Compositional process: 'Dreaming'

With 'Dreaming', I tried to evoke a dream-like quality for this track, not unlike something Thomas Newman would do. To achieve the effect, it was important to understand the 'ingredients' first: how to use the appropriate harmony, texture and tone colour.

1.) Harmony: The whole piece is build around harmony that 'hangs in the air'. In other words, I used fragmentary chords.
The first chord in bar 1 could be a C7, however the crucial 3rd is missing. Instead the 4th (F) and is part of the chord. To add to the confusion, the G falls to Eb, which would suggest Cm7. The next chord could be described as C6/9 but once again the describing interval (3rd) is missing, instead we have the 4th, 6th, 9th and 11th (4th). The next chord would probably be a Abadd2 over a C pedal. But once again, no 3rd (excluding the pedal C) but a 4th. The last chord of the phrase has the 3rd omitted as well.
The point is, that by leaving out the crucial interval in defining a chord (3rd) and using extensions instead, a somehow incomplete sounding chord is created that seems to be almost 'empty'. Also note that the left hand moves in clinically 5ths, providing the movement, whereas the right hand provides the emotion with extensions and suspensions.
2.) Texture: The overall texture is very light. I didn't want it to be too heavy and dense, otherwise I would have lost the 'floating' feel I was after. Piano, synths and strings is all that was needed.
3.) Tone colour: It was important to use a solo instrument for the main focus of the piece to create a feeling of loneliness but also to make the listening experience more direct. The piano was chosen because of the percussive nature of the instrument, being played two octaves higher than middle c, it creates almost a 'cold' and distant sound.
I used a synth pad underneath to bind things together. I tried using strings at first, however I felt that they would not communicate the 'etheral' feel as well as electronic sounds could.
The strings entering a bit later were chosen to get a bit of 'warmth' back into the piece.

Work flow:

My ideas usually come by just doodling/improvising at the piano. However, this piece was preconceived and I had to 'find' it on the instrument. This process involved a lot of trial and error but eventually I came up with a sketch:

early sketch

Next up was creating an orchestral sketch, done in Sibelius (note the violins still providing the pad in the beginning):

Sibelius sketch

The resulting audio mockup sounded like this:



After coming up with a basic orchestration, I imported the Sibelius midi into my sequencer and started creating the mockup proper. I like to keep things clear in Cubase, using colours and (especially important for me) tempo, time signature and marker tracks. As you can see, I didn't use a whole lot of tracks as I usually try to keep things as simple as possible.

Cubase project

Resulting mockup after mixing and tweaking:



Finally, mastering, where I only tried to 'pump up' the volume a bit to keep it competitive in terms of loudness.

Final piece:



I hope you found my way of working on this track interesting. Do feel free to provide feedback and comments!

-PW