Tag: release notes

Release Notes

Mjorn — EP Cyclical: release notes (Part 2)

Posted on by mail@mironnabokov.nl

If you are reading this, I have just released my new EP and want to tell you everything about it.

This is the second article from the series about EP Cyclical, read the first one there first. The previous part deals with the two singles, and here I’ll speak about the rest of the album.

Spring Onion: jumping greens

Spring Onion is the embodiment of spring on the EP, though the title relates both to the way this kind of onion jumps from the ground and the season itself.

Yes, I did in fact choose the title for a pun, no regrets.

This might be the most naive and predictable piece of mine, completely adhering to the musical stereotypes of spring, though never losing the fresh feeling of the season.

The working title of the piece was Open up, because of that one a-ha moment towards the end of the track, when I sent all tracks to one delay at once, which truly opened the space up, filled it with life and breath.

The piece almost crumbled apart in the last moment of production: I pushed some wrong buttons and everything broke completely. The time and effort needed to fix this mistake spoiled my attitude to the piece, it seems that I just listened to it too many times.

It’s possible that this piece deserves to be a single more than the actual singles, but I personally can’t enjoy it anymore. Can you?

Golden Milk: turmeric and honey

I truly love this piece for its simplicity and the sense of flow it was created in.

I really had to hurry to produce this track, since I fell out of love with the previous autumn candidate, and was already on a tight release schedule.

I’m happy to be finally able to compose something I can play solo. Something simple, but truly grounded.

Golden Milk — is a very tasty drink with turmeric and other spices, perfect for getting into a cozy blanket fort. I hoped to create a similar sense from listening to this track.

It’s the second time I try to build a bridge to the next release with the last piece on the album. Golden Milk ends in a lingering caramel ambient, which is the direction I want to take next to create a harbor for my lonely Sirin’s Nest single.

What next?

As for now, I’m on the lookout for various projects in film and game scoring. Watch my showreel to see how my music can interact with familiar visuals. If you are creating something, which needs a sonic identity, contact me on social media as soon as possible.

Release Notes

Mjorn — EP Linear: release notes (Part 3)

Posted on by mail@mironnabokov.nl

Revealing the last secrets behind working on my debut EP. If you missed the previous two article parts, it’s better to start with them here and here.

Multilayered Disillusion

It’s the best way to describe me working on Here They Marched. To this moment, the piece is still the least loved one by me and by my audience, no competition. I think I know why, and I’ll share some ideas about that.

I’ve put too many hopes onto this melody since it was born like a proper piano piece – not in front of the computer, but at the grand piano keys, start to finish.

That was an ecstatic experience, for sure. I was happy and proud of my music baby, but every child would sooner or later either discover their own path or would break under a parent’s overcaring attitude. I failed this music child of mine and realized it only when it was too late.

I added too many timbres and voices into the dough of the piece, so it never rose into the proper bread. It broke into three independent melodies instead, one of which sounds suspiciously like the famous saxophone solo on Careless Whisper. Ouch.

I am surely going to revive this music baby with an acoustic piano solo version or some kind of a remix in the future.

Stravinsky: Dilluted

Before becoming Bridge to, the last piece on the album was called Stravinsky, because a melody lying in its core is a sweetened and straightened version of a motif from Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. No plagiarism, just an homage.

I was happy to be able to add something like drums to my music since at that point I wanted to go into a more rhythmic and electric direction, and this piece was supposed to act as a bridge (thus the title).

I didn’t really manage to plunge into that genre yet, but when I do, I will connect a new piece to this one with a title of Bridge from.

1+1=3

Let’s end with the beginning: the title of the entire EP.

Linear — is a reminder to myself, that every piece is very similarly structured, and a promise to try something new next.

The music turned out to be asking questions without giving any answers, which invites you to come up with your own reply as you listen. I just need to ask the right questions.

You read three long articles, so the EP must sound quite differently to you now.
Release Notes

Mjorn — EP Linear: release notes (Part 1)

Posted on by mail@mironnabokov.nl

I believe in the power of naming, so it was extremely important to name my projects correctly, to enrich their meaning. That is why the working titles of the pieces in my debut EP tell the entire story of the creative process and the sources of inspiration.

None of the pieces could avoid being renamed from their working titles.

Weary Ghost, for instance, transformed the most times. Play the song and try to hear the legacy details of its past titles.

The first piano draft I recorded on my old phone in my favorite old concert hall was called Lopsided due to an uneven rhythm, bad recording quality, somebody walking and coughing in the background. Its own charming imperfect atmosphere.

Mjorn music video screenshot Weary Ghost Linear EP

The first proper version of the piece inherited some of the draft’s limp and earned the name Uneven. This time the title was motivated by the conversation of melodies towards the end of the piece – the same voice in different octaves.

The melodies are stumbling, awkwardly trying to give way to each other, trying to start from different spots, and finally manage to play unison one last time.

The music video I shot for that piece finally earned it a title of Weary Ghost. Filming in the empty concert hall at sunset, alone with all the charming drafts and creaks, I felt less like a real person with a body, and more like something ephemeral, fleeting.

By the way, the ghost is neither friendly nor malicious: it’s too weary for that.

Every new version of the piece is in some way looking back to its origin, but going into the new direction anyway.

Most of my visuals are black and white not just because it’s beautiful, but also to conceal my limited editing skills, oops.

Read more about the EP in the second part of the article.

Release Notes

Mjorn — EP Linear: release notes (Part 2)

Posted on by mail@mironnabokov.nl

I’m going to give a better glance into the history of my debut EP through the working and public titles.
There is a part one, which you can read here.

Next up, Push and Pull — the piece most loaded with non-musical ideas. You could say that the album actually started with this one: before I managed to draft the first version of it, I’ve been trying all kinds of genres chaotically and wasn’t getting anywhere.

Working title — Frahm

Finally, a half-forgotten music school and piano lessons resurfaced and brought me to the realm of my favorite Nils Frahm. His music made me realize the unimportance of complexity and rigid structures.

It turned out that music can both enchant you and give you some headspace; that you can express complex ideas with basic melodies.

My significant other came up with a perfect name for this kind of art: reflective minimalism. I want to capture this reflexiveness and to wrap it in my music whatever style I might be trying out.

Frahm’s Frahmness

Push and Pull is frahm-ish in many ways, starting with a tonal ambiguity: it’s a dish of two harmonic centers with a spice of different minor modes.

Another frahm-ish detail is the proportion of electric and acoustic sounds. It’s an old trick that never fails to impress me in other people’s music. Naturally, I wanted to try it out.

Before releasing anything, I show all of my pieces to one piano virtuoso, and when I let him listen to the final version of Push and Pull, he was sure I subconsciously borrowed something from Nils Frahm. Together we scoured through his discography and reached the conclusion that my virtuoso just remembered the early draft of Push and Pull instead.

If that’s not flattering, I don’t know what is.

The poetry of Push and Pull

The title of Push and Pull is proudly stolen from Avatar: The Last Airbender, where the relation of the Moon and the Ocean is described this way.

The description really stuck with me, and I carried it through many years, so finally getting to use it somewhere gave me a huge inspiration kick.

The melodies are like waves – reaching out to you, retreating, reaching out again. There are no sudden jumps, everything is smooth, gentle, repeating and flexible.

The shining pad starting in the middle of the piece serves as a reflection of the Moon on oceanic waves: the light only reaches the surface but captures all attention.

Finally, the electric sound in the end. It doesn’t abide by the rules of the waves. It’s sharp, jumpy, standing out on the oceanic background. This is the chaotic life energy from which all life emerged once; it’s an invisible unknown, which we try to transform into something familiar to be able to grasp.

The attempt to reflect something so fundamental in my music is extremely ambitious, but I glad I tried.

Push and Pull was also the first piece I managed to translate into a solo piano version to feel like a proper musician.

Don’t forget to read the last chapter of Linear EP release notes!

Release Notes

Mjorn — EP Cyclical: release notes (Part 1)

Posted on by mail@mironnabokov.nl

The new EP is out, which means it’s time to tell everyone how and why it was created. The best place to start is the beginning, or in this case, the title. Strangely enough, it was only devised right before the release.

From Linear to Cyclical

The debut EP is so linear that it’s even in the title

I wanted to find a way to connect my new EP with the previous one, which I called Linear for its basic linear composition structure. It was a promise to make something more complex in the future.
There is an entire cycle of articles about my debut EP Linear right here.

New EP — Cyclical

This time the title does not allude to the structure. I tried to reflect the mood of the four natural seasons, the natural cycle, through the grand piano and electronic atmospheres.

Not trying to jump as high as Vivaldi or Tchaikovski, obviously. Nature is my primary source of inspiration, and I’m just over-enthused with the opportunity to convert natural impressions into music and hope somebody else would become just as excited once they hear it.

The working title of the EP was Dashes, Dots, Waves. This is due to the jumpy rhythms and fluid pads of the first piece on the album:

Icicles Melting

Icicles Melting reflects what I like most about winter: the moment when it’s clear it’s coming to an end.

Together with nature, I usually enter a winter hibernation: I wouldn’t go anywhere or do anything new – just maybe finish old projects. That’s why the feeling of breaking and melting ice is so precious to me – there is finally some movement within, though invisible. It’s still winter, but the winds are changing.

The piece’s working title was Punctures because of a special technique of midi-monitoring I discovered to make writing complex parts on my overloaded laptop possible. This method results in a very sharp and playful sound, thus Punctures.

I’m planning to film a short tutorial about using this technique and publish it on my YouTube channel. I haven’t really seen anyone else doing this, though most likely I am not the first to figure it out.

Another noteworthy detail! In this track, I am my own percussion: shuffling my feet and smashing the table to bring some more rhythm to the piece.

Summer Hail: the other side of summer

Summer Hail is the second attempt at subverting widespread ideas about summer music and summer itself.

Hails are truly mostly summer events: they come to end long exhausting heat waves, forcing everybody to run back home, turn off the lights, and sit in silence. I tried to achieve a similar effect in my music (I even ran into the pouring rain to record a tiny rainy slice you can clearly hear at the end of the piece).

The piece merged organically with a sped-up movement of the queue behind the anti-virus screens in Efteling Theme Park.

Working title: Felt Less, after a piece by Nils Frahm, which was a massive inspiration.

What Next?

The EP was released on September 18, packed with all 4 seasonal tracks.

The release strategy was weird. I released 2 out of 4 tracks as singles to get them onto blogs and playlists (didn’t really work out) and to get a kick of inspiration from your reactions (worked out really well).

I’m planning to do a livestream reading your comments on my music, connect with the listeners, and then write another article on that. So please do tell me what you think of my new and old music, and share it with the world, it’s very energizing.

Continue to read about the EP