On Epic

In the first five days of officially working on "Usher," I wrote reasonable melodies for at least five songs. I came up with some guitar tunes for William... I wrote a drinking song.... good stuff. To be honest, I felt like my pace was a little slow.

How I long for those days again.

For the past week and a half, now, I have been working on one song: "Mysterium." "Mysterium" is Roderick Usher's attempt to "usher in" a paradise on Earth through music. It will be performed at the base of Mount Olympus by an ensemble of 100,000. Forty-five thousand strings, one thousand pianos, four thousand percussion (including two thousand actual cannons), and fifty thousand voices. There are only strings and pianos because other instruments drive Usher mad with pain, for some reason. Anyway- sounds easy, right?

I suppose it's reasonable, then, that I wrote ten drafts of the first thirty seconds of this piece... spending ten days doing so... only to toss them all and stare in fury at my empty computer screen. I need to go back to Woodberry- I think I work better there.

The good news is that I finally have at least one melody that has passed my strictest "epic" test.

Mike's Epic Test:

1. Would it sound reasonable if you heard it in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy?

2. How about "Star Wars"?

3. "Gladiator"?

4. "Batman?"

If you answer "no" to any of the above, the song is clearly not epic enough. Try again.


With any luck, I'll be satisfied with it as a draft soon enough. Then I can work on... you know... the twenty other pieces of music I need to write.