Brave New World Symphony

Columbus, OH –

Some time ago, well over a decade ago, I was on my way home from work, listening to the news on my car radio.

Suddenly I heard the opening strains of the 4th movement of Dvorak’s New World Symphony blasting through my car.

It was the start of story about some orchestra from the U.S. visiting someplace like North Korea.

But I didn’t care about that.

No, I had only one thought swimming around my head…

“That would sound great if it were being played by a rock band!”

So I did what anyone in my shoes would do…

I went home, searched around the Internet…

Found a MIDI file for the symphony…

Imported the last movement into my music notation software…

And started re-orchestrating it for a large rock band.

Remember, I said anyone in my shoes…

I don’t care about anyone else’s shoes…

They’d probably just let the thought go in one side of their head and out the other…

And go on with their lives.

Nope, not me!

After all, I’m a pretty decent musician with delusions of grandeur…

If I can take the pomposity of rock music, and marry it with a good symphony…

I’ll think “why not?” and dive right in.

And so started a large, multi-year project.

I mean multi-year!

But I’ll get back to that shortly.

First off, I completed the 4th movement working from that MIDI file, taking the various parts and reassigning them to guitars and keyboards…

Adding in an occasional solo, veering slightly off course before rejoining the well-traveled map…

And began playing with some lyrical ideas.

It occurred to me that it might be a good mash-up with Brave New World.

Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel, exploring what Orwell’s 1984 would have been like if Big Brother had realized that the populace could be easily controlled by being fed a steady supply of opiates.

Almost like how we’ve turned out today.

So, this called for re-reading the book…

And sorta mapping the movements of the symphony to the story…

Let’s see, movement 1, start in the nursery, move to society as a whole…

Movement 2, the recreation, feelies (movies where you felt what was happening to the characters onscreen), mandatory orgies, and the other hedonistic exploits fed to the populace to keep them sedated…

Movement 3, the trip to the reservation, with the merging of Native American pow-wow with Judeo-Christian ceremony and symbolism, the discovery of the “savage” son of the main character’s boss who had been born and grew up on the reservation…

And Movement 4, the savage having been brought back to London, and thrown into modern society, and his reaction to it, including his eventual rejection of it, and all that ensued.

Close enough for me!

And so I changed my workflow…

I quit working from the MIDI file.

I mean, it worked for the 4th movement, but why continue down that path for the other three?

No, I bought the score and did the other three movements from the paper version.

I think my reasoning was that the score would give me the individual string section parts, where the MIDI file just had a single channel for “string section”.

Reasonable reasoning, assuming that was my reason.

But I could no longer copy-and-paste from the orchestral transcription.

I now had to enter every note myself.

And transpose those parts for instruments not notated in C.

So, just about all non-string parts…

And I think I mis-transposed a trumpet part in the first movement, about half-way through.

But I liked the atonality of the part.

It felt like the fly-in-the-ointment of certain characters (Bernard) who liked to think for themselves instead of being drugged into conformity, not quite fitting into society.

You know, something a little off in Utopia…

So I left it that way.

Kept going.

Eventually making my way through the first three movements in order.

Re-orchestrated and recorded.

Although I don’t remember at this point whether I re-orchestrated all the movements and then started recording the parts, or whether I did each movement before starting the next.

At this point, it doesn’t matter.

It was all many years ago.

It was the mixing that took awhile.

I would create a mix, and then sit with it for a while.

Listening to it on a regular basis, making mental notes of tweaks to make.

And eventually I got to the point where I wasn’t making any more tweaks.

So why did this project take so long?

I mean, I started this well over a decade ago.

All the parts were recorded close to a decade ago.

Well, the primary reason is because this was a large project.

And it kept being put aside for smaller projects.

I’m sure there was a year or two that I didn’t touch it at all.

After all, I only have so much time available for this.

What with my day job…

Especially with my day job…

It limits the amount of time I have for side-gig projects.

And I have a lot of side-gig projects.

I keep starting new ones.

So, the larger the project, the longer it takes to finish it.

And with newer, smaller ones entering the competition for my time…

Especially ones with a deadline…

The larger ones get set-aside for a while.

And I’ve got an even larger one than this that I need to free up my large-project time for.

So that pushed me to taking the final steps with this one.

Mastering.

Then releasing it.

Get it out there, in the world, for everyone to hear.

At which point, I could cross it off my list of projects to keep coming back to.

I’ll still listen to it from time to time.

After all, I spend a lot of time on airplanes, jetting around the place.

I have to listen to something on all those long flights…

But I won’t be making any more tweaks.

Even if I hear something I want to change.

After all, I decided years ago that I would leave imperfections in my recordings.

I think that if something is too polished, it becomes boring.

And I don’t like boring.

And the imperfections keep things human.

So, settle in for a while.

This is a long one…