LYRICS
NO LONGER HOME
In the afternoon
I’ll visit just once more for me
Standing in this room
The corners get harder to see, hard to see
Cause as you grow and age
Parts of the past will fade
No longer home
Memories out of touch
No longer are fresh in my mind
Thought about too much
Those details, they shift over time
I remember you
Or do I? I don’t think I know
Several years, time flew
What’s left is this feeling hollow, feels hollow
Cause as you grow and age
Parts of the past will fade
Time will move on, I won’t
They might let go, I don’t
No longer home
THE BEAUTY OF IT ALL
Where calm winds blow
And slow streams flow
Made of sound, made of scent
Meant to represent, some time
Days will pass here then gone
Losing time moving on
Sit and watch the sun fall
The beauty of it all
The stars are shown, like fireflies glow
Over here, over there
The memories everywhere
They live without a care, in mind
Days will pass here then gone
Losing time moving on
Sit and watch the sun fall
The beauty of it all
Days will pass here then gone
Losing time moving on
Sit and watch the sun fall
The beauty of it all
ToDriftinPeace(2026)
Bringing a gentle but strong beginning to this recital, To Drift in Peace is about the beauty and wonder of space, inviting the listener to imagine what it might be like to be floating amongst the stars. Within this song, there are two notable sounds, with the first being the rumble of a rocket ship at the beginning. I created this sound by applying EQ and distortion to white noise, affecting the frequency and cleanliness of the sound that is produced. The second sound is the chirping of theremins heard just after the rocket sound, which are affected by volume and panning automation, causing them to sound as though they are orbiting around the listener, especially through headphones!
BeachKiwi(2026)
Initially coming from the desire to make bossa nova inspired song, I made this song into an 8-bit bossa nova. Whilst the version of Beach Kiwi seen in this recital is an arrangement, the original is completely made up of digital instruments that were inspired by the sounds of the Game Boy videogame console. Whilst brainstorming what to name this song, my lovely girlfriend Lilly suggested the clever name Beachy Keen as a play on the phrase peachy keen. I heard Beach Kiwi.
Grazin’SpaceCows(2024)
Around the time of finals week my sophomore year, I had an odd moment of free time between finals, in which I was playing around on a piano in one of the Swope practice rooms. In that practice room, I wrote the underlying ostinato to this song and formulated the themes I wanted to explore; space and cowboys. When I moved back home for Summer break just a few days later, I began to work on actualizing what I had just written. I made use of slide guitar, acoustic guitar, melodica, the Rhodes setting on a keyboard and many other instruments to give a sense of space whilst hinting at a more rustic tone For today’s performance, I have arranged Grazin’ Space Cows for clarinet and piano, both as a way to vary the materials of this program and to allow for this song to be easily integrated into the recital taking place tomorrow evening at 6pm for Nikita Mendelsohn, the clarinetist of this recital and my friend.
ADandelion’sJourney(2026)
After getting back into playing the videogame Pikmin 3 during the Winter of 2025, I was inspired to emulate its style of music. With Pikmin 3 being about astronauts working with little plant creatures called “Pikmin” to find fruit and make their way back home, the music matches this concept by fusing natural sounds with more electronic, alien sounds. I took this idea and ran with it. I began work on A Dandelion’s Journey. This song began to find further inspiration after I showed my progress to Dr. Arne. He pointed me in the direction of Petalcore, a sub-genre of electronic music that fuses electronic and natural sounds. This may seem like the same kind of music as in Pikmin 3, but Pedalcore offers a wider variety of sounds and textures, sometimes even including lyrics. With this new inspiration, I added more timbres and textures. Creating a serene and light soundscape, which brought me the name A Dandelion’s Journey
Groove-Bot9000(2025)
This song started unlike any of the other songs in this program, with the drums You can hear the basis of which I constructed the whole song at the very beginning, being a two bar repeating drum groove The robotic nature of this groove can be heard throughout the different instruments that are added, such as the repetitive two bar bassline or the funky sixteenth note guitar part. This robotic idea is further emphasized by the metallic instruments that can be heard supporting the drums at the beginning, such as the tambourines, cabasa, triangle pitched down an octave and electric drill Whilst the studio version of this song abruptly transitions into a swing inspired keyboard solo, the arrangement for today’s performance will transition into Gleeby the Alien.
GleebytheAlien(2025)
Written for my album BEEP BOOP!, Gleeby the Alien was an exploration of a new digital audio technique that was new to me. This technique involved taking an initial sound (such as a held-out piano chord) and chopping it up, copying and pasting segments to create rhythms. Combining this with the odd chords I chose, I had an interesting sound scape to make a song. As with most of my songs, the name came last, which in this case was inspired by the Ikea alien plush (officially called AFTONSPARV, meaning “little alien”) that my roommates and I had renamed “Gleeby” and dubbed as our apartment’s mascot.
NoLongerHome(2026)
Growing up is tough. As a kid, I’m sure most everyone has experienced the adults around them talking about how difficult it is being an adult and how they miss being a kid. They tell you to enjoy your childhood and appreciate what you have before it’s gone, but given your natural naivety and lack of experience, you won’t have an accurate frame of reference or understanding of what they mean until you grow up and experience that loss for yourself. Perhaps I am assuming too much about how other people experience growing up, but this was my experience. I enjoyed my childhood and appreciated the people around me as I was told, but that didn’t prepare me any better for the loss of my grandparents. They were a huge part of my childhood, looking after my brother and me as my parents were at work. Even now, years later, I think back to the feeling of being in their house, eating dinner, swimming, helping with chores, doing homework, watching movies, celebrating Christmas, drawing, playing, all of it. But just like many other places I’ve made memories, I can’t go back there anymore. It’s somebody else’s house now.
IAMWAYTOOSTRESSED(AAAAAA)(2026)
Over the past Winter break, I was experiencing extreme bouts of stress due to all the work I needed to complete for this senior project. As a way of coping with this, I wrote this short song. It’s meant to sound frantic, panicked, and frustrated. After I finished recording all the parts, anytime I got stressed about my senior project, I would listen to this song. It somehow helped me relax.
MoonWalkin’(2025)
Moon Walkin’ initially came from a place of wanting to depart from the way I usually write. Specifically, from the desire to create something that I could see being performed live by a four-piece band. Whilst this song isn’t the first jazz fusion tune I’ve written and released, it manages to distinguish itself through its unique experimentation with texture and implementation of the organ. Inspired by bands such as Casiopea, I would vary the textures of the instruments, having the bass switch to slap, the organ to a rotary sound, and the drums to various patterns that heighten the building complexity of the song. This evolution leads to the organ becoming more of a melodic force as the song goes on rather than just acting as harmonic support Though it still spends most of the song supporting the melody of the guitar. To add to the unique nature of this song, I made the creative decision to start the song a half step from where it lands, causing the intro and outro to be in C# minor, whilst the rest of the song is in C minor. This key signature shift, plus the other ways I challenged myself, are what made this song one of the more difficult ones to write for my album, but the result is a song with plenty of details for the ear to pick up on.
JupiterStormWarning(2026)
Being one of the most complex songs I have worked on to date, Jupiter Storm Warning became the ultimate challenge during my senior project. Beginning with just the intro guitar riff, I knew I wanted a song that went in several sound spaces, each more exciting than the last. Keeping this idea in mind, I spent countless hours composing new sections that had a variety of sounds and approaches, which were often cut due to lacking the right kind of drive. In the end, I had several time signatures, tempos, keys and instrumentations that I was sure would be interesting to the listener. All without a real source of influence that I could point to beyond the vague idea of “videogame music” or “jazz”. After understanding the identity the song had taken on, I decided to name it Jupiter Storm Warning to match the loud and heavy sound it has with what I can imagine it would be like to be in The Great Red Dot on Jupiter (which is a storm greater than the entirety of Earth).
InLovingMemory(2026)
It was nearing the end of the 2025 Summer break when my roommates and I were informed that we needed to move out of our apartment. It turned out our landlord had never gotten the proper permits to have students living there. Giving us only a few weeks to find housing, we were all under a lot of stress. It was during this time that my family dog, Cocoa, began experiencing health issues after falling down the stairs. He couldn’t balance himself Leaning to one side to the point that he could only lie on the floor, with his eyes darting back and forth as though he were constantly spinning. Even after going to the vet and being prescribed medication for nausea and appetite, he wouldn’t eat and wouldn’t drink, forcing us to consider his quality of life. Fortunately, he slowly began drinking, standing up with help and eating, eventually recovering to the point he is at today. When things were still looking grim for Cocoa’s health, I wrote the intro to this song, attempting to catch the intense grief and uncertainty I felt about his well-being. The song then builds in intensity This is meant to display the frustration and the power of the emotions that I also was feeling. This ultimately gives way to a calm and slow ending, meant to represent the horrible reality of what I thought I would have to face… finally saying goodbye.
thebeautyofitall(2024)
As the first song I wrote with lyrics, the beauty of it all allowed me to test the limits of my compositional abilities. From the beginning of writing my album DECAY, I knew I wanted to have one song with lyrics. Though, I didn’t know what to write about or what the instrumentation would be. I eventually settled on the instruments being just guitar and voice, as a means of further differentiating this song from other larger music I’ve written. After writing out the guitar part and a melody over that, I had just a few days to write lyrics. This was because it was the end of summer and I would soon have to go back to school. Under the time crunch I had, I wrote and recorded lyrics over and over again until I had settled on the final draft. The song ultimately came to be about creating memories, living in the present and appreciating past experiences. Though, these themes are kept intentionally vague to allow for more personal interpretations from the audience. In order to involve everyone in this “finale”, I have written and arranged several more parts I’ve also extended the form, allowing for the song to feature a solo by Aden Rodriguez in a form of tribute to our past band Papyrus
