Category Archives: music release

20.02.24 – Latest music releases

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Hello, everybody!

For a while towards the end of last year, I didn’t release much music, as I had so little time to practise/compose/record. Thanksfully, I’ve had a bit more time recently and have managed to release four videos, three of them original music and one cover.

The first release was a piano piece of my own called ‘Let the Scheming Begin’. It’s a character piece and is related to a piece I released at the end of 2022 called ‘Inexorable Force’. It shows a different side of the same character.

Next up was the orchestral version of the aforementioned ‘Inexorable Force’. It’s the music that would play for the final battle with the main villain of a game. It took me a couple of months working on it every night to get the orchestration sounding how I wanted. I expect if I return to it with more experience, I’ll make some subtle changes, but I’m very happy with how it turned out.

Before I started work on that orchestral version, I’d actually made a prog-rock version of the same piece, largely inspired by Emerson, Lake and Palmer, as are many final boss themes in Japanese RPGs. I ended up releasing it a week later than the orchestral version as I’ got so focused on working on that one that I hadn’t thought to release this one. I hope this, the orchestral version, and the original piano solo will serve as an interesting example of how multiple arrangements of the same piece can be made.

Finally, I just released a piano arrangement of Motoi Sakuraba’s ‘Majula’, from Dark Souls 2. It took a while before I was happy with this and there’s still one section that I’m, unsure of. Generally, I’m pleased with it.

While I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep up a schedule of one release a week, I hope to keep things more regular than before.

Re-release: An Ill Presence (orchestrated)

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Hello, everybody! While I’m not a huge Halloween person, I do like horror media, so thought I’d work on some creepy music this month. My first release is actually a re-release. Just over two years ago, I released a piano album and not long after I started to orchestrate some of the pieces from it.

One of the earliest was ‘An Ill Presence’. Listening back recently, it sounds excessively harsh, and at the same time, quite muddy. The panning of the instruments is also fairly arbitrary. I decided to remix it with the knowledge I’ve gained in the last couple of years and feel that it sounds much better now.

So here is ‘An Ill Presence’, arranged for piano, violin, flute, and oboe. There are two versions. The first has emulated tape wobble:

The second version has no tape wobble, as I know it can be disorienting for some people, especially if they’re listening in headphones:

Please let me know what you think!

New track – Life

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Hello, everybody! It’s been a while since I last released any new music. Here is a new track, released in two different flavours, subtle, and unsubtle! The latter has a lot more mangling done to the sounds.

You can listen on YouTube: https://youtube.com/playlist…

If you prefer to download, you can do so from Bandcamp, where it’s available in ‘pay what you want’ format (that includes free, if you prefer not to pay): https://nicholasowen-petch.bandcamp.com/album/life

Inexorable Force – new composition

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Hello, everybody!

It’s been a while since I last released any music – my most recent was my EP about six weeks ago. After the relative simplicity of the EP, I wanted to go in the other direction and work on something much more musically complex. I’m happy to present the results of that work in my latest video!

This piece, Inexorable Force, is my attempt to capture chaos in musical form without going completely abstract. For the average listener, there are still plenty of hooks, as I’ve gone by the adage of making anything that supposed to be clever also be catchy. For the theory loving musicians, I think there’s a lot of interest.

The main riff in this piece came about by a small challenge I set myself – to write a rhythm in 5/4 time that doesn’t split up the quavers into 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 1 2 groupings. I ended up going for 1 2 3 1 2 1 2 1 2 3 and started to think of the time signature as being 10/8. Then I was curious about adding one more beat into the next bar to add to the feeling of chaos. I built on this and ended up using frequent time signature changes, irregular numbers of bars for some phrases, plenty of chromaticism, and some quartal harmony for further strangeness. I’m really happy with the final result!

I’ll be releasing the track on Bandcamp as soon as I get the notation finished.

New EP released and anniversary of my first album!

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Hello, everybody!

I’m delighted to announce the release of my latest EP, Moments of Safety! It’s currently available to purchase on Bandcamp, and will be up on YouTube and Spotify in the coming days. Here’s the link to buy: https://nicholasowen-petch.bandcamp.com/album/moments-of-safety

This EP is something I’d thought about writing for a while. I love the ‘safe room’ themes from classic Resident Evil games and decided that I wanted to do my own take on them.

Additionally, the idea of safety took on new meaning to me earlier this year – I was living in Kyiv in February when the Russian military started its renewed invasion of Ukraine and I know the terror of waking up at 5am to explosions. Sheltering in an underground car park never felt entirely safe, but it was with trepidation that we ventured outside when the air raid warnings had finished. While two of these tracks were written in Kyiv before the invasion, they developed nuances of emotion that they didn’t have before in the time since.

An interesting aspect of these themes from the old Resident Evil games (and some other survival horror) is that they’re usually quite simple – just a few chords with memorable melodies (and orchestrated beautifully). At the same time, they capture both feelings of comfort and unease – for me, it’s quite incredible how effectively they do this. In my writing, I tend to go quite complex and often have to pull myself back from that. Here was a challenge for me – how could I simplify my writing for each track without making it boring, and how could I write multiple tracks without falling back on the same ideas and chord progressions?

I’m satisfied with the results – each track is quite different from anything I’ve previously written but still sounds like me. In the end, whether this music is effectively written or not is up to each and every person who listens. 

In addition to the new release, today is the anniversary of my first solo album, Let the Journey Begin! The last year has been a very long one and I barely remember frantically trying to release that before moving to Kyiv. I’ve learnt a lot about composition since then and plan to learn even more in the coming year. Thanks for all of the support thus far – I hope you’ll continue to find my music engaging and interesting!

Piano arrangement of an excerpt from Metal Gear Solid 3 Main Theme

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Hello, everybody. I glad to post a new video – the first since having had to leave Kyiv due to the war. This one is a piano arrangement of the music from my favourite scene in the Metal Gear Solid series of video games.

I hope to have some more performance videos up soon, though you can imagine, a month without access to a piano for regular practice slowed me down with that.

To Arms! – proof of concept video

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I’m excited to announce that I have a new video on my YouTube channel! This one contains a rock arrangement of one of my earlier piano tracks, titled ‘To Arms!’. For anyone that prefers rock to solo piano, this is for you! If you’re a fan of epic (in the original sense of the word) guitar solos, please have a listen. The solo in this piece was written by the fantastic Ainsley Stones, (who plays in the band Girl Gone Bad), and is the first of two collaborations we’ve done recently.

I’d also like to thank Thomas Slimm for writing the drum part and James Aldred for listening to the track a great many times and offering mixing advice.

If you want to hear the track without the sound effects from the game, there’s a Soundcloud link in the video description.

Theme of Oppression proof of concept video

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I’m happy to announce that I have a new type of video up on my YouTube channel. I suspect anyone that played video games in the 90s might be interested, and anyone who wants to see how music does a lot of work to create atmosphere for old 2D games should check it out as well.

It’s a proof of concept for an early area of a game that I’d like to make. It’s in the style of old JRPGs (Japanese Role-Playing Games) like Final Fantasy and features the piece of music that I wrote back in 2013 that has inspired almost all of my recent musical projects. It was made in RPG Maker MV and was a chance for me to learn how to loop a track correctly from specific points and design a level and dialogue to fit with the music.

I’m really interested to hear what people think about it – do you feel that the visual design matches the mood of the music? Is the atmosphere as oppressive as the track name suggests?

My new album has been released!

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Hello, everybody! I’m delighted to announce the release of my first solo piano album, Let the Journey Begin! Though I’ve always dabbled with composition and song writing, I’ve never been very good at taking my ideas to completion. During the pandemic, as I’ve had fewer lessons to teach, I decided to finally finish a project. This album is the result of 10 months of writing and recording. It includes ideas that go back as far as 2013 as well as completely new ones.

I’ve always loved older video game soundtrack, especially those from the 90s and early 2000s. The music had a lot of work to do, as graphical limitations and lack of disc space often meant that facial expressions and voice acting were limited. The music had to carry the scene, let players know how the characters were feeling and tell the story.

This is what I’ve tried to capture as I was writing this music. As the majority of my prior experience is in writing pop and rock songs, this project forced me to get outside my usual habits of writing and learn experiment with form, texture, harmony, and rhythm.

My album is available to purchase on Bandcamp (click the link to be taken to my Bandcamp page). For the princely sum of £6, you’ll receive not only the audio, but also sheet music for every track. If you feel that my music is worth your money, this is a great way to support me as most of the money comes to me – Bandcamp takes a small cut of the sale compared to most distributors.

If you prefer to stream music, you can listen on Spotify or on YouTube.

The cover artwork for my album was done by the wonderful Shannon Leslie. She works in traditional media and I highly recommend checking out her website: https://www.shannonleslieart.com/