A belated happy new year! It's odd how time pulls tricks sometimes. It almost feels as if it's been 2008 for some time now, yet it's only just been about a month so far. Such is the subjective nature of it all, I suppose!

The main reason I wanted to update the site is a new project I'm launching as of today. I've actually been working on it for around a week so far, but wanted to wait until I had a sufficient stock to start out with and gague if I was actually able to pull through for my own ambitions. Thankfully, I proved to myself that it's entirely possible and I can officially unveil my intentions.

The project is called (clog]. To be short, it's like a blog but for compositions. Instead of rambling on about opinions and hot topics, I intend to write a new short piece every two days and post it up on the site. So far I've only written piano pieces, but that may change as time goes on. Regardless it will be small instrument couplings if anything, to ensure that I can actually finish it in two days.

The project is both an exercise to flex my compositional muscles, and as a bit of an interesting look into how complexity and stylistic nuances play into the amount of work completed in a given time. In the first five pieces I've posted, you can notice right off the bat that those with a more repetative or theme/variations nature allow themselves to be more drawn out. However, the ones that are very progressive or asymmetrical in structure tend to be shorter. It seems like an obvious thing, but you never really think about it consciously.

In any case, I hope you enjoy what is currently posted and keep coming back to see what new piece pops up! Remember, I'll be updating every two days (or at least writing them and updating periodically.)

~Leif

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10/14/07

As 2007 flies along in its latter months, the second anniversary of my website's launch has come and gone without much notice from me other than an email in my inbox notifying me of my 2 year renewal on the domain name. I started the website back in September of 2005, halfway through my last year in college. Since then, the website has gone through two full years of updates and a full evolution in music as I've taken on jobs and contributed to projects. With those developments also comes a change in outlook for the website.

Another year has passed, and it's time for another revamp on the design and contents of the site. Other than the new layout, one of the major changes is how the embedded music player is handled. It is still present on every page, but now you can click the 'open music player' button on the right to open up a standalone window so that you can continue to listen to the music playlist while browsing the rest of this site or other websites altogether.

I hope that you enjoy the new look! And don't be shy. Feel free to send me some feedback about either the site or my music by using the contact page or commenting directly on my blog.

~Leif

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8/5/07

After a long stint of a lack of news, I'm pleased to introduce my new blog: Gregarious Diffusion. While I have been using the front page as a blog of sorts for a while, I will be relocating all my various ramblings and reflections to the weekly blog updates and keeping the front page of this website for brief bits on content updates and the like. Here's a brief exerpt from my first entry to explain the blog a bit:

"Some people have accused me of being too verbose at times, and I'll give them that. My love of language is pretty close to that of music, so I'll milk it for all it's got. Diffusion is, aside from its scientific meanings, a word to describe the spread of cultural elements from one area or group of people to others, to quote Mirriam-Webster's 4th definition. Gregarious is a way to describe something that associates with others of their kind, or one's liking for companionship. And so by linking the two words together, gregarious diffusion, it could become a definition for art and our inherent nature to pass it along and collaborate with others in its creation. It's that definition of art that I live with and try to further define by the act of creating more. A bit heady, sure, but I can always use the excuse that I went to a pretentious arts college."

All my best,
~Leif

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4/24/07

Greetings! A lot has happened in the past four months. Some productive, some not. On the productive side, I've been lucky enough to demo for several upcoming PC games, and several more opportunities may arise in the near future. I also was able to attend this year's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, CA where I met many great people in the industry and generally gave me a great feeling for the future. There are some immensely talented people out there, and I'm honored to be part of the next wave of upcoming people in the industry.

One major change I've made to the website this update is how my demo material is now handled. Since GDC, I've switched over my demo reel format from a montage to short 1-2 minute tracks and exerpts. The entirety of my demo reel can be found in the streaming media player to the left of every page. The mp3s from this can be found on the Samples page, as well as the full pieces previously available.

New amongst the demo material are a duo of pieces: Birth of Eternity is my answer to the need for an epic orchestral sound, mixing elements of electronica into large string and choir sections for an eerie yet quirky sound. Misty Plateau takes the same approach, but for a more mellow atmosphere. It's the Yin to Birth of Eternity's Yang, and utilizes a unique pairing of solo flute and synthesized square wave that I found particularily alluring.

'Till next update: all my best,
~Leif

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12/27/06

A belated happy holidays to everyone having celebrated something these past few weeks! My time off was spent mainly with family, catching up with several relatives that I haven't seen in quite a while. If anything, it was definitely invigorating and will lead into the new year smoothly!

On the music front, I have several new pieces to add to the mix. The first of which is called Cittágazze, inspired by the wonderful His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman. If you're familiar with the books, you know that Cittágazze is an abandoned city within a vast alternate world where soul-devouring creatures called specters run amuck, subjugating the adults to a soulless existence and leaving the children to band together and try to survive. The literal translation of the location's name is "City of Magpies", and was my inspiration for this piece involving 2 guitars and acoustic bass.

The second new piece is a result of some new audio toys to play with in the studio... I named it Reticent Mound as sort of a subtle homage to my inspiration found from Silent Hill's lineage of amazing ambient horror music written by Akira Yamaoka. I realized that a lot of my music lately has been somewhat up-tempo or meandering, but never suspenseful or eerie... So I sought to break that up a bit with this piece!

The final bit of news is that, with the changing of the new year, I've updated the demo reel to reflect a "best of" for 2006 and may be what I bring with me to GDC in '07! 'Till next update, enjoy.

~Leif

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11/12/06

Apologies to those I've subjected the brief stint of a horribly over-white graphic design. While I was certainly solid on the layout, the design itself didn't settle too well with me in the long run. Hence, you'll notice a completely different look now to the site. Things are more colorful, a bit darker and not as washed-out, and I've carried over the color-coding on the pages to the layout itself. Admittedly the site might function better as a flash site with cool transitions, but 1) I know nothing of Flash, and 2) Flash sites are generally harder on the overall populace to browse easily and flawlessly.

In the world of music, I've spent most of the past month writing a new piece for a dance performance choreographed by a good friend Karen Brown. The piece is called Observations of Nature and clocks in at an epic 15 minutes. Considering how things turned out on the DVD's end, I may also even have a video of the performance to add to the web site at some point. The piece works on its own, but to see it with the dance and lighting is definitely the ideal situation! The performances all went beautifully, so hopefully I can get that up for people to see.

Things are slowly but surely progressing forward with not only looking for a solid job (hire me!), as well as my grand move to California in the late winter / early spring. I'll likely update with more on that later, as the date rapidly approaches. Demo reels were put on hold while I redesigned the site, but now they'll likely get sent out during the holidays. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

~Leif

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10/26/06

The new design is here! It took a little longer than August to get it all set up and functional, but I'm extremely excited about this new layout.

One of the biggest new features is the Flash-powered music player mounted on the left-hand column! Downloading is no longer necessary to check out any of the pieces of music on the site. That is, unless you really like a piece, in which case I definitely encourage you to download the mp3 for your own personal enjoyment!

There are a plethora of new pieces, including the 24-minute orchestral suite named Snowflight. It's broken down into 7 movements which can be found in order on the music player playlist, or slightly scattered on the samples page. Other new pieces include a track I wrote for the upcoming sequel to Gary Grigsby's World At War which I titled German Sixth Army, a little looping African Groove, and the Progressive Mandolin Techno Epic (phew) Panoroia.

Unfortunately, some of the pieces from the old website didn't make the cut for getting included in the new streamlined playlist. However, if you really want a copy of one of the older pieces, please feel free to contact me and I'll see what I can do!

Welcome, and enjoy!
~Leif