NEW ALBUM: Eight Evolutions

Eight Evolutions Cover Art

The album is out! You can pick your preferred method of streaming here. (The best way to support me is by purchasing the album via Bandcamp — plus you get the full piano score for free!)

Eight Evolutions is a concept piano album inspired by the Pokémon Eevee and its 8 evolutions. I composed this set of 9 piano miniatures between November 2018 and May 2019, and performed and recorded them on my piano at home through June & July.

I wanted each track in this album to evoke a unique mood, but also be tied together by a common thread, in the same way that each “Eeveelution” is unique yet all evolve from the same Pokémon.

 

Unique Moods

For each track, I took into account the Eeveelution’s Pokémon Type, as well as the habitat that Eeveelution might inhabit (or a natural phenomenon that might be associated with that Eeveelution). For the real Pokémon nerds out there, I also took into account each Eeveelution’s Base Stats, sometimes assigning each stat to some parameter of music—for example, a high Attack stat might equate to a louder piece.

This is the track listing for the album, with the subtitle of each track in parentheses referring to the imagined habitat or natural phenomenon for each Eeveelution (it also helps give folks who are not familiar with Pokémon some reference):

  1. Eevee (Beginnings)
  2. Vaporeon (A Clear Lake)
  3. Jolteon (A Capricious Squall)
  4. Flareon (Volcanic Fields)
  5. Espeon (A Desert Mirage)
  6. Umbreon (A Lagoon Bathed in Moonlight)
  7. Leafeon (Wind in the Forest)
  8. Glaceon (A Cavern of Ice)
  9. Sylveon (A Shooting Star)

(Does the album art make more sense now?)

 

The Common Thread

The shared core that unifies the album is the “Eevee Motif.”

By some luck, the name “Eevee” translates itself pretty nicely to musical notes. “E” is a note, so with just that, we already have 4 of the 5 notes in our motif: E-E-__-E-E

But what to do with the letter V? If you’re familiar with music theory at all, you might have some idea already—while V doesn’t refer to any specific note, the use of Roman numerals in harmonic notation is very common in music (you may have heard of something called a “II-V-I” progression in jazz). If we assume a key of E Major (which is the key of the first track, Eevee), the “V” refers to a B Major chord, because B is the 5th scale degree in an E Major scale. Thus, we can use this to finalize our “Eevee” motif to be the notes: E-E-B-E-E !

While the notes are set in stone, there are many ways to play this motif, simply by shifting the notes up or down octaves. This is how the motif first appears, in the track Eevee (Beginnings):

Here are other treatments of it in some later tracks:

 

While the motif is super obvious in the first track, some later tracks have it quite hidden, and it can be a fun exercise to try and listen for them. My YouTube channel will have all of the tracks accompanied by the score if you want some visual aid as well 🙂

 

Closing Thoughts

I’m super excited to share this album with you all. When I started out making music and released my first EP (under the name Doopliss) in 2013, I remember having a hard time promoting my work because I didn’t feel fully confident in the quality of my work. No matter what happens with Eight Evolutions, I consider it a success because I love the music and believe in it with all my heart. I just hope you all enjoy it as much as I do!