National Anthem (from 'Zone' and 'Music for a Story-Telling')

Written and Recorded in 1991

A fictional National Anthem I wrote for a students’ theatrical performance called Zone, to which I was deeply involved during the autumn of 1991. In its initial stage, we began to discuss what kind of story would take place in what sort of space and time, etcetera etcetera, and by the time I decided to make demo recordings of associated music tracks, it became obvious that we need a national anthem for the fictional state, where the story takes place. Despite some other demos I made for the performance were later rejected by the director, this track could win him to be used in the performance as background music for a scene set for introducing the director himself acting a role of governor of the state.

A few years later, when I tried to convert the story for my musical conceptual work called Music for a Story-Telling, I re-recorded this tune with my band called Culotte in 1994. The band even dared to play it live for once or twice but none of their versions could exceed the quality of initial demo featured in this video. The pictures and footage are mostly taken from the students' performance. Unfortunately, the scene in question was not taken from the live show but from the final rehearsal session, hours before the actual performance.

A Tragedy: Part I - Theme (1990)

Written and Recorded in 1990

A Tragedy is an instrumental composition I wrote during the summer of 1990. In those days, I was working hard at writing an essay about German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, as a course work, and was obsessed with ideas and facts I was absorbing from various books I referred for the essay writing. Along with his philosophical thoughts, I was also interested in Nietzsche’s private life as well and when I first completed this main theme piece, I decided to write a conceptual musical work based on what inspired me through the research activity by then.

For making a series of videos to cover the entire conceptual work, I have re-examined sources of information now available on-line and make some changes to the audio track in order to present the tragedy more coherently. Though the music I wrote has nothing to do with the 19th Century German philosopher, I hope some of you may enjoy this work.

Space-Moving Theme (from 'Zone')

Written and Recorded in 1991

This tune was written for a students’ theatrical performance called Zone, to which I was deeply involved during the autumn of 1991. In its initial phase, we started off with gathering random ideas for the project and I wrote some original tunes in accordance with the basic scheme provided by the director, who was my close friend at that time. One of the impressive ideas suggested from the director was that the theatrical performance takes place in several 'zones' and when it comes to shifting from one zone to another, the performers have to make strange moves because the laws of gravity are different between inside the zones and the outside space. Given such a unique explanation, I tried to create background music that would meet the requirement for this particular scene and in doing so, I tried the effect of rests inserted between successive notes for snare drum, in order to make the flow of music unpredictable. The melody I wrote for this experimental work was designed to re-appear in the later part of the performance; the assassination scene.

The demo version featured in this video was actually played as background sound-effect in the original students' performance and the footage of the actors' performance in that scene is also presented in this video, though they are not designed to synchronise here.

In Accordance with the God's Will

Written and Recorded in 1991

An experimental recording I made in early 1991 for filling a collection of my original works then titled Sunday, 'tis Raining. Though the making of this track was mainly motivated by musical intentions, for the sake of this video, it would be better to keep silence on behind the scene things as the composer, who wishes this work to remain ambiguously thought provoking.

The Convict's Theme (from 'Zone')

Written and Recorded in 1991

This tune was written for a students’ theatrical performance project called Zone, to which I was deeply involved during the autumn of 1991. In its initial phase, we started off with gathering random ideas for the project and I wrote some original tunes in accordance with the basic scheme provided by the director, who was my close friend at that time. In the roughly drafted story,  there was a scene where a convict, who was found guilty in the trial scene set earlier, is brought to a facility for execution. It was also discussed that it should take a wagon for transferring the convict. Since the judicial decision in this story only reflects the decision of the state, I decided to write this theme music for the scene as a variation of the National Anthem of the state, in the parallel minor key.

Along with the National Anthem, this theme for string quartet was played as the background music in the actual performance that took place in December 1991. As you can watch in the video, I played a role of a state officer, who was in charge of transferring the convict from the court to the execution facility and put a headset on the convict's ears as a preparation for the execution.

Additionally, this tune was re-used in my conceptual work titled Music for a Story-telling a few years later, as the intro (and the outro) of a tune called The Wagon.

Love Song

Written in 1992 / Recorded live in 1992 and 1993

This song was written while I was in love and that circumstance simply affected to my ability and willingness for making music negatively. The song was written mainly focused on its lyric but, even so, I assess everything belongs to this song is under the standard level. Despite of these, I dared to make this video for the sake of my band Culotte, which occasionally played this tune sound good. Culotte played this song live while we had the second guitarist in our line-up in between late 1992 and early 1993 and all the materials used in this video were filmed and/or recorded in this period.
I know this thing never sounds like a love song, but that's how things go in real life isn't that?

Lovesophie

Written and Recorded in 1990

A lovely tune I wrote at the end of 1990, the year I worked hard for writing a thesis for securing my graduation from the university. The topic of my thesis was about the thoughts and life of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and while I work on writing at home, I used to play some CDs of classical music for enhancing my concentration. One of these CDs was a collection of Viennese Waltzes that induced my mind to dance with some philosophical thoughts, which resulted in writing this musical composition. Originally, it has a lyric to go with the music that featured Socrates as a character but later I recognised my interpretation at that time no longer fits my grown-up mind, therefore, I only left the voice parts singing 'la-la-la...' in the end for this video edition. In addition, one of my friends, who happened to come to my place while I was recording this track, contributed his voice to the above-mentioned ending bit as well.

As for the title, probably such explanation would be unnecessary though, it's a kinda word-play regarding the etymology of the word 'philosophy', which came from Greek word 'Philo = to love' and 'Sophy = knowledge'.

Sweet Goodnight (Part One)

Written and Recorded in 1988

This composition was written in three different arrangements and keys during the summer of 1988 for furnishing the first collection of my original stuff. Whilst Part Two was written for string quartet and Part Three for the piano and full band accompaniment for voice parts, this Part One was written for solo guitar. In the initial demo recording, I played the acoustic guitar while I was still composing and learning the tune and the result was not so satisfying. Additionally, my lack of knowledge and experience in the recording process, in general, is also to be blamed.
Part Two was a miserable failure due to my ignorance on the arrangement of that sort of music and these basic failures at the planning stage also haunted the Part Three.

The audio track taken to this video was a live recording of myself playing the tune a few months later from the initial demo recording. The audio quality is not good because it was recorded by a portable cassette recorder held by an audience member, but since this is the sole existing recording of the tune played live in front of audience; and is played relatively better than the home recorded demo version, I decided to pick up this one to make a video on.