Hi all! It's been a long time since I've posted anything, so I'm digging through my folders of unreleased music to see if there is anything worth posting. There are loads of pieces that I wrote while studying composition at the local music conservatory. I never released them because they are pretty different than everything else on my page. They were assignments to develop my classical technique, a pretty far cry from the sentimental piano, jazz, and video game inspired tunes that I've released over the years.

To be honest, my desire to compose music was basically crushed over the last few years. There was a while when I was going to school full time, working nearly full time, and experiencing a whole lot of difficult life and financial circumstances on top of it all. It got to the point that making music was no longer joyful. Instead it caused a massive amount of anxiety for me. I graduated and stopped writing altogether, got a corporate job and began working up to 80 hours per week to pay off my student loans.

I'm trying to rediscover my joy for composing and to rebuild my musical self-esteem. I'm starting that process by releasing the tracks that I wrote while in conservatory. May as well stop overthinking it and just get them out into the world so I can move on. I'm not going to work too much on polishing them in terms of audio. They mostly exist as MIDI and Finale files. I don't have access to my fancy music software, as my desktop computer is currently in storage. Instead I'm going going to dump these MIDIs into FL Studio and use the basic sound libraries that I have on my potato of a laptop. I just uploaded one of these tracks.

As an aside, a whole lot has happened in my life since I last posted five years ago. I studied abroad in China. Hitchhiked across Japan. Backpacked through South Korea and Thailand. I graduated from community college, got accepted into a music conservatory, and studied classical music composition with some pretty hardcore professors. I could write several posts about that experience. Since graduating I took on a job that has me traveling around the country 5-6 days per week throughout the entire year. I seriously live in hotels and am barely ever home. Most importantly, I got married back in October!

The last few years have been absolutely wild, and I've missed the Newgrounds community greatly. I'm excited to be back and to ease my way back into making music. I'm trying to not take myself too seriously and to just have fun with it. Thank you to those who have supported me over the years, even when I have gone MIA. It means a lot to me! <3