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I’m starting by letting you know that on Friday, June 27th, at 2:30 PM (Italian time), the new single “tomorrow you’ll wake up!” will be released! I’ll try to write about my approach to composing, even though it’s difficult to do so in this developing climate of war over the past few days. I’ll give it a shot.
It was early 2008 when I decided to start a program useful for composing! I began searching for a list of the best-selling albums in the history of pop music, wrote down the first 200, and started listening to them to expand my musical and cultural knowledge. I listened to everything, even genres that weren’t my daily bread, because I always had Kurt Cobain in mind, who was inspired by Boston’s “More Than a Feeling” to compose “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” and who knows how many other “out-of-context” listens he had throughout his life to become the artist he did. Anyway, first phase: listening to great works!
Then I started the second phase: the search for motifs to develop! I start from the premise that the mind has the ability to acquire external stimuli, centrifuge them, and make them its own—or at least my mind works that way. I take melodies, throw them into my head, centrifuge them, and let them settle. To activate and bring out new motifs, a method was needed to activate them, and I thought of ambient music! These chords with ethereal, cosmic, and eternal effects made the mind fill the silences, the voids with the little motifs that had settled earlier… and it worked! I would listen and record with my PC microphone, then write them down and export MIDI files with Guitar Pro.
Later, over time, I also used orchestral music, ambient noises like stream water, rain, thunderstorms, traffic, bird songs, animal sounds, and each time I would listen, stop to see if anything came out of my head, and then record or continue listening. Once the motifs were recorded, I would take them and assemble them. Then, during the recording phase, I’d first record the rhythm guitar, then the lead, the bass, and finally try to set up the right drum accompaniment and various electronic effects to embellish everything. Lately, I start with the drums, compose them, then play over them—it’s more convenient and saves me a lot of time.
Why listen to music and ambient effects? Well, throughout my life, I’ve often heard many artists who found inspiration during trips, even short ones, outside their place of residence, and I’ve always wondered why. Of course, maybe there’s also mental relief; perhaps when you’re at home, you’re subject to more pressures: bills to pay, groceries, daily life, problematic relationships, etc. etc. However, when you go on vacation, you might become calmer, more receptive, and that’s where the opportunity arises to notice environmental dynamics that have always been ignored or that aren’t part of your own environment. Someone who lives in a small town might find inspiration from the millions of sounds generated in a city center; someone who lives in the city might be inspired by the birds they hear singing while standing on the shore of a lake.
Then I experienced it myself. In 2012, I went to Amsterdam, and I remember those bells that often rang throughout the day! Even the birds were different. The fact is, when I returned to Rome, I composed 4-5 songs spontaneously, and from there I had an epiphany and started listening to bell sounds and birds. A very good choice! The same thing happened when I went to Seville in 2014, Barcelona in 2016, Istanbul in 2019, and Budapest in 2023… so traveling does a musician a lot of good! It’s like indirectly getting “high” on sounds… it’s like musical secondhand smoke that, in this case, only does good!
So, wars permitting, visit as many countries as possible! Even if you’re sociopathic, it can only do you good for evolving without doing anything, because very often it’s an automatic and unconscious process.
Friday, June 27th, “tomorrow you’ll wake up!” Talk soon!