Music and fantasy: the Swamp Monster

Part of what I want to achieve with my music is transporting people to a fantasy setting. In my series of forest songs I introduce you to an enchanted forest with magical deers, sleeping and dreaming animals, and mysterious glades.

Recently I have been working on a song about a swamp monster who lives alone in the bogland. He is playing music with sticks, humming and singing to himself. I rarely use my voice in my songs, but for this one I am planning to create a set of vocalizations I can use, for painting the exact picture of the swamp monster that I have in mind.

It intrigues me how music has the power to evoke elaborate pictures like this. I think about this a lot, about all the things necessary to convey an idea with music. I love using ambient sounds like bird sounds, the sound of the rain, fitting pictures and clips in the video. But the key is the melody itself, and it is a bit like magic. Music tells a story, much like spoken word. I wonder if this is deeply human, or if some other type of intelligent life form would also understand our musical tales.

I made a lot of pictures about the swamp monster, and I already picked one for the cover, but I want to show you another one from Stable Diffusion. It’s not perfect, and has all the glitches of a bad AI picture, but I kind of like it.