My story

I grew up on the outskirts of a small city in Canada and spent much of my early years out exploring in the woods. My mom put my sister and I in piano lessons when I was eight or so, but when I lost interest a couple of years later, she never tried to make me keep up with lessons - I have often been grateful for that. As a teenager, I became interested again, and learned Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata by listening to it in tiny increments. Mom suggested I try lessons again; my piano teacher was flabbergasted (that is exactly the right word for the look on her face) that I had memorized it, and showed me the sheet music and tried to help me follow Beethoven’s expressive marks as written. But I guess I wanted to do things my own way by then, because I decided to quit again after two lessons.

My sister kept up with lessons and sheet music, and has gone on to become the most skilled sight reader I know. I went the other way and hardly looked at sheet music again, preferring to learn by ear and then add my own expression.

When I was 18, my sister went to a wedding and was enchanted by the wedding march they had used. She looked up the sheet music and learned it. I thought it was beautiful and decided I wanted to write something like that, so whenever I had the house to myself, I began writing my first song (this was Seasons - I didn’t name most of my songs for a couple of years). I finished it a few months after my sister had moved on from the wedding march (which was good, since I didn’t want her thinking her music tastes had inspired me or anything). I never let anyone hear it until it was finished.

Enjoying my newfound emotional outlet, I wrote another song (Cornflower) and then another (Falling in Love). Around that time I began suffering from anxiety and depression; I didn’t know what was happening to me, and I remember longing for chances to be alone so I could play my heart out - it was my way of dealing with the darkness and confusion inside me.

While I was in college, I took a class on musical theory (I was a bit wary of theory since that sounded stuffy, but it turned out to be a lot of fun). I didn’t learn many completely new concepts in the class, but it was really cool to suddenly realize that the things I’d been doing in my music had names. During this time I wrote Dreamweave, and when I played it for a classmate he said it sounded like 25th-century Beethoven. ‘25th?’ I asked him. ‘Yeah, 25th,’ he said.

A couple of years later, a friend of mine who had a young daughter began annoying his wife by playing the same ten notes on one of those little keyboard toys. Every time she yelled at him to stop, he’d protest, ‘It’s my song!’ After a few days, he turned to me and said, ‘Okay, take my song and finish it - five pages, on my desk, on Monday.’ I took him up on it. I didn’t get it done by Monday - it took me three weeks, I think - but I did finish it. That was Fairy Dust, though I simply referred to it as "Andrew’s Song" for quite a while.

I had kept up with Moonlight Sonata during this time, and had been fascinated with the lesser-known third movement for its speed and impressiveness. I never got especially good at it - it caused my dad a lot of frustration and I remember him bellowing at me, ‘Put the soft pedal on!’ and ‘Slow down!’ I can’t really blame him - I used that song as an outlet for when I had too much energy, and I probably played it with all the emotional expression of a weedwhacker. Sorry, dad.

After a while I thought it would be cool to write a song that used similar right-hand riffs as what that song did (that’s probably not the right word, but if you listen to it hopefully you’ll know what I mean), and the result was Thunderstorm.

I decided I wanted my next song to get back to a more expressive place. Thunderstorm was fun to play (though I’m sure my dad didn’t think much more of it than he had of my enthusiastic attempts with Beethoven’s work), but I didn’t consider it beautiful, and I wanted to write something really beautiful. So I began working on Follow Your Sunbeam Through. This is perhaps an odd name, but I named it for the way its main melody is bright at the beginning, darkened but still recognizable in the middle, and emerges again at the end, noble and free. I loved playing it, especially when I was struggling with depression - it reminded me that in spite of the blackness in my mind, I would get through it one day if I just kept following the ‘sunbeam’.

A little while later another melody came to me. I have always loved reading The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis - particularly The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I love the peaceful wonder in that story, especially in the chapter called The Wonders of the Last Sea. That chapter inspired The Silver Sea - I wrote it to sound like water and tried to evoke that same peaceful wonder that I felt when I read that book.

I didn’t write music for a little while after that. I was doing better mentally, and I had a lot of other hobbies that I wanted to explore. After a couple of years, when I was 25, I started writing music again.

I was halfway through that song when I met my wife, Ariana. She enjoyed my music, but was more interested in getting to know me than listening to my music - which was very special to me since many people had simply allowed me to anxiously hide in my music and let me be ‘the piano player’ at social events. I don’t blame them at all, since I know I was very shy, but Ariana went beyond that and began drawing me out of my shell and supporting me. Gradually I learned more social skills from her and realized that she was helping me to become myself - the stable, happy person I had always wanted to be. She taught me how to get there, bit by bit. When I finished Ariana’s Song, I couldn’t have named it anything else.

We got married soon after that, and I moved down to the United States to live with her. I discovered in the first year that much of my depression had been caused by Seasonal Affective Disorder - I didn’t get enough sunlight in Canada. I began to thrive mentally, both from that and from the stability of living with my person in life, and I have not had significant trouble with depression since.

The last song in this album, Lone Rider, was written during our first two years of marriage. Ariana called dibs on naming it, and when it was finished she called it Lone Rider because she said it made her think of a horseman riding through forests and scenery and having adventures.

Over the years, people kept telling me that I should record the songs I played. I’d never gotten through one of them without mistakes (and still haven’t) and I generally laughed it off; but Ariana approached me more seriously about it last year. I was happy just keeping the songs in my head, but I agreed to record them for her - she gave me a lot of logical reasons why I should do it but in the end she just gave me the eyes.

I doubt this music can do quite as much for anyone else as it has for me, but here’s hoping it can make at least a little difference. Beethoven believed music could change the world. I know some music, like Thomas Bergersen’s work, has changed my world (that’s another story). Maybe my music will change someone’s world some day too. If that happens, I hope they pass it on, whether that's through music or some other way. ♥