About Table Pieces

With the exception of the final piece, each track in Table Pieces is named after a character. There’s the Storyteller, the Dancer, the Watchmaker, the Cartographer, the Child, the Mother, and the Innkeeper. These figures meet in a place called The Forgotten Room, where each one brings something unique to the table.

I first started developing the idea for Table Pieces over a year ago, even before releasing my last album, Outdoor Pieces. The initial concept was simple: to use only small, quiet sounding instrument, that could fit on a table, such as the kalimba and music box. These are instruments that require you to be quite close to truly appreciate, and there was something intimate about that idea that I liked. Over time, however, the idea evolved, and I realized that limiting the album to just these instruments felt too restrictive.

Now, Table Pieces has become an album hat embraces closeness in many forms. The album features the tactile sounds of a bows hitting the strings, clicking noise from keys, winding mechanisms, the sound of breathing and moving. Delicate sounds that you wouldn’t perceive from a concert stage, and which contribute to an intimate, fragile, and nuances soundscape.

How the pieces was created:

All that being said, it’s a bit ironic to admit that every sound on this album was created using virtual instruments – VST’s. That means, there isn’t a single human musician recorded here. Every frase, dynamic nuance, and even the vibrato, is carefully programmed, to emulate live musicians. In a way, this has been an experiment, exploring how much expression I can draw from VST’s when I write specifically for them. Because of this, Table Pieces features instruments that are naturally well-suited to sampling, like bells, harp, piano, and music box, for instance. With other instruments such as winds, strings, and especially the choir instruments, it’s been an interesting challenge to compose specifically for the strengths of these virtual instruments. For example, some patches have beautiful legatos, while others works best for short notes. Some comes with pre-recorded dynamic and rhytmic elements that are locked in tempo which offers little flexibility, but can potentially sound super-realistic when used right.

All of the pieces in Table Pieces were composed and produced directly in the notation software Dorico. Thanks to Dorico’s DAW-like functions, I have full control over the VST instruments and all MIDI parameters, while maintaining a clear overview of the music that only notation can provide me.