Origins and The Ripple Effect

I was talking to somebody the other day about my early works on the net. They mentioned The World is Beyond Square but I quickly pointed out that the internet has turned over many times since then, and that piece is ancient history. A few days later I searched it to see what If there was anything left. I found much more than I expected One of the most outrageous being from some weird interview of a forum I've never heard of.

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Interviewer: What's your favorite song?
Subject: Hm... kinda tough decision. For now, let's leave it at... "The World is Beyond Square". The Artist is... Elliot... something... I lost the piece, but it retains a place in my memory as one of the best musical pieces I've heard. And longest. A single piece rating at 26:52. I've seen classical music pieces come close, but none has surpassed it yet.

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Obviously this person doesn't know anything about music, but whatever my artistic goals were back then, they seemed to have been successful. To be honest, I don't think I really had any artist goals, I was simply doing something personal and challenging. The whole thing is like a big inside joke made of thousands of funny musical relationships.

Now I listen to it and laugh at how I now know the names for all the things I was doing. Invertible counterpoint, modal mixture, an outrageous combination of baroque and jazz figurations. Along with fond memories, I cringe at all the structural problems.... The funny thing is that I knew about them then, I just didn't know how to solve them. My harmonic tool box had serious limitations. Sometimes I wrote myself into some funny corners.

I get strange looks when I say I learned to orchestrate though videogames. Teachers/profs/students look at me like I'm crazy. It's true though, I didn't touch a real orchestral score until I got to university.... Before that it was hundreds of midi sequences and hand notated video game transcriptions.

I could never write this piece now, even if I wanted to. My brain doesn't work like that anymore. The best I can do is look back and enjoy the fond memories it continues to trigger in me and other people.