I remember vividly watching this performance at least once daily at age 17, so many years ago and just swoon. Babies 🥲 Happy to say that I still adore both of them & am so proud of them, to have watched their growth and talent for over a decade.
First of all this was in the days pre-Logic, or Garageband or any sequencer for me, this was done on a notation programme, like I used to do everything. I kinda want to give a shoutout to Myriad, actually, makers of Melody and Harmony Assistant, because idiosyncratic and frustrating though they could be, they were (still are I assume—pretty sure I have opened up Harmony to look at old music lately and it's been fine) super powerful and flexible programmes, and splendid value for money. I wrote a lot of midis in those days, and then/alongside mp3s and it's something I've been thinking about a lot lately how I need to get some kind of happy medium of mixture between the convenience in a way, and the freedom in a way, of sequencer/playing notes in, and the thinking-through, or at least a different kind of mechanical process, that comes from having to write down all the notes (literally mouse clicking them all in back then too), and any fancy business you wanted to do with dynamics and effects and whatnot having to do almost note by note intentionally too… This was also the first time I ever paid for sounds — like 30$/€ for a "gold" set which honestly I'm still annoyed that I seem to have lost the CD of because some of them were pretty neat!! Â
Ahh that was a tangent …. technology tangent.  Process tangent.  Anyway second, this was from… 2004 I think, so I was in sixth form — I remember I sent this with my uni applications, along with some pretty horrible looking sheet music, and some cute CD booklet liner notes — I wish I find those but I think all my school folder files got lost or wiped… I think this was when I was kinda sorta thinking trying of doing film music (oh yeah, Harmony Assistant had video sync, of all things, too!) — but for a made up film, obvs.
ANYWAY anyway, this is a Prologue scene to some kinda animated movie I was imagining based on the story of Hido, the Unlucky Warrior (see here). I was gonna expand the plot a lot and maybe have him under some actual curse, probably give him a love interest - or at least a fake-out because I was not a big fan of love interests in fiction at this point lol, but a Girl Who Is a Friend and a friend is what they both needed - and a whole heap of sadness before the end. The beginning of the story runs that this samurai got a rep for being unlucky since he was always on the losing side of every fight he took sides in… This opening was illustrating that point by having him returning lonely from the scene of another defeat, leaving the battlefield maybe.. looking out over the world despairingly from some scenic mountain… burying a friend of his, wow 17 yo me.. (OH OH yEAH it was gonna be he was cursed not to be killed himself but to bring destruction on his comrades or something ahhhh… Kinda not the point of the original story but nvm. And I guess after this he figures out 1) what the nature of the curse is and 2) how to break it, which has something to do with the underwater kingdom and the dragon and all.)
…darn, anyone want to pick this up for Netflix after all?? hire me as composer? I have even better sounds that Myriad Gold Base ca. 2004 now you know!
