Island

About two years ago, my friend Michelle Martinez and I took a day trip up to a beach in north Seattle, and had long deep conversations about love, relationships, and culture.  Somewhere along the beach, we got around to discussing writing songs together.

Later on that day, high on sunshine and Indian food, we took a look at a piece that I was working on, "Theme and Variations", of which I already completed the first variation and intended to write three more.  Using the pre-existing melody as counterpoint, and the harmonic structure with some changes to the form, we started to add a vocal melody with original lyrics.

It was amazing how quickly everything came together, once we started on the idea of telling the story about her past relationship with a woman who was distant and controlling, like an island surrounded by fast currents.  The music happened just as fast, and we completed the piece in less than two hours.

Putting it together afterwards turned out to be more difficult.  I had only just started learning how to mix and master recordings in Logic Pro X, and Michelle was just starting out learning recording techniques.  We experimented with different microphones, changing the key, and adding compression, but ultimately I was never completely satisfied with the final product.

About a month ago, Michelle suggested that we take another look at it, try re-recording and mixing the piece.  This time, everything came together pretty easily, and finally I'm proud to present what we created together.