Hello!

This is my first post in quite a while, a month in fact! The reason being I’ve been very busy lately with a music project, a project that I’m proud to say is my first ever professional music composition job :D Unfortunately I can’t say what the project is just yet, but all will be revealed soon. I’m very excited about it!

This means that I haven’t had any time to compose any personal music. So in the meantime, I’d like to share an old track that I composed over four years ago. I thought people may be interested in what I composed in the past. 

Boat Adventure (old demo) by Adam Haynes

I composed this piece specifically for my university interview back in 2008, for which we had to showcase some of our music work. I decided that I’d compose four new tunes for this interview, and this was the first. I used an old orchestral package called Edirol, which has a very computer game-like sound. It’s cute, and I kinda miss the simplistic nature of its tones.

I had a cut-scene in mind for this piece - a small child on a small sail-boat, sailing the ocean waves. The scenery of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker was a huge inspiration for this; the sea, the bright colours, the character designs. I really wanted to capture that feeling of youth and adventure with this piece.

The ending is supposed to reflect the end of the child’s adventure, as he/she is arriving back at the shore at dusk, perhaps feeling a little tired after a long day playing at sea. I imagined this end-scene silhouetted against an orange and purple sky.

Listening back on it now I can point out some things I’d definitely change, and I have every intention of re-composing this. 

Hope you enjoy a little of my composing history! :) I will soon upload the other three tracks I composed for my university interview.

~ Adam

Source: SoundCloud / adamhaynes

Space Opera for Piano - Part IV by Adam Haynes

And finally: the final part of my Space Opera for Piano. This blog post has been a bit delayed due to work but I’m glad to be posting it, especially for those that enjoyed the previous parts.

This part of the score was composed for the grand finale of the original film. As before, I don’t want to describe the plot. However, I will say that the second half of this piece was actually for the end-credit sequence, and upon writing it I discovered that I love writing credit music! It allowed me to bring together all the themes and motifs used throughout the whole score and present them in a neat package, with a final resolution.

Actually, I wanted to create a feeling of an uncomfortable resolution - one that almost doesn’t resolve. I wanted the viewer to feel a bit lost with the ending, but also at peace with this sense of being lost. Ugh..I can’t describe it without sounding pretentious haha! Well I’d love to know what it makes *you* feel! :) Maybe you can describe it better than I can.

I intended to make the last quarter of the score possess slightly different character than the previous quarters. I wanted to break that sci-fi tone and make it sound more ‘human’ and raw, at least before the credits roll. I then break this familiar, human feel with the sudden stabbing of threatening chords (@~1:05). There’s a very good reason for this in the film ;) The credits then roll at around the 1:32 mark.

Anyway, I hope the final part of my score successfully wraps up this sci-fi adventure, and leaves you feeling like you’ve encountered something from a distant universe.

Thank you again for all those that listened to all parts and/or left comments - I’m incredibly grateful :)

All parts can be heard here:

Part I: Listen to it here ~ Read about it here

Part II: Listen to it here ~ Read about it here

Part III: Listen to it here ~ Read about it here

Part IV: Listen to it here ~ Read about it here

Listen on Youtube

Thank you again for listening! Hope you enjoy my Space Opera for Piano :)

~ Adam

Source: SoundCloud / adamhaynes

Route 29 - Pokémon Gold & Silver - Arrangement by Adam Haynes

This is the Youtube version of my Route 29 arrangement. The Soundcloud version, along with a write-up of my composition process, can be found in this post.

I really enjoy creating the Youtube videos for my Pokémon arrangements as I get to play some of the game on an emulator to capture the screenshots! I always try to take a varied selection of screenshots to capture the look and feel of the scene (Route 29 in this case). In this remix of mine I’ve also captured some night-time screenshots to sync with the night-time part of the music. 

I’d just like to say thank you so much for the kind comments left on my previous post :) I’m so grateful for people taking the time to listen to my work, it makes me very happy to send music to people’s ears; it’s the main reason I compose music, to give someone the enjoyment of music.

A big Thank You to all my wonderful listeners! ☺

~ Adam

Route 29 - Pokémon Gold & Silver - Arrangement by Adam Haynes

Here is the second of my Pokémon Gold & Silver arrangement series!

Keeping consistent with the theme of my arrangements I have given Route 29 the Eastern Asia treatment with the sound, with a bit of accordion too. My intention was never to create an authentic Japanese sound, and in fact my arrangement may seem a bit offensive as it has that generic Japanese sound you hear in Western cartoons. Still, like all my music, I composed it purely for fun and for the enjoyment of your ears :)

At first I wasn’t sure about this arrangement, and I spent a long time piecing together scraps of ideas. I almost gave up at one stage because I was so dissatisfied with it. I think I made the right decision to see it through to the end though as I’m very happy with the finished result :) 

Perhaps the main Route 29 melody gets a bit lost within the koto and shamisen, but I quite like it that way. For me it was about creating the upbeat and jolly nature that this route’s original music seems to have, whilst also creating the sense of being in foreign lands. As I mentioned in my last arrangement’s blog entry I find the music of Gold & Silver slightly unnerving in that it’s not very homely. Hopefully I’ve captured this in my arrangement, although perhaps it’s a little exaggerated with the Asian theme haha..

I’ve really fallen in love with the accordion and Asian instrument collaboration; they fit perfectly together in my opinion! For me it takes away the Asian sound slightly and gives it a delicate European flavour, which again is good for making the player/listener feel a little far from a familiar homeland. Anyway I’m rambling haha.

Something I always liked about the Pokémon games with a day+night cycle were the slight variations in music during these time changes. The variations are verrry subtle in the original Gold & Silver, but they’re there. I wanted to have a moment in my arrangement that reflected the stillness of the night, which is what you hear with the piano, erhu, and string section.

This was a lot of fun to compose, especially as it came together in the end after a lot of doubt from me. Hope you enjoy this one :)

Hear my New Bark Town arrangement!

~ Adam

Source: SoundCloud / adamhaynes

Space Opera for Piano - Part III by Adam Haynes

Here we are then: part three of my Space Opera for Piano. :)

Again, the mood and pace is quite different from that of the first two pieces. There are more dramatic and action-orientated moments here, but I tried to keep the sci-fi feel within the music, as well as the leitmotifs. 

When I came to polishing this I noticed that, in the original midi, I had already quantised a lot of it already. And actually, I didn’t like this! I think some of the more up-tempo moments sound a little robotic, but unfortunately I don’t have the skills to rerecord it with a more natural feel. Hopefully it sounds okay though. Any pianists want to attempt to play this? You’re welcome to :)

Oh, and perhaps this should really be tited Space Opera for PianoS! There are moments where the pianist would need three or four hands, or two pianos haha… ;)

Part IV will be polished and uploaded very soon! Thank you for your patience if you’ve taken the time to listen to these as I know they’re very long and possibly a bit tedious. I recieved some lovely comments on part two, so thank you very much, I’m very grateful :)

Part I: Read about it here, Listen to it here

Part II: Read about it here, Listen to it here

~ Adam

Source: SoundCloud / adamhaynes

Space Opera for Piano - Part II by Adam Haynes

This is the second part of my Space Opera for piano!

As I said before I don’t want to outline the plot of the original film that I had composed this for, but as you’ll hear there is a slightly different mood to that of the first part. Some of the themes begin their place here so listen out for those :)

If I remember rightly, this section of the entire score took the longest to compose. Establishing the sound/character of the score is where this took place, and from here on the writing process became a bit easier.

You can listen to Part I here, and read about it here!

Source: SoundCloud / adamhaynes