I’ve been composing and playing music for as long as I can remember. I started using computer software and synths around 1994, and over the years I’ve assembled endless snippets of 30-second music themes that I never followed up on.

Recently I listened to some of the very first themes that I wrote on my computer in 1994. In the beginning I didn’t have a MIDI keyboard, so I was forced to put down every last note on sheet music, in a very simple sequencer program called Session, and I played it out on a laughable FM synthesis soundcard. It was an impossibly time-consuming way to make music.

I remember I had Windows 3.0 installed on my brand new computer. When I bought it it came with early editions of Encarta and Cinemania. My friends and I were amazed to see those 20-second 240×180 movie showcases that was included on Cinemania - not to speak of the 8-bit sound clips from literally dozens of movies. The notion of real sound and video on a personal computer! Unbelievable! The internet was still to reach our shores. The world was young.

Anyway, I was listening to these themes. At that time I was utterly heartbroken. I was going through my first major break-up, and I was completely devastated for a very long time. Reading my diary entries is scary - I was going through some heavy shit, and the stuff I wrote was pretty depressing.

Among the music I created, I discovered a theme that’s very sorrowful and melancholy - and I think it’s actually very pretty. Inspired by Ennio Morricone’s Cinema Paradiso, I’m guessing, it’s almost certainly related to my lost love. I don’t know why I left it unfinished, exactly, but that’s just the way it goes sometimes. I start on a song, write a few bars, then it doesn’t really head anywhere and I leave it behind when another idea springs to mind. Anyway.

I don’t know if this is a good or bad idea but here’s what I had in mind:

I’ll present you to this “lost” theme today, and in the following weeks or months, I’ll try to develop it into a suite of some kind; a quasi-classical suite for flute or piano or something, not sure yet.

And as the work progresses I will update you with new musical samples so that you can follow the process and listen to where the piece is heading - and then maybe leave some of your own views and/or advice in the comments section. It will be an interactive composition exercise. If it’s successful, it could be an interesting experiment for me - I’ve never written music by popular demand before… I’m not a musical genius or anything, far from it, and I have no degree or diploma in composition. This is just for fun. And, if you’re intrigued by the idea, follow me along the way, why don’t you?

Here’s the theme in a simple orchestral arrangement:
Flute theme (mp3-file, c. 0:40)

Disclaimer: If, on the other hand, popular demand should prove to be more or less absent, which may very well be the case, this project could also die a silent death in the course of the next few weeks - and that would be fine, too. I’m kind of hoping for that, actually…