fitting into the theme of the conference that gave occasion to the collaboration).

Random Jam in Banff (flute and piano)

This is an original composition in tribute to heroically good classic rock pianist Nicky Hopkins (a.k.a. “Edward” as he was sometimes called in the studio by members of the Rolling Stones).  He would have turned 80 years old today (02/24/2024).

This was not an attempt at impersonation, but rather an effort toward one specific aspect of his versatile playing style, namely, that elusive balance of flow and syncopation.  Simply put, listening to Nicky Hopkins makes my brain dance, and trying to capture that effect is what inspired this piece.  

Note: Many are unfamiliar with the name Nicky Hopkins, but everyone is familiar with his piano playing which has appeared on records of the Rolling Stones, Jeff Beck, the Who, Rod Stewart, Joe Cocker, the Kinks, Steve Miller Band, Art Garfunkel, Jerry Garcia, the Beatles (as well as solo work of all four individual Beatles), and many others.  He played on over forty top 40 albums, and dozens of singles.  He was practically a member of the Rolling Stones (and came up with many of the Stones’ most iconic piano parts including for the songs Angie, She’s a Rainbow, Loving Cup, Sympathy for the Devil), but his battle with Crohn’s disease prevented him from being able to commit to regular touring.  As a result, he spent most of his career working as a session musician. He was, however, an official member (from 1969-1971) of Quicksilver Messenger Service where his piano work generally sits up front in the mix and where you can hear his creativity fully unleashed (e.g., check out their songs Shady Grove, Edward the Mad Shirt Grinder, and Fresh Air).  In spite of his limited number of live performances, he was also a talented improviser as showcased in the Rolling Stones studio jam album “Jamming with Edward”, and another great example of this is the high-quality recording of his live performance with the Jerry Garcia Band on “Let it Rock: The Jerry Garcia Collection Volume 2" https://soundcloud.com/jerrygarcia/sets/let-it-rock-the-jerry-garcia.

Here is the Wikipedia article on Nicky Hopkins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicky_Hopkins

Song art: The image depicting “a session pianist resembling Nicky Hopkins” was created with a lot of help from my brother-in-law Patrick McGee using a combination of AI art generators.

Edward Piano Hands

Happy PIano Day!  (the 88th day of the year 03/28/2024)

This is a piano instrumental version of Ren and Chinchilla's "How to Be Me".  The original song is here: https://soundcloud.com/renmakesmusic/how-to-be-me-feat-chinchilla

The original has sparse instrumentation (simple strummed guitar chords and minimalist cello), but the added complexity of Ren and Chinchilla's codominant vocals make for a rich harmonic tapestry and a stimulating challenge to arrange a piano instrumental version.  For instance, one aspect of the song that I love is the use of the harmonic minor in a way that spans both a haunting classical (almost Chopinesque) sound as well as a soulful Jazz sound.  The raison d'etre of the harmonic minor is the V - i resolution. In early takes I settled on extending some of the V - i resolutions using a dom7flat9, which seemed to enhance the haunting classical feel and simultaneously felt in line with Ren's love of diminished chords (e.g., the diminished arpeggio in the Intro of "Hi Ren" which is arguably in fact a dom7flat9).  But then when listening back I noticed that in some places this chord extension did not mesh with the vocal harmonies and a dom7sharp9 a.k.a. the "Jimi Hendrix chord" sounded better).  This is just one example of the intricacies of jamming along with Ren's music.

Part of my motivation for posting this piano arrangement was the idea that Ren's music has enough complexity to stand on its own as instrumental music.  I was delighted when, later that day, Ren posted his first piano instrumental on youtube, a beautiful piece of modern classical music https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqq3VcwPGseErHUa0-xLInQ

Here are the youtube channels for Ren:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@RenMakesMusic

...and Chinchilla:
www.youtube.com/@chinchilla_music

How to Be Me (piano arrangement)

The final master of this song was released on Spotify and other streaming services on November 29, 2024. https://gyro.to/Wheels
Spotify artist page: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6C0SntKljTLs56EFvZzvzS?si=ObtRZlMzRrmvx6l_HXOX3Q

The intention of this piece: a roller coaster for your brain, using variation in arpeggio patterns as the primary musical device to evoke wheels in motion as well as the twists and turns. This piece is completely arpeggiated (no simultaneously struck notes), and the harmonies created through sustain are relatively noncommittal (lots of suspended chords to keep the listener feeling "suspended"), and lots of note spacing to break up the melody, leaving the listener to hone in on the arpeggio patterns as the focal point; the song invites the listener in with a long ascending arpeggio followed by a descending arpeggio, then a sequence of ascending arpeggios with descending root notes evokes the motion of a wheels (oscillation around a monotonic center of mass) before more complex patterns are introduced.  

Mathematical feature of this piece: one way to quantify the complexity in arpeggio patterns is to look at possible permutation patterns that appear in consecutive strings of notes.  Taking a consecutive string of distinct notes and ordering them according to pitch, one can assign a permutation.  All of the 24 permutations of size 4 are realized at least once in this song.  This explains the song art which depicts the Cayley diagram for the permutation group of size four.

Wheels

This instrumental track builds on a collaboration with my brother https://soundcloud.com/skai-eriksson/desert-odyssey-acoustic-guitar-and-piano 
The original song just had acoustic guitar and piano.  Torben Fugger heard the song on SC and took it to a new level of orchestration adding tasty slide+electric guitar work.  At that point it sounded like it needed some low end, and Wayne Cribbs stepped in to add a tasteful bass guitar track.

You can listen to Torben's other elegant orchestral music on SC: @torben-fugger

Here is the credit in the order the instruments were added.

Acoustic guitar: Timothy Lundberg
Piano: Skai Eriksson
Electric guitars: Torben Fugger
Bass guitar: Wayne Cribbs
Mixing/Mastering: Erik Lundberg (Skai Eriksson) with lots of help/feedback from the rest of the group.

Desert Odyssey (w/ additions by Torben Fugger and Wayne Cribbs)

I grew up in the Florida Keys where both of my parents worked as musicians in the entertainment business.  My grandmother taught me to play the piano at an early age.  I ended up pursuing a career in mathematical research and teaching, but in my free time I enjoy composing music mainly for piano.

Skai Eriksson

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