I always came up with original songs but it was only in the age of the YouTube that I ever put the craft "out there". Heck, I was even shy about after starting to blog here at DKOS! (I mean, what's up with that?)
And I did exactly one song posted for a few years. Then two summers ago I started posting more. Then lots more.
Some - just a few - seemed to do okay. :)
Anyway, between original music, the series of stories that goes with them and assembling a small and very talented team of contributors for taking this project to the next level (more on them shortly)... well, here we go.
Because I know who does most of the looking at these things. It's my peeps at DKOS - and I am indeed grateful.
Requiem
Despite the name, it's the one that started it.
While a topic that the Repubs tried to, well, hijack for 10 years, I think (given events a year ago) this is rather properly a national topic of remembrance again.
The purpose of this song was to recall - yes, it was effing bad. But we're still here. Really. Look around. Nothing worth keeping about our country was destroyed. Not by crazy people with box cutters anyway. Nothing that cannot be raised anew, and better.
Like I said. Flag's still waving. We're not done yet. Forward.
Deneb
The simple riff of this song was in my head for years. I never could figure out what to do with it. Then, late in the summer of 2010, after Viva NNos Vegas, it hit me.
I had already settled on Deneb, one of the intrinsically brightest stars in our side of the galaxy, as a place of special purpose in the story. It was also an ideal test of a theory - that massive stars have more primordial makings left over to make planets and though their greater energy output and shorter lifespans cuts the time short to make worlds, the faster pace of things means that a star like Deneb can assemble an early-era solar system (lots of comets, Kuiper objects, planets, gas giant cores, even gas giants and oodles of moons) in a hurry... then blow them all up in about 20 million years.
Also, Deneb happens to be in an exceptionally pretty part of the Milky Way as the pictures show.
Then I figured out what to do with the Windows Movie Maker effects...
This is to date my best-received song. The theme reprises in many of the other pieces. This is intentional.
Redemption
The story theme, in a nutshell. How do you come back from turning your back on every good thing?
The video was a sad experiment in changing skies from different points in the near galaxy, calculated using Hipparchos data on an Excel spreadsheet... with the Chart function. Weird, yes.
Seven Sisters
Since the main characters of the story are seven sisters, princesses of a new incarnation of Atlantis (half in Africa, half in Brazil), there has to be a tie in with the most famous Seven Sisters of all ,the Pleiades, daughters of Atlas - all of whom per myth were very lovely and had bittersweet (at best) lives.
The theme here is built around a song I came up with in college called "Highland Dancer". It fit perfectly with an Angolan legend about the courtship of a young prince with the eldest daughter of Sun and Moon, which seemed like a fine tie-in since Angolan stories after going on six centuries of European contact have a strong fairytale component to them.
Astrida
Astrida is a Promethean character - the seventh of seven sisters, an irrepressible spirit and almost dangerously creative person. And she almost dies as a child in a tragedy involving one of the best-known crops of Angola - land mines. Fortunately her leg is regenerated (she grows up about seventy years from now so they got this sort of thing figured out) but she becomes both agoraphobic and restive ever after. Ultimately the best place you can be both enclosed and on the move at all times is space travel.
She is the first person to leave the Solar System. It is she who travels to Deneb ahead of all others and finds there the immense secret waiting for Humanity.. if it can survive the reign of the much-changed sisters back home
The Golden Swan
In Portuguese its name is Cisne Dourado. In the now-ubiquitous English of Earth, it is known as the Golden Swan, a ship composed of scarce more than highly energetic plasma, spread out in an invisible shield 100 kilometers across. The field is corrugated and capable of spooling out ice from the interplanetary (and later, interstellar) mediums, then accelerating the flecks at near-light speed, over and over again.
The trick is having a payload, namely a pilot, that is composed of the same energy. This is what Astrida ultimately forgoes for many thousands of years (our time, two years for her) to reach the distant stars.
Alecia II
This was an upgrade of a prototype that worked very nicely. Alecia is the oldest of the Seven Sisters. When their father the Emperor is killed she becomes Empress. When he lived, she was very strong, and the world was certain she would be a good and strong Empress when her own time came. Yet it came to soon... and when it did her husband was slain as well.
Then it was apparent; Alecia was too long accustomed being an instrument of the will of others - even before her Father was slain she had been torn between her loyalty to him and that to her love, Ferdinand who, alas, turns out to be a real scoundrel.
She never recovers from the loss of both her sources of strength in adult life.. and falls back on the stronger more fundamental recourse of sisterhood - specifically, with her next oldest sisters Cecelia and Tara. They form the Trinidada (a play on the trinity, also a word for triumvirate), and this works very well. However, the Three Crowns are increasingly hostile in their dealings with the younger four sisters, even Astrida. This leads to strife.
Musically, I love the cello part in this and the choir voices. It came through very nicely.
Time to Stand
This song served two purposes - to capture the "moment of truth" vibe for the story, yet at this time there was real life news going on with regards to the Wisconsin protests.
The video clip captures images of struggle, both here and elsewhere in the world. It was also an experiment in repeating parts.
Cecelia
The second-born princess of Atlantis has many impressive qualities. She is a paragon of both physical and intellectual power yet stands in the shadow of her older sister, whom she is absolutely devoted. In comic book tropes she would be the Lancer; I am not sure what the female equivalent but much of the story's exercise is to refurbish much abused and annoying tropes as a cultural public service to all Humanity. (So, yes, if you think you see a trope, clue: You are seeing one and it's probably being played on purpose and I welcome having unintentional tropes pointed out.)
The song reflects on Cecelia's being in love with an older officer - a defector from (brace yourself, recall it's the late 21st century) America who very studiously avoids so much as noticing the intimidating captain who just happens to be his new boss's daughter.
Naturally, they wind up all happy because someone has to be. Which brings to the trope of Lancer: even when they serve evil masters, they're at heart good eggs and you want them to come out well with some big awesome redemption.
Alas for Cecelia.. .it does not quite happen for a long, long time but at least she does know (a la Princess Bride) true love and doesn't drop the ball like Buttercup. :)
Mara
Mara is twin to Tara; she was always exceptionally sensitive, to the point of madness, many think...
...yet it's not quite so.
There are many universes, many possible realities - not every possible one (such as that where green cheese cats are the primary celestial objects) but the ones akin to ours in terms of physical laws, arrangements and historical trends.
Mara can see them.
The problem is - she can see them, see them all, and cannot stop.
Ergo, she is not mad. She is an Oracle.. and therefore even more difficult to understand than a madwoman.
And her predictions always come true.
Cygnus
As well as an experiment in mathematical music, this is meant to capture the sense of Astrida's journey in the depths, Deneb always visible, its faintly detected signals of an impossible civilization hidden in its radiance, yet still very far away.
Astrida on her way out from Earth visits many star systems, first among them Alpha Centauri, then turnng into a fast paced spiral outward from Sol.
Her findings are transmitted to Earth via quantum link and corroborated with the huge telescopes there she herself designed. Likewise, those scopes direct her outbound course - go here, go there, avoid that rogue planet we project to be in your course. Oops sorry we missed that one, our bad. etc.
Her course comes to have a name as explorers and colonists move outward in the Third Millennium: the Via Astrida.
Centauri
The first of the clips of Astrida's journey. It's also one of the better-received songs on the list.
The solar systems are built using a model I designed based on exoplanet data and fitted into the Celestia application through, well, a lot of klunky Excel code. :)
Other Songs
But most importantly...I've recruited some ringers :)
My cousin Alex Mauldin is a working professional composer.
My friend of oddgirl art is a working professional artist.
Taking a tune I posted, Alex upgraded the music.
KJ provided the art in use... and I do understand she is to be featured on kosgallery soon. :)