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

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.

Ripples In Spacetime

Skai Eriksson