Speluncean Disquietude

Program Note

Speluncean Disquietude is the continuation of an album that I created over 3 years ago. This album starts with an orchestral miniature, City & Escape, which depicts an adventurer who begins a journey into an unknown underground cave system. As the journey continues, electronic pieces (like Bloom) start to appear, which are intended to create the ambience shift of the story. As the album goes on, pieces become less accessible, and more experimental. Speluncean Disquietude illustrates the transition from a lively, echoey, luminated wide cavern into dark, dead, and claustrophobic tunnels. Parameters such as melody, pitch height, volume, texture, attack, release and resonance have meaningful equivalents in the visual world. The piece ultimately attempts to construct an experience in which the audience feels as lost as the depicted explorer.

Composer's Notes

After Bloom, we had to continue our descent. The Jungle was big, adventurous, organic, fresh, bright, and full of life. However, the thing was, if I had stayed there, I could never have reached the thing I was searching for. I had to go deeper to find the Forbidden Flower Garden. And the following path was darker, and deeper, and lifeless.

This piece is both inspired by my dreams and my composition journey. So, it reflects my contemporary classical music concerns and philosophy. Let me explain:

I didn't start my composition journey at my university, which gives a contemporary classical music education. Before anything, I started composing classical piano pieces. After some time, it started to sound boring and backwards, so I composed electronic and movie-soundtrack-like music. But if I had to improve, I would have to continue. So, I entered one of the few universities in Turkey that offered composition education. Don't get me wrong, I am very grateful to my composition department and teacher. Their guidance is invaluable, and it is one of the best decisions I made. However, there are fair concerns over writing contemporary music. We are dealing with something our mothers can't understand or like: something strange to our friends, strangers, and ourselves. Why are we writing the music nobody likes, cares about, and understands? It is a very lonely kind of pursuit...

However, I still think it is a path I should take. At the end, I am not only gaining experience in different kinds of composition styles, but also learning the fundamentals which I cannot learn in other genres. For example, I can't really practice achieving limitless self-expression while writing commercial music. I can't experiment with rhythms and pitch content if I am just working on electronic music. It is impossible to grasp most things if you always stay in the safe corridors.

Also, this piece contains concerns about my style of composition. I can't get this thought of not belonging anywhere... I really like to create music that I like/listen to. Also, I want to create music that benefits me. Because of that, my portfolio is like a scrambled Play-Doh, and I am concerned this would harm me in the long run. If I were focusing on one style, I would get pretty successful with it. I could be a successful Daw-based orchestral composer if I gathered all my attention. I could have a big repertoire if I only composed contemporary music. If I only created electronic music, I could be the next TheFatRat... But I am dividing my attention among all those different music styles, which I absolutely love doing, but I still don't know if I should continue like this.

So, the darker the cave system is, the more obscure the music genre gets.

I am coping with this through the existence of FFG. I want to be at a point where all that diversity of tracks not only makes me compose more (I have to work multiple times harder if I want any albums), but each one will also teach me something more about the music and sound. I have this feeling that if I trust myself and continue composing and discovering, I will have a greater understanding of human & music. At this stage, I will not compose with the muscle memory, but with a true understanding.

I don't know if I am wasting my youth, even my life on a pointless and wrong belief. But I am pretty sure time will tell, and if I refuse what I love to do, I believe that would be a bigger mistake.

Visual represenments

• (note) This piece is the first piece I started to use visual representation on sound:

• Registers
  • Low Registers: Darkness
  • High Registers: Light
  • Dim Melodies: Flash Light
  • Harmonics: Crystals & Mushrooms
• Life / Movement
  • Plantation, Alive:
    • Harmony, leading somewhere
    • Melody
  • Dusty Rocks, Dead:
    • White Noises, static music
    • Chords
• Polyphony / Homophony / Monophony
  • Poly – Complex Life (animals, plants, us)
  • Homo – Symbiotic – Plant Based & us
  • Mono/pointilistic – Single Life (us)
• Geography
  • Narrow Spaces: Instant Tails
  • Tunnels: Repeating/Delayed Tails
  • Open Cave: Largest & Longest tails

Funfacts

• The dream I had is nearly exactly the same as this piece's story. Both this story and my dream are somehow connected with Noita's (game) darker theme of seeking truth in the dark halls.
• This is the first piece I have created a pyramid system to narrow down the techniques I have used. Performer's first advice (and I started to think they said that for themselves) was "Less Is More". Because of that, I redacted many advanced techniques from the score and worked on the overall ambience.
• The starting notes of this piece is the ending notes of Bloom, and sometimes you can hear the motives and rhythms of the Bloom.