Greetings on this fine Wednesday!
Today marks the end of the Story Behind the Song series for my album Legacy. The final song is "Kosmos", the 13th and last track of the album.
The song "Kosmos" -- like several of my songs -- gets its title from my interest in astronomy. I envisioned this song as a soundtrack for a very high speed journey through our solar system and galaxy. Yes, this journey would have to be REALLY fast... faster than even theoretically possible. The song is less than 4 minutes and it takes light from our sun 8 minutes to reach the Earth, traveling at the speed of light. Our current understanding of physics doesn't allow for speeds faster than the speed of light, so yeah, I'm invoking my artistic license here. :-)
"Kosmos" was originally intended to be a duet for piano and cello, but as I got further along in writing the piano part, I decided to arrange the song for more of a rock ensemble (bass, drums, synthesizers, and eventually guitar). The song has two distinct sections. The beginning half has the more traditional sounding chord progressions and melodies, and I envisioned this as the part of the journey that takes place within our solar system -- it is our familiar home within the universe. The second half moves to a decidedly darker, more haunting modern harmony with a bit more of an unsettling melody. This part of the song represents the journey off into the largely uncharted deep space of the Milky Way and beyond.
The original recording of "Kosmos" focused on the piano, and there was no guitar part at all. Before I had even started the recording sessions for the Legacy album, I had picked out all of the songs that were to be included, and "Kosmos" was actually not on the list, because I had always approached it as a piano song, not a guitar song. As it turned out, one of my original choices -- a song titled "Sunset" -- was just not working. It was always kind of an odd song with a mishmash of different ideas thrown together, but the new recording of it made the incongruities even more apparent. I was on the verge of just chopping the album down to 12 songs, but I decided to try adding a guitar line to "Kosmos" to see if it would be a worthy replacement. I never would have guessed how well the guitar part worked with this song, and I had to kick myself for not opting to include "Kosmos" as a first-round pick.
For the new version of "Kosmos", aside from just adding on new guitar parts, I also improved the drums and bass guitar quite a bit. Those parts were functional, but pretty boring in the original.
I truly hope you've enjoyed this series of posts, and I encourage you to comment here or on my Facebook page if you have any questions or comments about any of my music.
I'll be taking the remainder of the week off for blog posts, but starting next week, I'll be trying out a new format for posts.
Also, if you haven't picked up your copy of Legacy yet, it's available on CD, digital download, iTunes, Google Play, and Amazon. The links to all of these are on my website: http://chrisstark.com and from now until June 30th, $1 from every album purchased will be donated to the THINK Fund, which helps provide educational and workforce experience opportunities to underserved students in Hawaii (where I live).
Today marks the end of the Story Behind the Song series for my album Legacy. The final song is "Kosmos", the 13th and last track of the album.
The song "Kosmos" -- like several of my songs -- gets its title from my interest in astronomy. I envisioned this song as a soundtrack for a very high speed journey through our solar system and galaxy. Yes, this journey would have to be REALLY fast... faster than even theoretically possible. The song is less than 4 minutes and it takes light from our sun 8 minutes to reach the Earth, traveling at the speed of light. Our current understanding of physics doesn't allow for speeds faster than the speed of light, so yeah, I'm invoking my artistic license here. :-)
"Kosmos" was originally intended to be a duet for piano and cello, but as I got further along in writing the piano part, I decided to arrange the song for more of a rock ensemble (bass, drums, synthesizers, and eventually guitar). The song has two distinct sections. The beginning half has the more traditional sounding chord progressions and melodies, and I envisioned this as the part of the journey that takes place within our solar system -- it is our familiar home within the universe. The second half moves to a decidedly darker, more haunting modern harmony with a bit more of an unsettling melody. This part of the song represents the journey off into the largely uncharted deep space of the Milky Way and beyond.
The original recording of "Kosmos" focused on the piano, and there was no guitar part at all. Before I had even started the recording sessions for the Legacy album, I had picked out all of the songs that were to be included, and "Kosmos" was actually not on the list, because I had always approached it as a piano song, not a guitar song. As it turned out, one of my original choices -- a song titled "Sunset" -- was just not working. It was always kind of an odd song with a mishmash of different ideas thrown together, but the new recording of it made the incongruities even more apparent. I was on the verge of just chopping the album down to 12 songs, but I decided to try adding a guitar line to "Kosmos" to see if it would be a worthy replacement. I never would have guessed how well the guitar part worked with this song, and I had to kick myself for not opting to include "Kosmos" as a first-round pick.
For the new version of "Kosmos", aside from just adding on new guitar parts, I also improved the drums and bass guitar quite a bit. Those parts were functional, but pretty boring in the original.
I truly hope you've enjoyed this series of posts, and I encourage you to comment here or on my Facebook page if you have any questions or comments about any of my music.
I'll be taking the remainder of the week off for blog posts, but starting next week, I'll be trying out a new format for posts.
Also, if you haven't picked up your copy of Legacy yet, it's available on CD, digital download, iTunes, Google Play, and Amazon. The links to all of these are on my website: http://chrisstark.com and from now until June 30th, $1 from every album purchased will be donated to the THINK Fund, which helps provide educational and workforce experience opportunities to underserved students in Hawaii (where I live).
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