The album is a mixture of 3 of my favorite things, astronomy, musical composition, and catchy guitar melodies with soaring solos. I endeavored to write each song to reflect the celestial objects and / or phenomena of their title, and seeing as the album is entitled “The Universe Explained” here’s the clip sheet.

1) A Comet’s Tale: A celestial body consisting of ice, rocks, and dust in a highly eccentric orbit around the Sun. As it approaches the Sun it warms and the ice out-gasses producing a coma, the fuzzy ball typically associated with a comet, and a long tail. An individual comet is an infrequent visitor to the inner solar system as their eccentric orbits fling them far into outer space, hence the misspelling of “tail” as “tale”.

2) Rogue Planets: These are planets that are not bound to any star system and just travel through the heavens as nomads. The Middle Eastern flavor of this song attempts to convey their nomadic existence in the universe. 

3) Supernovae: A massive explosion that happens when a dying star collapses into itself. The result produces tremendous luminosity lasting for several weeks along with a huge shock wave and plenty of cosmic rays. You wouldn’t want one happening in your neck of the galaxy.

4)Dark Matter: A hypothetical form of matter thought to account for approximately 85% of the matter in the universe. It’s called "dark" because it doesn’t interact with the electromagnetic field, and can’t be detected. I wrote the melody lines of this song to have a “sinister aka dark” feel to them. As an OCD side note, I wrote the 1st and 2nd verse so that they could be combined together to make the 3rd verse (after the solo break). In musical terms, this is known as “polyphony”.

5) The Pulsar: Another nasty celestial neighbor. Pulsars are neutron stars that rotate rapidly and emit powerful blasts of radiation from their poles at regular intervals. The strobes of radiation reach far into space and if our planet happened to be in the path, well, not so good for us. Even though I put this song near the back of the bus, I love the way this song starts open and airy, and then slowly the melodies begin to play against each other, ultimately building to a crescendo. This is my musical vision of the fate of Earth if it happens to come within range of a Pulsar’s strobe.

6) The Milky Way: Our spiral galaxy, all 100-500 billion stars. Awe inspiring to gaze upon if you can find a place away from artificial light and get a perfectly clear, dark, new moon night. I tried to make the music reflect the sparkling quality of the stars.

7) Northern Lights: The aurora borealis. Serene, colorful, shimmering, hypnotic, it’s beauty belies the true importance to our survival on this planet. Auroras are the result of disturbances in the magnetosphere caused by the solar wind. The earth’s magnetic field protects this planet by deflecting most of the solar wind over and around us. What little gets through causes the auroras aka northern lights. The original version of this song is very different from the one on this album. There were no drums, just percussion, no guitar solo, very low key, but it had the same name “Northern Lights”, so I decided to update it and stick it at the back of the bus. The album version is still a bit “different” to be sure, but I think it represents it’s title well.

I hope you enjoyed our little tour of the universe and will come again soon.

Recorded & Mixed via Protools, Mbox Audio Devices, Harbinger Mixers, Audacity, Shure & AKG Microphones, Polk Audio & Yamaha Studio Monitors, and more,….

Recorded & Mixed by: Rich Troxler (being basically deaf in my right ear due to Meniere’s Disease, my mixes are theoretical at best lol)

Mastered online at BandLab

All instruments played or programmed by: Rich Troxler

All songs written & arranged by: Rich Troxler

These musical works and recordings are registered with the US copyright office
Copyright Sru 1-532-365 2023 All Rights Reserved

The Universe Explained

A Comet's Tale

A Comets Tale

As a multi-instrumentalist and composer, I am not bound to any musical disciplines or constraints. My music runs the gamut from guitar shredding rock, to ambient electronic, to orchestral movie scores for your mind, and more, so please don’t judge the whole package by a single offering. Music has been a lifelong love affair and I’ve cherished every moment. For more info visit www.richtroxler.net