SchwanSongs

This page contains a small number of musical compositions I have written over the years. The main reason there are just a handful of short pieces here is because I have very small hands... OK, seriously, the songs below are just a sampling of some of my works, and I wish to share them with you. There are more recent, longer/rewritten, high quality recordings of these, and other pieces, which I am preparing for sale on an upcoming CD (and a DVD music video, in one case below.)

Please respect my hard work. These pieces have been composed note-by note, sometimes taking months to create. They are copyrighted works, and they may not be sampled, publically performed, modified, commercially used or linked to without my explicit permission. I have posted them here simply to let you hear and enjoy them.

I do hope you enjoy my music. If you wish to offer professional critique, or wish to discuss commercial licensing or using the printed scores, please e-mail me (contact information is at the bottom of this page, altered to thwart SPAM-harvesters), I would love to hear from you.

My music is written such that I can easily print properly-transposed sheet music, ready for real performances, when the opportunity arises. Click the image to the right to see a larger partial page from one of my works. A full score, along with individual instrument scores can be licensed for use/performance, quite inexpensively. Please e-mail me for details./p>

More SchwanSongs can be found on other Music Websites

Feel free to peruse my music on these other music web sites as well:

SchwanSongs Blog

News and sneak peeks of upcoming projects are posted on my SchwanSongs Blog.

SchwanSongs Merchandise

My CGI music video "Dance of the Technoids" (along with a description of the extra features on the DVD) is available at 'The Lost Records' here. A quick low-quality glimpse at the DVD cover artwork is shown below:

I'm also toying with the idea of putting my logos and other artwork on things here at CafePress.

Written: April 2004
Notes: Imagine a Mexican quintette playing a fast waltz. There are 3 melodies played in 3/4 time, in a sort of non-standard ABCABC (Rondo?) format. The title is a photographic/geographic/melodic play on words. There is a merging of European waltz and Mexican-sounding instrumentation.
This fourth version has an improved sampled violin, as well as the real trumpet performance from the prior version. The new violin part was created from the score-exported-MIDI by Bubowski, who tweaked & enhanced the expressiveness to work with the Garritan Personal Orchestra's violin, and sent me the resulting audio file to replace the old harsh violin sample I had in there. The great Russian jazz trumpet player Vladimir Galaktionov had graciously read my score and recorded his performance of this piece, and I had replaced the sampled trumpet with his live recorded performance. Anyone want to play the violin part live for this?
This has become a programmatic work for me, and the vision I have tried to capture in the music follows:

[Intro] The warm evening twilight brings a light scent of jasmine across a courtyard in Southern California, and a Mexican band begins playing a waltz. A young gentleman saunters over to a lady, who is shyly swaying to the music. He asks her to dance with him, and she accepts his hand. They sway together onto the dance floor.
[Melody 1] The dance begins with them dancing formally, with respectable distance between them. He is looking over her shoulder and leading gently, and her head is demurely bowed.
[Melody 2-3] As the dance progresses, she gains confidence and begins to look at him, and he at her, and they dance closer.
[Repeat Melody 1-3] Still unsure of each other, they return to the formal beginning of the dance. Again, they begin to feel the joyful warmth of each other and pull closer.
[Modulation] Playfully, the lady pulls away from him and out into the spotlight.
[Bridge/Melody 1] The gentleman watches as she performs her own twirling dance, just for him. He smiles and begins to clap his raised hands in time to the beat of her version of the dance.
[Melody 1-repeat] At the end of the repeat, he steps in and they dance together with increasing flair and passion.
[Melody 2-3] They flow together, seeing only each other. The rest of the world has melted away.
[Finale] As the music ends, the gentleman pulls the lady close to him, then dramatically dips her to the side.

Ah, to make this a reality with a real band playing this for my wife and I to dance to...
Hardware: Eduard: Dual 1GHz G4, Vodka, 3 or 4 kisses Vladimir: 1.6Ghz PC, Cubase SX. and AKG C3000 mic ...and the internet to connect Moscow to San Diego.
Software: This was written and scored note-by-note by me, and performed with a mixture of Bubowski's "Garritan Personal Orchestra" sampled instruments (Violin), and GarageBand 2 stock instruments (bongos, acoustic guitar, acoustic bass), and Vladimir's real trumpet playing. Artwork is something I created using "The Gimp" and Photoshop and a photo of Vladimir.

Written: March-September, 2007
Notes: Close your eyes, and come with me. It is a warm Autumn eve in the Black Forest. There are ancient folk tales about this magical wood... how late at night it comes to life with mischievious fairies and wood nymphs. Any mortal who hears the unusual, hauntingly romantic dance music, will be enchanted, drawn into the heart of the forest, and will never return. Hush! Do you hear them? They're calling, gathering for the dance...

Extra Notes: I wanted to create an unusual dance, something that felt just a little off-kilter, strange, but catchy at the same time. I wrote a melody that switched between minor and major, and also wrote an unusual rhythmic "loping" feel between the cellos, strings, and clarinets. It is in 4/4 time, but doesn't want to be... I'm dubbing it a "faux-trot". For all of us who have delightfully quirky eternal romances. Eternal thanks to my wife who inspires me to write music, and guided and critiqued this piece so thoughtfully. She really wanted the middle section to be a full-fledged-fugue, but it is a simpler canon ("round") for now until I learn more about composition.

Written: January, 2008
Notes: While my wife and I were travelling back down the coast of California (near Big Sur) from a vacation around New Years, we stopped at a turnout over a cliff, and took a bunch of video of at least 15 California Condors, flying and hanging out on the guard rail, not 15 feet from us! These amazing birds, once almost extinct in the wild, are now being re-introduced on the west coast. When full-grown, they can have a 10-foot wingspan, the largest land-birds in North America. I'm editing the video as we speak (checking with the San Diego Zoo and Ventana Wildlife Society to see if they want the footage.) I have about 15 minutes of amazing video of them in flight, or sunning themselves in the trees, or ambling around looking at the growing crowd of people, who are stopping to look at them in return. I am hoping that despite their apparent lack of fear of people, they remain safe. Due to lots of interest, I have edited down the condor video and have posted it on YouTube (see below), or click here to read a little write-up of the trip.

As part of the ending credits, I needed a quickie "Condor" theme, so I whipped this up. It is supposed to evoke Peruvian/Bolivian style folk music.

Written: March 2002, 2004, 2006
Notes: A Mythed opportunity has forced the group of weary warriors to break camp and continue their march, now under a dark storm. Inspired by the Macintosh strategy/warfare game "Myth" by Bungie Software. Beware the double entendre, quite a surprising weapon.

Written: June 2002, revamped January 2007, Music video finished February 2007
Notes: Bouncy Electro-pop music with aliens dancing around large lava lamps (suggesting that music is literally "universal".) Reaching into my 1980's musical subconscious, I wrote a catchy "Depeche Mode"-like techno-flamenco tune, and then created a mosh pit of Technoids dancing to the music in a hyper-realistic dance hall called "The Candy Bar". Music written note by note in Harmony Assistant (www.myriad-online.com) and finished/EQed in GarageBand. Live acoustic Spanish guitar performed by Ian Beardsley. Video rendered with POV-Ray Mac (mac.povray.org), and assembled in iMovie. For the technically curious, there are over 1,200 lines of POV-Ray code (all written by hand in the text language, no modelers were harmed...) to create this. The 2.5 minute movie (in final anti-aliased DVD format) took 70+ continuous hours to render all the frames on an old dual 1 Ghz G4 Mac. This is my first foray into real music videos. Now available is the high-quality DVD of the music video 'Dance of the Technoids', with an extra 12+ minute "behind-the-scenes" interview with yours truly about how I wrote the music and created the 3D graphics, and a solo guitar performance by Ian. It is now available for purchase at 'The Lost Records' on-line music store.

Written: June 2002
Notes: "Life's a blur, I suggest seatbelts." (Eduard Schwan) This was written after watching the exciting Indy 500 formula-1 car race one year.

Written: 2005
Notes: This little ragtime number began life as just a snippet, written as background music for a home movie last year. But recently, I decided to flesh this out into a much longer song. For the hard core ragtime buffs, I know this is not quite syncopated enough to be true ragtime, but hopefully its fun and bouncy and makes you smile anyway. I had a lot of fun playing with the dynamics to make this feel animated and alive.

Written: November 2002
Notes: From my 2002 "Barrel of the Kells" CD, my original fugue-like arrangement of Carol of the Bells (Shchedryk), as if J.S. Bach had written it. Ingredients: Warmth, depth, complexity, eternal romance. Dedicated to my Belle, Jeri.

Written: 2003, revamped August 2005
Notes: Dark Ambient crackling embers of relentless electronica. This started in 2003 as a sketch for a slow dark ambient piece and was almost forgotten. Then a few weeks ago, I found the sketch, fleshed it out it, and posted on MacJams.com originally as Ember. After I got some very helpful feedback on it (especially from MissChaos and Cameron), I heeded their advice by varying the instrumentation a bit, and adding a "torque-flute" in the middle quiet section. This is the result, Ember-Rekindled. I wrote and scored this note-by-note on "Harmony Assistant" composition software, then MIDI-ported it to GarageBand 2 & chose new instruments & EQed. I created the "Rekindled Burning Coal" artwork with the freeware POV-Ray 3D raytracer.

SchwanSongs

More SchwanSongs can be found on other Music Websites

SchwanSongs Blog

SchwanSongs Merchandise

Border Merger

Black Forest Dance

Andes Off!

Rainy March

Dance of the Technoids

Frenetico

Lickety Split (Rag)

Belle Fugue

Ember-Rekindled

Back to Main Web Page


	Border Merger Written: April 2004 Notes: Imagine a Mexican quintette playing a fast waltz. There are 3 melodies played in 3/4 time, in a sort of non-standard ABCABC (Rondo?) format. The title is a photographic/geographic/melodic play on words. There is a merging of European waltz and Mexican-sounding instrumentation. This fourth version has an improved sampled violin, as well as the real trumpet performance from the prior version. The new violin part was created from the score-exported-MIDI by Bubowski, who tweaked & enhanced the expressiveness to work with the Garritan Personal Orchestra's violin, and sent me the resulting audio file to replace the old harsh violin sample I had in there. The great Russian jazz trumpet player Vladimir Galaktionov had graciously read my score and recorded his performance of this piece, and I had replaced the sampled trumpet with his live recorded performance. Anyone want to play the violin part live for this? This has become a programmatic work for me, and the vision I have tried to capture in the music follows: [Intro] The warm evening twilight brings a light scent of jasmine across a courtyard in Southern California, and a Mexican band begins playing a waltz. A young gentleman saunters over to a lady, who is shyly swaying to the music. He asks her to dance with him, and she accepts his hand. They sway together onto the dance floor. [Melody 1] The dance begins with them dancing formally, with respectable distance between them. He is looking over her shoulder and leading gently, and her head is demurely bowed. [Melody 2-3] As the dance progresses, she gains confidence and begins to look at him, and he at her, and they dance closer. [Repeat Melody 1-3] Still unsure of each other, they return to the formal beginning of the dance. Again, they begin to feel the joyful warmth of each other and pull closer. [Modulation] Playfully, the lady pulls away from him and out into the spotlight. [Bridge/Melody 1] The gentleman watches as she performs her own twirling dance, just for him. He smiles and begins to clap his raised hands in time to the beat of her version of the dance. [Melody 1-repeat] At the end of the repeat, he steps in and they dance together with increasing flair and passion. [Melody 2-3] They flow together, seeing only each other. The rest of the world has melted away. [Finale] As the music ends, the gentleman pulls the lady close to him, then dramatically dips her to the side. Ah, to make this a reality with a real band playing this for my wife and I to dance to... Hardware: Eduard: Dual 1GHz G4, Vodka, 3 or 4 kisses Vladimir: 1.6Ghz PC, Cubase SX. and AKG C3000 mic ...and the internet to connect Moscow to San Diego. Software: This was written and scored note-by-note by me, and performed with a mixture of Bubowski's "Garritan Personal Orchestra" sampled instruments (Violin), and GarageBand 2 stock instruments (bongos, acoustic guitar, acoustic bass), and Vladimir's real trumpet playing. Artwork is something I created using "The Gimp" and Photoshop and a photo of Vladimir. in a new window.


	Black Forest Dance Written: March-September, 2007 Notes: Close your eyes, and come with me. It is a warm Autumn eve in the Black Forest. There are ancient folk tales about this magical wood... how late at night it comes to life with mischievious fairies and wood nymphs. Any mortal who hears the unusual, hauntingly romantic dance music, will be enchanted, drawn into the heart of the forest, and will never return. Hush! Do you hear them? They're calling, gathering for the dance... Extra Notes: I wanted to create an unusual dance, something that felt just a little off-kilter, strange, but catchy at the same time. I wrote a melody that switched between minor and major, and also wrote an unusual rhythmic "loping" feel between the cellos, strings, and clarinets. It is in 4/4 time, but doesn't want to be... I'm dubbing it a "faux-trot". For all of us who have delightfully quirky eternal romances. Eternal thanks to my wife who inspires me to write music, and guided and critiqued this piece so thoughtfully. She really wanted the middle section to be a full-fledged-fugue, but it is a simpler canon ("round") for now until I learn more about composition. in a new window.


	Andes Off! Written: January, 2008 Notes: While my wife and I were travelling back down the coast of California (near Big Sur) from a vacation around New Years, we stopped at a turnout over a cliff, and took a bunch of video of at least 15 California Condors, flying and hanging out on the guard rail, not 15 feet from us! These amazing birds, once almost extinct in the wild, are now being re-introduced on the west coast. When full-grown, they can have a 10-foot wingspan, the largest land-birds in North America. I'm editing the video as we speak (checking with the San Diego Zoo and Ventana Wildlife Society to see if they want the footage.) I have about 15 minutes of amazing video of them in flight, or sunning themselves in the trees, or ambling around looking at the growing crowd of people, who are stopping to look at them in return. I am hoping that despite their apparent lack of fear of people, they remain safe. Due to lots of interest, I have edited down the condor video and have posted it on YouTube (see below), or click here to read a little write-up of the trip. As part of the ending credits, I needed a quickie "Condor" theme, so I whipped this up. It is supposed to evoke Peruvian/Bolivian style folk music. in a new window.


	Rainy March Written: March 2002, 2004, 2006 Notes: A Mythed opportunity has forced the group of weary warriors to break camp and continue their march, now under a dark storm. Inspired by the Macintosh strategy/warfare game "Myth" by Bungie Software. Beware the double entendre, quite a surprising weapon. in a new window.


	Dance of the Technoids Written: June 2002, revamped January 2007, Music video finished February 2007 Notes: Bouncy Electro-pop music with aliens dancing around large lava lamps (suggesting that music is literally "universal".) Reaching into my 1980's musical subconscious, I wrote a catchy "Depeche Mode"-like techno-flamenco tune, and then created a mosh pit of Technoids dancing to the music in a hyper-realistic dance hall called "The Candy Bar". Music written note by note in Harmony Assistant (www.myriad-online.com) and finished/EQed in GarageBand. Live acoustic Spanish guitar performed by Ian Beardsley. Video rendered with POV-Ray Mac (mac.povray.org), and assembled in iMovie. For the technically curious, there are over 1,200 lines of POV-Ray code (all written by hand in the text language, no modelers were harmed...) to create this. The 2.5 minute movie (in final anti-aliased DVD format) took 70+ continuous hours to render all the frames on an old dual 1 Ghz G4 Mac. This is my first foray into real music videos. Now available is the high-quality DVD of the music video 'Dance of the Technoids', with an extra 12+ minute "behind-the-scenes" interview with yours truly about how I wrote the music and created the 3D graphics, and a solo guitar performance by Ian. It is now available for purchase at 'The Lost Records' on-line music store. in a new window. A low-quality YouTube version of the music video is below, just to give a rough idea of what all the excitement is about :-)


	Frenetico Written: June 2002 Notes: "Life's a blur, I suggest seatbelts." (Eduard Schwan) This was written after watching the exciting Indy 500 formula-1 car race one year. in a new window.


	Lickety Split (Rag) Written: 2005 Notes: This little ragtime number began life as just a snippet, written as background music for a home movie last year. But recently, I decided to flesh this out into a much longer song. For the hard core ragtime buffs, I know this is not quite syncopated enough to be true ragtime, but hopefully its fun and bouncy and makes you smile anyway. I had a lot of fun playing with the dynamics to make this feel animated and alive. in a new window.


	Ember-Rekindled Written: 2003, revamped August 2005 Notes: Dark Ambient crackling embers of relentless electronica. This started in 2003 as a sketch for a slow dark ambient piece and was almost forgotten. Then a few weeks ago, I found the sketch, fleshed it out it, and posted on MacJams.com originally as Ember. After I got some very helpful feedback on it (especially from MissChaos and Cameron), I heeded their advice by varying the instrumentation a bit, and adding a "torque-flute" in the middle quiet section. This is the result, Ember-Rekindled. I wrote and scored this note-by-note on "Harmony Assistant" composition software, then MIDI-ported it to GarageBand 2 & chose new instruments & EQed. I created the "Rekindled Burning Coal" artwork with the freeware POV-Ray 3D raytracer. in a new window.