Music I

Sheet music for the set of 12 piano duets called Tales from the North, Book I. 130 pages with a 10-page introduction. Available as a hardcover, a paperback, and an ebook.

This music was composed ultimately to be played by living performers, but in 2023 I also created a kind of intentionally crude demonstration album. See here for more on that and to listen.

You can also find the full sheet music for the first two tales on the Sheet Music page.

Passages Dark and Light II is my fourth album. It consists of Passages 1–43 and the final track, “Passages Dark and Light II: The Tack Piano Passages”. 

The album is available on Bandcamp and for streaming and download in many other places online. You can also read the liner notes and listen to the work right below (note that there are 44 tracks — you may need to scroll the playlist). The notes:

“Welcome to another journey through passages dark and light. This is for dreamers, those whose dreams may be eluding them for the moment, and those looking for something out of the ordinary. I hope you may enjoy it.”

“That Dark, Dark Night” is my second single. It lasts for 10 minutes 53 seconds. The single is available on Bandcamp, with liner notes, and all major streaming and download places online. You can also read the notes and listen to the work right below. The notes:

“I had always wanted to create a dark but also thrilling piece like ‘That Dark, Dark Night’. Before I could, I needed to not only understand enough about rhythms, chords, chord voicings, and effects of individual chord changes but also have access to and enough experience with certain instruments.

This all came together only in recent years, and this, my second single, is the result. I had long looked forward to getting to play freely, with abandon, with many of the instruments heard here for the first time in my music — toy piano and fairground organ or calliope in particular.

I go further with organic development in this work than in any of my previous works apart from the long culminating piece — ‘Love’ for string orchestra — of An Iceland Symphony.

This is also among the new pieces with which I started composing works directly with the actual sounds that were going to be heard in the final results. This means that the exact sounds of these instruments were an integral shaping element of this work, affecting choices made at each step.

‘That Dark, Dark Night’ was released the same day as another single called ‘In the Fog, Deep’. These two works feature some of the same instruments and also have some emotional overlap, but whereas ‘In the Fog, Deep’ has a clear outcome, ‘That Dark, Dark Night’ can have no such clearcut ending.

Because even though the fortunate ones of us sooner or later make it out of that dark, dark night, it goes on even now for others — and perhaps waits for us too, sometime, somewhere. May we all, whenever we end up back in it, eventually find our ways through.

Yet even in darkness, thrills and beauty can exist, sometimes as an inextricable part of the whole experience. So here’s to that dark, dark night.”

“In the Fog, Deep” is my third single. It lasts for 4 minutes 40 seconds. The single is available on Bandcamp, with liner notes, and all major streaming and download places online. You can also read the notes and listen to the work right below. The notes:

“‘In the Fog, Deep’, released the same day as another single called ‘That Dark, Dark Night’, makes for a kind of companion piece to it.

As mentioned also in the liner notes for the other single, in these pieces I got to play around with great freedom and abandon with certain instruments I had always wanted to start writing music for. This piece could never have existed without the inspiring, evocative sounds of the fairground organ or calliope and the music box, not to mention the foghorn.

Unlike ‘That Dark, Dark Night’, which could never have an end — since that dark, dark night never really ends, except for a time or for a particular person — by the time ‘In the Fog, Deep’ is over, we are clearly out of the fog.

Those of you who may have listened to a particular episode of my podcast What Now with Simo — 4.16: “Creative Basics, Visions, and Fog” — will have heard this piece in small fragments, but here the whole thing appears for the first time as a whole.

May we also always find our ways in and then out of fog. Though it can be lovely while it lasts.”

“Land of Youth & Beauty” is my first single. It lasts for 12 and a half minutes, and the liner notes explain the origin and background of the music and the title.

The single and the notes are available on Bandcamp, and this piece is also available for download and streaming in all the major online places. You can also listen to it right below.

This piece first appeared in the “Lake Presentation” video of my first book of poetry, Land of Youth & Beauty: Early Poems.

As I explain in the liner notes, I had always wanted to create music like this: dreamlike, timeless, and eternal — like love and lakes and seas. Out of all my creations so far, it’s among those closest to my heart.

My third album, Early Music Archive, features all the best finished pieces from the earliest of my first ten years of making music — the musical equivalent of my first book of short stories (At Dawn: Early Short Stories) and my first book of poetry (Land of Youth & Beauty: Early Poems).

As I was learning about every possible area of composition, instrumentation, and musical performance, the pieces range over a wide area of styles and approaches, from recorded acoustic flute music (“Turtle Morning”) to synthesiser pieces (“Finally” and others) to dreamy soundscapes (especially “Stream No. 1”) and everything in between.

The album consists of 50 tracks, a total of about 132 minutes of music, and is available for purchase and streaming on Bandcamp, where you can also read the detailed liner notes of more than 3,400 words offering commentary and thoughts on each piece. The album is also available for streaming and/or download in all the major online places.

Many of these pieces feature on my music videos, which you can find on my YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/@SimoSakariAaltonen), and the text descriptions of those videos feature more background information and details.

You can also listen right below (note that there are 50 tracks — you may need to scroll the playlist).

Tales from the North, Book I is my second album, now available for purchase and streaming on Bandcamp and in 150+ other places online. Here are my notes about this demonstration album and this music, which was composed to be ultimately performed by living, professional musicians:

“Tales from the North is an unlimited series of compositions for two pianos and pianists. Book I consists of 12 tales.
 

Like stories, these pieces can start anywhere and in any mood, have anything happen in the middle, and end anywhere in any mood. Any and all emotions may be involved.
 

I wanted this music to be often energetic, youthful, free in every way (including in freely moving from any musical key to any other and in being unburdened by any unnecessary musical conventions), fast or slow, visceral or meditative according to the needs of each tale, capable of surprises and turns (again, like any story may involve), for active listening, concise, and rewarding upon further listens, giving more with each one.
 

This music had to be so free that it could take time to consider its next direction, or tread in place, or backtrack to find the right way, or stay still and inside a single chord for extended moments — this and much more.
 

I chose an unusual virtual piano for my own versions of these compositions: Spitfire Audio’s digital recreation of the Mrs Mills Steinway Vertegrand of Abbey Road Studios. There were many reasons for this choice rather than a pristine concert grand piano:
 

First, when I heard this virtual version of the piano, I was immediately enchanted by its unique tang. The instrument has lacquered hammers and isn’t perfectly tuned. This slight detuning and unique character, which may be acquired tastes — perhaps like my Tales from the North themselves — add greatly to the harmonic cloud formed in many of the tales due to their extensive and extended use of pedal.
 

Second, I felt it would’ve been wrong to try and create my own renditions of these pieces in the digital realm in such a way as to mimic an actual performance. These are my creations of these pieces in that digital realm and intended only as the first step, the introduction, of these compositions to the world. I didn’t want to pre-empt what I hope may happen in the future: hearing pianists perform these pieces on different types of pianos, such as concert grands.
 

That’s the third point: I approached Tales from the North very much from a composer’s point of view: they were created for others — living musicians — to perform and create their own interpretations of. To this end, Tales from the North will eventually be published as sheet music — a process already underway at the time of this release.
 

Before I finish, I wish to mention what a great inspiration the beautiful work of the Labèque Sisters has been for me — an important part of my original inspiration for embarking on this series of short pieces for piano duos.
 

Thank you for reading. I hope you’ll find much of interest, beautiful or strange, beguiling or shocking, overwhelming or gentle, serious or playful, in this first set of my Tales from the North.”

Again, here is the album on Bandcamp, or you can also listen to it right below (note that there are 12 tracks — you may need to scroll the playlist to see the last ones).

And the full book of sheet music for this set can be found here.

Passages Dark and Light is my first album. It consists of the full soundtrack of the 2nd anniversary episode (4.9) of my podcast What Now with Simo along with variant versions of some tracks.

For this episode I created a more serene version of the season 4 theme tune as well as the extended piece “Passages Dark and Light” made up of peaks and valleys. The first and last tracks present two versions of this with just the peaks without the meditative guitar valleys.

The difference is that the opening “Single Peaks Version” features no repeats, whereas the concluding “Extended Peaks Version” includes all the repeats as in that anniversary episode, meaning there are also chord changes and therefore moments not featured in the shorter version.

“Lovecraft’s Garden” accompanies in the episode my reading of H. P. Lovecraft’s poem “The Garden”, and the reading itself follows the music-only track.

Here is the album on Bandcamp, or you can also listen to it right below (note that there are 11 tracks — you may need to scroll the playlist to see the last one).

An Iceland Symphony is a musical composition of 21 sections involving theatrical elements. Its performance calls for musicians of all ages from the youngest to the oldest.

The full set of sheet music for An Iceland Symphony, Op. 1: A Theatrical Symphony for All Ages is available on Amazon as a hardcover, a paperback, and an ebook.