Project – Modified was the very first song to be posted on my mp3.com website. The concept for this song, interestingly enough, originated from a project that came along before DigInt officially began – DEK Radio, my first-ever experience with anything akin to broadcast radio, many years before Life to a Beat. With the advent of live365.com, and the completion of a Macintosh mp3 program capable of Shoutcast streaming, DEK Radio was my first foray into the world of broadcast radio.

I hesitate to mention September 11th, because of the strong feelings and single-minded patriotism that is fast becoming associated with it. Still, it is an event that has touched everyone to some extent, both in the united states and abroad. This song isn’t a tribute – I won’t try to force patriotism on you. No person, no country, is entirely innocent or guilty – by the same token, no one person or country is with or against God.

This is actually, I believe, one of the first pieces I ever sequenced. It has a relatively simple melody and beat, but it’s still a strong piece of music. I had originally composed only the first 10 bars or so, and, as with many of my pieces, came back to it after a long hiatus to flesh it out. The piece can stand alone as it is, but it is one of the pieces I have considered remixing with some added background to give the piece a more complete sound.

A number of years back, while still actively taking piano lessons, I had taken it upon myself to learn the introduction to beethoven’s Symphony #5. One of Beethoven’s finest works, in my opinion, this piece is one of the most memorable and inspiring melodies to be created during the golden years of classical music. And, surprisingly, it actually has something to do with Autothem.

While I had been attempting to learn this piece, I had decided to sequence it on my computer, based on the original music, to get a feel for how it should be played. Needless to say, I sequenced part of it, and soon forgot about it, and it subsequently became hidden in the depths of my hard drive. Then, one day while doing some hard disk maintenance, I came across the piece, and decided to do a techno remix of it, similar to !DEL’s Vivaldi 2000. The actual remix turned out, however, to sound incredibly disjointed, and I eventually gave up on completing it. However, I did take small pieces of it, and mess around with them significantly, and eventually Autothem was created.

From what I can remember, this song was created, like many other pieces of mine, somewhat inadvertently. In this case, the project that was the genesis for Scherzo was the beginnings of a depressing-sounding visage-of-war track, complete with synth winds and battle ambiance. This project has yet to actually see completion, but as a result, I began to play around with some elongated string melodies, somewhat in the style of Samuel Barber’s Adagio. As I began to focus on the string arrangements, the song began to take on a life of its own, and when I had finished, I had created a new piece in its own right, albeit too upbeat for my project.

Originally, I was going to end it on the third note from the last, but after listening to it, I realized that it ended what had become a more upbeat and calming piece with a dark-sounding chord, and it seemed an awkward way to finish the song, so I added in the final two chords to compensate.