May 6, 2017

The Twelve Pahiran Part I & II

By the end of 2014, I undertook to write a fantasy novel taking place in the secondary world that had been growing inside my head for nearly half of my life.
Connecting my music to the novel felt like a natural move, so after writing the first draft of the story, I started to record songs to match the important scenes, concepts, places...

I regard music as a powerful world-building tool. It allows me to delve deeper into my world, to visualize it more clearly, and to put myself in my characters' shoes, so as to understand what they feel.
When I want to explore a place, I plug my instruments, and let the vision (and any associated knowledge) arise from the soundscape. Then, I describe what I saw with words. This approach also makes it easier to identify ill-defined concepts (and thus, to enrich them), and to structure the story. Besides, I develop my Con-Lang (Vaerin) almost only through singing.

This soundtrack is by far the biggest musical project I've ever had. I've never put so much time and effort into anything (apart from the novel itself). So far, it has required two years of intensive work, and I have yet to bring Part III to completion.

Time and effort aside, I've put a lot of myself into these pieces. At some point, I regarded them as a personal project, that nobody but me would understand or appreciate, and I didn't even consider sharing them.
I'm very grateful to my listeners on Thesixtyone for making me change my mind, and for supporting me while I was working on Part I and II. Since this soundtrack and my world-building endeavours are closely related, forging ahead with the music also helped a lot with the writing process.

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