This week I decided to noodle at a piano a little bit to try and get some ideas out. This is a usual part of my process when writing something – though I’ve been wanting to write something in 3/4, my mind seems to drift towards 4/4 and 6/8. It’s been hard to force myself into a 3/4 mindset, but I suppose that’s not really something I should be doing either; I am a firm believer that compositional ideas come naturally and you can’t really force it. Classical theory and guidelines help to structure an initial melody and harmonic structure, but only get you so far and I usually just end up scrapping anything I’m not particularly happy with. I’ve uploaded a recording of my noodling on the piano below:

I think I was pretty obviously inspired by a few things here. I was definitely inspired by the first movement of Cait Nishimura’s Lake Superior Suite:

Lake Superior Suite, Mvt. I: Pancake Bay by Cait Nishimura.

I was playing around mostly in E major (I’m not a pianist so there were a ton of mistakes haha) and I recently had been listening to both of the following, which definitely also influenced what I was playing:

The adagio from Rachmaninoff’s 2nd Piano Concerto is pretty famous, and for good reason; its lush harmonies, textures and movements sum up romanticism perfectly in my opinion. There is so much raw emotion in this work; I teared up the first time I heard it, particularly the last minute and a half or so.
This song by Laufey off of her most recent album features the Philharmonia Orchestra and has obvious influences of Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Chopin, and romantic music in general. Can you tell I’m a fan of the romantic era?

I’m not really sure where I want to go with this anymore – something nature-based but also inspired by romanticism? I think I’ll still have to noodle a bit more before coming to a final answer.