#marisaewing

Composer Portraits: Marisa Ewing

Day 2- “Cave Music”

“Cave Music” was made for a pixelated RPG game I created in 2018 called “Etherium.” The music played while the protagonist of the game explored a cave she found hidden in the basement of her home. Again, I combined my love of atmospheric synth music with sound design, which allowed me to create this piece. It features two synths, digital piano, and some drip sounds similar to those that can be heard in a cave. I focused the most on getting the drips right, adding reverb and EQ to make them sound more like they were in a cave and less like they were recorded in a studio. In the game, the piece continues to loop as the player explores the cave, but for this example, I created a two minute long segment.

Composer Portraits: Marisa Ewing 

Day 1- “Shore”

A brief bit of background about myself: I am both a composer and an audio engineer. I’ve loved writing music for a long time, but I began learning about audio engineering in college, which included recording music and creating sound effects. At first my composition and audio engineering were separate. I would write a lot of music for orchestral instruments, and would only record other people’s music or create sound effects for other people’s projects. “Shore” was a piece I wrote in 2018 that was one of the first combinations of my passion for composition, audio engineering, and foley (creating and recording sound effects). I’ve always enjoyed atmospheric and ambient synth music, so I decided to try using those styles to create music reflecting a beach. The main instrument in this piece is a digital recreation of an organ, and it features multiple synths to create the atmospheric effect. The birds and waves are also a synth from Absynth’s collection that I’ve edited slightly. I loved how this piece turned out, and it inspired me to create more pieces featuring sound effects as well as music.

Composer Portraits: Marisa Ewing

Day 4 - “Mindless”

Yesterday, I talked about how I introduced elements of randomness into my music, and “Mindless” is one of my most recent examples of that technique. This piece blends an element of randomness with my style of ambient and atmospheric synths to create something new. The piece starts with multiple synths blended together to create the atmospheric sound, and eventually adds a digital organ outlining the chords that will be used in the rest of the piece. Around the thirty-six second mark, a lower bell like synth enters, as well as that element of randomness. I decided that I wanted to use the five notes represented by black keys on the piano (D-flat, E-flat, G-flat, A-flat, and B-flat), and I also chose the speed, but the notes themselves were chosen at random. Once that low bell-like synth part was created, I changed and adjusted the synths in the background, as well as the high bells to fit with the randomly generated notes. It was really interesting to set the parameters of the piece and let the music somewhat create itself. If I were to “play” this piece again, the lower bell- like synth would choose different notes and it would sound completely different, though it would still use those same five notes. I loved combining my digital instrumentation with that element of randomness, and I hope to create more pieces like this in the future.

Composer Portraits: Marisa Ewing

Day 3- “Untitled Horror Song Experiment”

This piece is a bit older and was ultimately never finished, but it has become extremely influential in my style of composition. The most important and notable feature in this song is the higher, melody like bell tones. While it’s fair to assume that I chose the notes of the bells, they were actually determined by a synth. I chose the key and the speed, but the software itself chose the notes. I had struggled for a long time with being a perfectionist when it came to composing, so much so that I never seemed to actually finish pieces because I could always find something I thought needed improving. I decided to try an experiment where I gave up some control in this piece to my software so there was an element of this song I couldn’t change or obsess over until it was perfect. It turned into a really fun exercise, and I loved the idea of adding randomness to my pieces. This piece was the start of me adding random elements to my pieces. Since then I’ve created some pieces that allow players to choose how to play certain parts of my pieces, some that included more synth based random elements, and some where notes are chosen by a random number generator or by rolling dice as I’m composing.

Next week on Musica in Extenso! 

Guest-editor, Marisa Ewing composer, returns to present new pieces Join us!

“Shore”

Shore is one of my favorite compositions that I’ve written so far, and it’s a balanced blend between melodic music and sound effects. The entire piece is centered around a digital recreation of a beach, complete with waves crashing on the shore and seagulls. The main instrument in this piece is actual a digital model of a real organ. The digital version and the real version are incredibly similar, but I added effects to the digital organ to make it barely recognizable. I also have five other synths in this song, included one imitating a bass guitar and one imitating vocals, to round out the rest of the song. My goal in this song was to create music that swelled and faded, similar to waves, to complement the beach sound effects.

Next week on Musica in Extenso!

We’re thrilled to have had composer Marisa Ewing with us this week as part of our Composer Portraits series! If you missed any of it, check out the #marisaewing tag at Musica in Extenso, and make sure to read her interview with our editor-in-chief.

You can keep up with her beautiful experimental ambient work (and hear more of it) at her soundcloud, or by following her here on Tumblr as @the-sassy-composer. She’s also got a YouTube channel to which you can subscribe.