Willow-worm Thicket: So cinematic and professional! The harmonic relations between your ideas leaps out of a single scale and goes exactly where it needs to to achieve the description of the location and all the nuanced details of the small critters buzzing/floating/crawling by - something I wish I could do! The woodwind interplay is my favorite aspect of this piece.
Meadow of Woeful Souls: The way your instruments weave in and out from each other in this track takes away any emphasis on a single instrument and makes the entire orchestra feel like a single organism. I do think that the bassoon is the heart of this track though and anchors the darkness to represent maybe the wistful and murky quality of the woeful souls.
Lost Thought River: The constant piano 8th notes seem to be that stream of consciousness you refer to. Those little string scratch sounds at 1:29 are very pretty and I didn’t even know that was something you could do on a string instrument! I love the peaceful ending to this track.
Fields of Fading Memories: The tremolo in the strings do a great job creating that musical fog that seems transportive. The instruments seem to fade into each other which gives a sense of motion which I think is a creative effect and certainly matches the title.
Mezmar’s Maze: The panning of the guitar is disorienting and has a really cool effect. Did you manually alternate the panning, have two separate tracks panned to the side, or do you have a plug in that automatically alternates panned ears? I think this is a master class on how to make an orchestra sound spooky and uneasy. There is so much suspense in the harmonies, the melody, the instrumental techniques, the mixing, and the ambience whispering sounds.
Rumithian Strand: That each wave of instruments has a different sound and timbre feels like time is passing in a strange way. No two waves are the same and we continue moving to a different place. Oh that oboe and clarinet chirping section sound like seagulls - if that was intentional, that is a really creative musical representation.
Overall: I am so curious how you approached this project? Your compositional skills are at a professional level and I could not even fathom trying to attempt a project like this. Do you compose all at once moving the instruments from one section to the next, or is there some sort of subtle underlying idea that you started with? I will often sing my melodies before I write to help give my music structure, but that seems like it would be a challenging approach to this style of music. In any case, this was extremely impressive for both the quality and the amount of music you were able to make. Thank you so much for sharing!