The Same River

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Here, I sequenced an example of King Crimson style 5 against 11. If I were to turn this into an actual recording I’d probably replace that brass with guitars and the sequenced bass with real bass.

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Adam Mussell - The Solar Dance (final battle)

From “A Tale of Xandopheii OST (outtakes)”

This was something I was working on before I released my album, with the intention of including it. However, I didn’t end up finishing this until now. Honestly I think I mixed it a bit too loud… but I don’t feel like messing with it any more at this point.

So here, have an epic final battle theme with lots of choir parts, thematic development everywhere, and a shit tonne of dissonance.

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Adam Mussell - Passage Behind The Throne/Machinist’s Lab

Just something I wrote this morning as an exercise to see if I could still write orchestral things (which I need to do sometimes for the sake of not getting rusty).

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So, I managed to find a guitar, after a good two months of being without one, and immediately I was like ‘IDEAS AHHHH’ and since my dad didn’t want to do anything the day after he got back, I decided to work on stuff all day and not feel guilty about it.

This sadly is all I’ve got so far but this is after throwing away tons of shitty drafts of other ideas. I think the next thing to do is vocals.

I’ve also been afraid of E minor guitar writing for a really long time, but it’s obviously one of the easiest guitar keys, so writing things in it can be more manageable than other keys. Especially when the guitar in question has really high action and is a twelve string.

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Adam Mussell - Of Dreams and Butterfly Nets/The Lighthouse

In which I make a weird attempt at programmatic style music with piano, a drum kit, staccato bassoon, triplets (TONS of them), and ridiculous sounding names for each section.

0:00 – 0:56: The Creeping Doubt

0:56 – 1:28: A Hesitant Optimism

1:28 – 2:16: The Dock at Sunrise

2:16 – 2:48: Towards A Red Sky

2:48 – 3:52: Storm/Fear of Drowning

3:52 – 4:08: Cloudbreak

4:08 – 5:17: The Lighthouse

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Adam Mussell - I Carry the Flame (Work in Progress)

So, before I sleep, I figured I’d share this since I’m not gonna get to work on it until I get back to the mainland. The bass parts are a bit sloppy, even nonexistent in places they should exist, and the keyboard parts are so multi-layered that they probably require just playing them back as audio if I were ever to play this live. But I like the textures they create when they’re that layered, and I took a very ‘fuck it’ approach to the arrangement of this. The intro also reminds me a bit of Fadeaway by Porcupine Tree.

(46 plays)

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Adam Mussell - Signify (Porcupine Tree cover)

I forgot that I did this once. I’m pretty proud of this one, mainly what I did with the production. This was from June 2010, I think. Maybe I should re-do this with the full version of Signify, and with real bass next time…

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Adam Mussell - Their Sight in Firm Fixation

From “A Tale of Xandopheii OST”

This one is old (March 2009, I think? Or was it September? I don’t remember when I wrote it, but it was either right before or right after backcountry…), but I recently redid the ending and the snare part at the beginning, and I don’t think I’ve ever shared it on tumblr before. So here, have some epic cutscene music with a title inspired by (read: directly lifted from the lyrics of) Pure Reason Revolution.

That said, I really need to write some new stuff/finish and release the damn album I’ve been working on for years. It’s gotten to be about an hour and a half long… which is a bit absurd, and pretty much double album material by now.

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Adam Mussell - Discovering the Floating Continent

From “A Tale of Xandopheii OST”

This is probably one of my oldest orchestral compositions, and it’s been reworked at least twice before this time. But I think I’m alright with calling this one the final version at this point, at last. It’s got kind of a minimalist theme kind of thing going on, and it’s inspired very much by Hayao Miyazaki’s Laputa: Castle in the Sky. I envisioned an airship making a journey through a very intense storm to reach a hidden floating continent on the other side while I was composing this. It’s very lush in the strings and choir department, and the piano and a harp carry the main minimalist motif.

Let me know what you think!

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