Tag: Composer Tero Väänänen

Path of a Composer Chapter VII: Wideplay – Überture

Welcome on a journey! I call it the Path of a Composer. The idea is to post key pieces of my music from along the years and hopefully put some light on how I have developed aesthetically, in my craftsmanship and of course also artistically — resulting in these days where I am finally ready to proudly launch myself as a composer of modern art music. It is time for Chapter VII.

Wideplay: Überture (taken from the album “Wideplay I”, 2021)

Chapter VI was about me joining Discordia again and completing what I consider my greatest piece of rock music, Grip!. Despite the great experience and artistically satisfying results, the process once again also made it clear to me that I would probably no longer create music in such a big group of people. The more people involved, the more there is also extra-musical elements to buzz around — that´s the law of music making, like it or not.

Nevertheless my second go with Discordia left me with a lot of musical material that had not been used. After various phases, Riikka and Sande from the band were willing to create an album with me around those songs and so Wideplay was formed. Sande and I also wrote a bunch of new songs together many of which were recorded as demos as we tried out different arrangements.

In hindsight something about the subconscious exhaustion I started to feel towards rock music and progressive rock can probably be seen in the fact that despite many great songs Wideplay created, in the end I didn´t feel motivated enough to properly start producing more than an EP (30 minutes) of Wideplay music. There was starting to be the element of certain repetition, doing rock for the sake of doing rock.

Anyway, I started to compose Überture only once Wideplay was formed. I also remember that the very beginning of the piece was an idea I toyed with thinking that if I ever wanted to create a traditional romantic piano concerto, my grand opening would be something like that, dramatic and pompous. It is a rather funny thought as I have never ever planned on composing a piano concerto. Anyway, from the very beginning the point of Überture was to be profoundly eclectic and free-spirited music that would not acknowledge the boundaries of genres at all. What better way to start such a piece than with an idea I had for a grand piano concerto? 😉

It just so happened that straight after starting to compose Überture all of a sudden one of my very best friends I had known for around 25 years passed away due to heavy substance use. It was a great shock to me. Of course I knew things were far from well but I had not realised just how bad things had gotten. Consequently Überture shifted it´s focus immediately and it became my way of dealing with the horror of such a fate, the loss and the grief.

As the title suggests, from the very beginning Überture was meant to be over the top. The title also suited the personality of my friend perfectly. He was over the top. I was ready to go wherever the music and the narrative took me — and indeed I was taken to places I had never been before. The most obvious examples are the two techno sections in the middle of the piece. I had never done techno before it and I haven´t done ever since. I don´t even listen to such music. But both the material and the narrative pushed me towards it and the whole point of the piece was to expand the aesthetic boundaries anyway. Once again I needed to free myself musically (indeed it seems that such a musical liberation process is something I regularly have to go through) and free myself I did.

When it comes to my path as a composer, Überture is important in many ways. Firstly it further solidified my skills in creating longer works in a smooth manner and being free with my material. Technically Überture was the best I had achieved so far: diverse yet coherent, all the material closely related and developed constantly. Secondly my skills in musical production took a significant leap forwards. Thirdly I faced my own boundaries of “good taste” which I think is something I had to do sooner or later. And I have to be honest: every time the techno sections kick in, it is kind of hard for me to accept. Then again that kind of cringy awkwardness was the goal as it is obvious when it comes to the narrative and lyrics we are not dealing with a healthy little party here but something compulsive, something over the top, something unhealthy, something scary.

I created a detailed score for the the piece. Überture is scored for flute, piccolo, 3 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, 1 tuba, timpani, drum set, percussion, electric drum set, piano, 4 electric guitars, bass guitar, synth bass, male and female vocals, a choir, 1st and 2nd violins, violas, cellos and double basses. The idea was that vocals would replace the sound of woodwinds, otherwise it would be a symphony orchestra combined with a rock band. Despite the eclectic solutions and the bold crossing of genre boundaries, I regard the work as a symphonic poem more than anything else.

I bought electric drums and played them on Überture although on Wideplay I there are acoustic drums elsewhere. I also played the electric bass and keyboards. Sande played many tracks of electric guitars. Riikka did marvellous job as the other vocalist, once again! I am especially proud of our choir sound. It also needs to be mentioned that although it took a long time to mix Überture, the sound engineer Seppo Santala did an amazing job. After being able to pull off something like the Überture mix, it was later obvious I could trust him even with something like my symphony.

For the record: In the youtube video I created for Überture there is a clown as the main character. Although my friend was one of the funniest people I have ever known (and the most social person I have ever known) and he was famous for his pranks, he was no fool, and neither was he “ridiculous”. But when it comes to artistic expression, bright colours, special emphasis and highlighting are often needed. With the clown character it is easier for the listener to grasp the narrative, I think.

Looking back at it all, completing Überture both as a composition and as a recording was crucial for my musical development. It resulted in giving me enough of the confidence needed to one day start believing I could pull of a symphony of my own. It is now also obvious that it is indeed Überture that finally pushed me over the cliff and forced me to accept that I would gain total artistic freedom and get to express myself to the fullest only in art music from them on. I wasn´t ready to accept it just yet but indeed it was inevitable.

Even after the Wideplay EP I recorded songs with people but something was missing. I found myself talking to people about music more than actually creating it. I was making things complicated out of subconscious frustration. Finally I realised that I had to leave progressive rock behind me and that a symphony of art music would be my way to finally achieve complete and uncompromising artistic freedom, something I had always craved. Something clicked, mental continents shifted and immense forces of nature started to flow. I freed myself also from the self-created (or society-implemented) social boundaries of music making and fully accepted that it does not make me a bad person if I want to be artistically uncompromising. That is the subject of the next chapter, my first symphony.

Path of a Composer Chapter V: Polyblock – Strive or Warp

Welcome on a journey! I call it the Path of a Composer. The idea is to post key pieces of my music from along the years and hopefully put some light on how I have developed aesthetically, in my craftsmanship and of course also artistically — resulting in these days where I am finally ready to proudly launch myself as a composer of modern art music. It is time for Chapter V.

Polyblock: Strive or Warp (2010-2011, selection of three movements)

Chapter IV was the story of my first solo album. It was a thrill to feel independent as an artist and to be musically completely genuine, honest and free. I got such encouraging feedback on pathétique that there was no need to get timid. Pathétique was composed very quickly yet I knew I had not lived up to my full potential, not even close. I was in an artistically very ambitious stage.

Sometime around pathétique Discordia and I parted ways. Yet there were quite a few progressive rock songs yet to be recorded which I had composed for the band. I thought I had put too much effort in to trash them. So I started to plan my most ambitious work so far: Strive or Warp. I asked Riikka (from Discordia) and Henri (from pathétique) to cooperate with me on the album and they agreed. At the same time I had bought my first studio system with Protools and I started to teach myself how to record and program — in a way I also wanted to see how far I could technically go just by myself.

The trilogy of songs I chose and that were left over from Discordia were lyrically and musically science fiction. I knew from the beginning I would end the recording with the trilogy. Early on the structure of the music started to form in my head. There would be two parts: the first part would ask the question “Strive or Warp“, there would be a Warp in the end of the section — and the rest would happen in the science fiction universe I had created earlier. In the end there were seven movements. The first 4 movements were new material, the last 3 were the epic trilogy from Discordia.

It sounds like a cliche but I cannot (or will not) create music without being seriously inspired. So I always need to ask myself what is it that I would myself want to hear or express at the given time. So in addition to the Scifi Trilogy which was a given, I needed to find the inspired me here and now for this album. Well, this time I got seriously inspired by John Coltrane´s Stellar Regions which Henri once played me. The saxophone playing was down to fundamental principles, immensely serious and impactful. I was immediately very inspired indeed.

At the same time the image of Beethoven as a Janus Statue — facing both classicism and romanticism — resonated in me to such an extent that I thought about it quite often. I felt that I was facing rock & prog and at the same time facing the other world of serious art music. One of my faces also wanted to create music that people would be touched by and would understand (tonality based) — and at the same time I wanted to create music that would boldly explore the possibilities of expression through being honest primarily to myself (the boundaries of tonality would be bent and at places broken, if needed).

Thirdly, after the typical “suite structure” of pathétique, I definitely wanted to go symphonic this time. Being inspired by John Coltrane, wanting to express the Janus Statue Situation and striving to go symphonic eventually resulted in the opening movement of the work: Ianus Statue.

Ianus Statue is definitely my first take on symphonic music. After the introduction the two saxophones take the main role and talk with the two mouths of Janus. I perceive the movement as kind of sonata form: there is an introduction, exposition, development, recapitulation and coda. The music is not evolved around singable melodies. Ianus Statue is not a song in any way. It is not rock. Is it progressive rock? I am not sure about that either. If pressed, I would say that at least compositionally it is one third progressive rock, two thirds art music.

When it comes to my own compositions, Ianus Statue is amongst my favourites. I feel that in this piece I for the first time showed the elevated version of myself as a composer and musician. It was like having a look high up a mountain and deciding to climb up there. Henri´s saxophones are perfect in my opinion — this is what saxophones are all about to me, and it couldn´t have been any other instruments. Flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, trumpet — absolutely not. This is saxophone music. Also I am very proud of the vocal choir work by Riikka and myself in the recapitulation. This is symphonic and it is in G minor — the key of Mozart´s 40th. The key just always felt the right for this work.

I must say that due to my strong need for musical renewal with every recording I have created I have lost some of my previous listeners and gained new listeners — but Ianus Statue is one of the very few pieces by me that has so far been liked by basically everybody. So maybe like a true Janus it manages to look to both directions and find the balance between being approachable and seriously artistic!

Also: the other face is maybe striving, the other one is looking for some warping? I could go on forever with the dualisms, of course!

Stimmung is the 3rd movement. The name is kind of an homage to Karlheinz Stockhausen and his electronic music. I needed a movement that would without words express the dichotomy between modern hectic futility — and on the other hand the longing for peace of mind. I decided to achieve this in an experimental way by juxtaposing different musics against each other in the stereo picture. In the end there is only one “Peace of Mind music” and “3 Hectic Futilities”.

The Peace of Mind music is played on church organ with a lot of cathedral reverb. The Hectic Futilities are musics that have logic to them but they just go on and on without pausing or having any true contrasts anywhere. Some people might be aware of my dislike for “neoclassical, grotesque or ironic dance-like staccato hopping”. Well, if you have wondered what I mean by that, the Three Hectic Futilities of the Stimmung movement might help you understand!

In the end we needed to advance all the way up to The Warp. Phase Shift is the last movement before the other universe. This work is a combination of me wanting to provide space for Henri Haapakoski to improvise on his saxophone and also me wanting to fully express my hate and dislike for the constant STRIVING of modern human life. So I decided Henri would be directing the Phase Shift on top the tribal atmosphere created by me and drive the listener towards the Warp while I would express the awfulness of not warping…

Phase Shift is the craziest music I have created. It remains my most disliked piece of music! Then again composer Osmo Tapio Räihälä decided to play it on YLE (Finnish national broadcasting company) radio channel as an example of Finnish progressive rock. There are friends of Phase Shift, too. I am one of them, for various reasons.

First of all in Phase Shift I managed to let go of controlling all the music. For me that was something new. The piece is almost as much Henri´s as it is mine. His playing and improvisation and the textures he creates are absolutely gorgeous! Secondly, I could not have expressed in a more extreme way what I think about the bloody constant STRIVE of the modern society. The repetitive STRIVE chords were even painful to sing! It was very difficult to breathe in between the barking. I have never been as exhausted or as out of breath or in as deep disbelief after singing than I was after recording my vocals for this one. Riikka and I always laugh warmly after we have revisited this crazy piece of music!

I think the first half of Strive or Warp was musically successful. It was symphonic and people familiar with my later Symphony proper will hear that it is from the same person. Then again it is obvious that being new with the studio technics, I did bite more than I could chew. It resulted in that I was too exhausted to produce the scifi trilogy part properly. The sounds are plain and simple so bad that I cannot listen to them. The compositions are fine but the sounds are unbearable. A very complex 50 minutes album was a bit too much for my technical skills and longevity at the time. That is the reason why I have withdrawn Strive or Warp.

It is a bit peculiar that so far with every Chapter of this blog series I have presented you a different artist name. Shistavich, Waehnen, Discordia, fäänä, Polyblock. The reason for that is that I have never enjoyed the focus being on me as a person. I rather hide behind band names or acronyms and let the music speak. I also have a huge inner need for renewal. So I tend to reject the past and really go for the new. Like I said before, with every point of renewal I have lost some “fans” and gained new ones. Still it is the only way for me.

Sometimes it is hard for me to believe, but even Strive or Warp — where I was most ambitious musically inside progressive rock and went over the top — had some true friends. Some people still say that it is their favourite album from me. It felt immensely good that there were reviews where my hard work was being acknowledged. I have read reviews where the whole drama of the album has been understood without me explaining any of it. With the album technical weaknesses were more exposed than ever but still some people did not care but valued the musical ambition. People forgave my technical errors. That felt very good and it still does.

Creating Strive or Warp left me and my ears musically and most of all technically exhausted. I learnt the hard way that I cannot do it all by myself and that realistic limits must be set around the scope of the work in advance in order to maintain the constant quality. Inevitably I also started to value cooperation once again. The Chapter VI will tell how Riikka and I eventually returned to Discordia and how I got to compose my longest and greatest progressive rock song and record it with great musicians.