Sci-Fi Songs: Kay Kenyon

I could not be more thrilled with the chain of events that occurred this past week.

First, over at Fantasy Cafe, Kristen wrote a nice post about two of my recent songs.

This led to John DeNardo at SF Signal mentioning Sci-Fi Songs in his blog this past Wednesday. John was kind enough to link to three of my recent songs:

The Return of Titus Quinn is a solo acoustic instrumental piece that was inspired by Kay Kenyon's excellent novel: Bright of the Sky. The piece of music came to the attention of Kay Kenyon herself, through SF Signal. Check out some of the nice things that Kay had to say about the composition:

Finally, Paul from the Beam Me Up Radio Show, Blog, and Podcast took a liking to Rachel Rosen, and graciously wrote about it on his blog as well as playing the song and discussing it on his radio show and podcast this past Saturday.

Thanks to everyone who wrote about Sci-Fi Songs this past week. I'm just about finished with a new instrumental piece, which should be recorded and posted by next Monday.

The Return of Titus Quinn.mp3

This week's song was inspired by the protagonist from Kay Kenyon's excellent Bright of the Sky. The Return of Titus Quinn is a solo acoustic guitar piece played in the DADGAD alternate tuning.

In the novel, Titus Quinn takes on the identity of Dai Shen, a Chalin man. The Chalin are a race of people that bear a strong cultural resemblance to earth's Asian population. I tried to interpret this by taking my initial "Titus" theme of the A section and transposing it into the Chinese pentatonic scale of the B section.

This piece is a bit of a departure for me. Many of my formative influences (Steve Morse, Alex Lifeson, Steve Howe, Leo Kottke, John Fahey, and Michael Hedges) have recorded numerous solo acoustic guitar pieces. As much as I love this style, I've never given a serious attempt to compose and record one of my own. I had great fun putting this together, and I hope you like it.

Has a novel ever inspired you to write a piece of music? Has a song ever inspired you to compose a novel, short story, or piece of visual art?

-John

More info on Bright of the Sky

Sci-Fi Songs

Kay Kenyon, SF Signal, Radio Airplay, and More!

Sci-Fi Song #4: The Return of Titus Quinn