Blog #1 - Melodies of Berk's In-Depth Creative Process & My First Physical Albums!

Hi! Trying some blogging. Even while being an artist on hobby basis, this is something I put work into every single day! I want to do some write ups on my setup, my creative processes, collaborations, albums and so on. Rest assured these are only a bonus, haha. And in-depth rant about my process. These will be exclusive for a month each :)

But first, a quick Feb 2020 update: The last album release went really well! Emotional Anime on Piano Vol. 2 is doing well on streaming services. And I was very excited to finally release "Dream Lantern" in last month's post, as we've been working on it since last year.

Last year I went through some personal changes that pushed several album projects back. Right now I'm working to finish those! One is based on a video game, one on a TV-series and three on anime movies/series. It's always a struggle to work on these big projects while keeping a constant stream of videos out on my YouTube. I hope to get an EP release this month, and I have a big album scheduled for April. Hint's in the month name! So stay tuned for that :D

In the misc. department I've been doing changes to the website, updated Patreon tags so it's easier to browse and I'm working on merging my artist channel with my main channel on YT. This is a process that I can explain in another blog post :)

Anyway, here is my Melodies of Berk write up!

Melodies of Berk

Inspiration & track selection

I'm not the type who puts together a bunch of piano recordings into a folder, slaps on some stock photo that fits and calls it a day, I put a lot of thought into album releases :) The track selections, artwork, production, the release, it all contains thousands smaller decisions and nuances. Hence this block of text...

This album was a tribute to the "How to Train Your Dragon" trilogy movies, and the soundtracks by John Powell. Absolutely gorgeous movies and some of my favorites. The themes "Romantic Flight" and "Test Drive" always spoke to me as I was growing up, so those were my main inspiration. Test Drive is perhaps the most iconic song from the trilogy, and despite the name not being the most descriptive, it carries the main motif majestically. Romantic Flight carries the main motif of Hiccup and Astrid's love, so it was another good choice. Thanks to artist (and now Materia founder) Sebastian Wolff's piano arrangements, I was able to make my own spin off arrangements and performances of these two songs. I later of course made sure to ask him permission when licensing them.

Fun fact: Test Drive was the very first song I learned and played on my trusty P-115 piano! This was in October 2015, so my arrangement dates all the way back to that. 

I recorded and released Romantic Flight as a performance back in 2017 on my YouTube channel. It was the release of the third movie, "The Hidden World", drove me to finish up the EP and produce the last three songs. Initially I wanted it out in February or March to match the release, but it was unfortunately delayed. So how did I decide on the format and the remaining tracks?

I wanted to feature melodies from all of the movies, and represent the entire trilogy. In the second film, Stoick's Themes spoke to me, and they are arguably formed around the most emotional moment in the film. Because they are both short, I found it fitting to mend together "Stoick Saves Hiccup" and "Stoick". In hindsight these could've been split to perhaps generate more revenue and also get the album to feel "bigger", but I like how they fit together well, and represented core themes in the movie.

The third movie was obviously the big "buzz" at the time, so I wanted to feature two tracks from it. Even though it's not the most iconic, "Legend Has It" is sort of foreboding, and works well as an early, build up track I think. The original title is  "Legend Has It / Cliffside Playtime" and features the "mythical" sounding main motif of the movie twice, as well as Hiccup and Toothless' theme that I featured in the first half of Stoick, and a section from the Romantic Flight motif. I especially like this cute, playful version of Hiccup's theme, it's very gentle. 

Fun fact: The reason for the name change of "Legend Has It / Cliffside Playtime", is that I simply cut out the Romantic Flight motif (which is at the end), and instead transitioned into the actual Romantic Flight track, which I thought was clever. They are played in the same way, so this would have been completely seamless, if not for the fact that there is a keychange (hah). 

"Once There Were Dragons" plays during the ending scene and was a no-brainer pick for me, it features the mythical motif again, as well as the Viking motif (that I was missing so far) featured in all three movies, and it caps off with an emotional version of the trilogy main theme, transitioning into a victory lap of the same theme.

Fun fact: In Once There Were Dragons, I intertwined the theme "Where's Hiccup" from the first movie into the slow emotional rendition of the trilogy main theme, because I felt it was a good fit. Funnily enough, when I posted this track, which is 4 minutes long, YouTube picked up this track specifically to copyright, instead of the 90% of the actual track from the third movie. 

Production

How do you go from nothing to holding a finished album in your hands? I want to write more generally about this in another post, but here is the creative process I had for this album. First generally, then more in-depth.

-Decide on covering a song you love. This is important.
-Transcribe, arrange, practice, arrange some more, record, edit, release. Releasing the song before finishing the album will teach you things you can't learn before, about the fanbase, reception, release platforms, and of course your own, changing view of the song. It will also give you progress and satisfaction, whereas you otherwise would be stuck with 5-10 unreleased songs until you finally finish all of them.
-Take some time to let the release breathe. Were you happy with it? Do you want to do more?
-If yes, plan more. After a certain point, plan a scope and start creating a plan for your EP or album. Here, for me, this was after releasing two songs. And the release of the third, final movie was what set the release window. Having a purpose to it makes it easier to work towards. Just try to make it a realistic scope (this is the hardest part, haha).
-Consider things such as tracklisting, track order, representation of the themes and motifs you're covering, dynamics and moods across the tracks, and anything else that comes to mind, as you start producing your planned tracks. Will this song be too tough to play? Is this song really necessary? Could I shorten this down? All relevant questions during this process.
-Be a perfectionist if you want, but after a certain point I do believe you will gain more by releasing, learning and moving on to newer projects, than dwelling on one forever. This is pivotal, and what sets people apart in my opinion. Some people slap things together quickly, some use a reasonable amount of thought and time to produce and release, and some people get stuck.
-On a less serious note, the final step for me tends to be; get sick of your music and finally release! Then eventually decide it was decent, haha. Final steps for me are planning the final release date, mastering, quality control (use your friends!), name pick, artwork and licensing. 

More in-depth for this release...

As written above, the name pick always comes very last for me. Melodies of Berk is meant to signify that it's a music album by the inclusion of "Melodies", and of course "Berk" ties it to the lore of the series. It's literally music from the world of the series, so I found it fitting. It's less generic than "Piano Collection" or "On Piano". Another problem with using one of these generic terms is that I'd probably have to include the original title "How to Train Your Dragon", that is very long. So, it serves a purpose by being relatively short. The biggest disadvantage to not including the series name however, is through tags and searches on services such as Spotify. People search for HTTYD, but not for "Berk". So it would perhaps be more successful with HTTYD in the name, but I think it sounds more artistic and original with my title. There's always pros and cons. 

As always I created the arrangements through Musescore, and I recorded with my Garritan CFX piano VST in Cubase 8 Elements. It's all midi data, as I do not have an acoustic grand piano, that's my only viable option. But I used the same piano setting for all of the songs, to simulate a concert. For mastering I used the Ozone 8's master assistant. I decided to license it through Soundrop, my go-to licensing partner. Their model is a one-time fee of $10 per cover song, whereas other models might have you paying smaller but yearly fees.

The tracks themselves do build a dynamic experience in my opinion. You have the riveting main melodies in Test Drive and Once There Were Dragons, to the soaring Romantic Flight, mythical tones of Legend Has It, and sad, emotional rendition of Stoick. So this was something I considered when picking and developing the renditions. 

The arrangements are always the hardest parts for me. You have to decide what kind of phrasing you want to do, what notes to use where, and so on and so on. It's a thousand choices. And then you play it and decide maybe it was better this other way. On this album I believe I always used the original keys, and for the most part the same tempos. I normally do unless there's a specific reason not to. 

The Artwork

The artwork was drawn by Vibrant Crow! And I had help to finalize the font and render by Keiko Narita. I'm quite happy with it, it's gorgeous. I included some extra renditions in the deluxe version linked below, if you haven't seen them yet. I think the process took a couple of weeks, and she really put her best into it I'd say. We did some renditions for Hiccup's hair and Toothless' eyes, I remember. I think the font really fits the "Viking" aesthetic. The font placement was also an important aspect to it. 

Vibrant Crow:  https://www.artstation.com/vibrant_crow 

Release

Melodies of Berk was finally released on the 13th of April, 2019! Licensing through Soundrop went perfectly, and I was able to get it out on the desired services. As usual the trailer was quickly put together, nothing fancy but works fine. The reception was ok by my standards, it has since grown a bit. I didn't do much to advertise, but I did create some synthesia tutorials that I released over the following months, along with the sheet music.

Release link & trailer: https://fanlink.to/melodiesofberk
VGMdb page: https://vgmdb.net/album/95521  
My HTTYD videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkIEo_0apwfLEtEPSZZJdUyWDwwgASY-C

Physical copies!

For the first time in my life, I've gotten actual physical albums produced! You can view them in the pictures above. The back was also created by Keiko Narita, I'm quite happy with how these turned out. These are my personally ordered prints and not on sale, so they are limited. I want to wait until I have more physical goodies to bundle, but I wish to ship signed copies out to you guys at some point :) I guess you could say that's where my ambitions are in terms of stretch goals right now. I have a bunch of albums I can make physicals of, so I'm predicting at least 5-6 more physicals by the end of the year.

Looking back

Melodies of Berk was a fun experience! I'm happy with it. As always there are some things about the midi or the piano sound that I wish I could improve, but after a certain point you feel like it's better to release it, learn from it, and take what you learn into new releases. Some things can only be learned after releasing anyway. The physicals were especially a highlight. I've successfully paid tribute to one of my favorite composers, and released it to a satisfactory reception. So all that's left is to say THANK YOU, to you guys for helping me along the way. Your support is a big part of what keeps me going. And I'm excited to finishing these new projects and show you what I've made :) If you have any questions about any of this, don't hesitate to ask!

If you didn't download the special edition yet, you can get it here!  https://www.patreon.com/posts/album-release-of-25997035


Thanks for reading! Any questions or suggestions to improve these kinds of articles are welcome. Maybe some more pictures (and even videos?). I hope this shows you just how anyone can fulfill their dreams of releasing music! You just need to put in the work :)