​Dreamtime
As a longtime oneironaut, I've had many adventures while dreaming.  Dream plots fascinate me, especially how we casually accept the fantastic as perfectly normal while dreaming.

This song uses suspended chords to create a sense of mystery, and a tone cluster chord (consisting of 3 or more closely-spaced notes), rarely used, let alone in modern songs, to create a rich, dense major chord in the bridge.


Suddenly
Inspired  by a certain chordal convention in '70s pop songs (G, Em, D, C, D,) but with more open, suspended chording, this song is about how, unforeseen, life can change in an instant — one minute everything is going to hell, then the next minute, all's  going well — or vice-versa . . . 


A Little Dream of Blue
Long ago, I read an ancient Chinese poem which intrigued me with the line "waves roll blue" — planting the idea that created this work, a musical meditation on the color blue.

Beautiful dissonances intrigue me as they are rare, unique, complex, rich and lovely in their own way.  In this song, the dominant chord gets thicker and more dissonant as the song progresses, notching up the tension until the very dissonant penultimate chord, followed by a very open-voiced, resolving, expansive major sixth chord. ​ The rhythmic drive is provided by use of the Bo Diddley beat.


I Go On and Dream of You
The path of the  lover is one of, at times, intense emotion, to say the least — not for  the timid, and with many colorful characters along the way.

This song uses quartal chords for suspension, a dense cluster chord based on the pentatonic scale, and strident chords full of tension — in this  case the Holstian chords B/G, Db/G, and E/G — before resolving in a flurry of dreamy notes.


Mine
The love of one's life may not be at hand, but life gives enough love to sustain us, coming from many corners of one's life.

Drawing inspiration from modern jazz approaches in chording gives this song depth and color — suspensions, dissonant tensions, quartal chords, an 11th chord and more.


I Don't Know What It Is But I Love You
Life is what happens while you're making other plans, it's said, and life brings people close to us who are remarkably different than we are — ones who we would not choose of our own accord, initially, not seeming like a good fit, until life and the passing of time blooms some ineffable love that somehow makes it all work . . .


The Wheel of Life
In Buddhism, greed, hatred and delusion are known as the three fires or three poisons.

Inspired by late Romanticism, this work also uses reharmonization to make the choruses akin but slightly different:  The first chorus is in a minor key; the second chorus in a major key with mostly the same melody notes but with different underlying chords.

 
It's a Wonderful/Horrible Life
I adore the movie "It's a Wonderful Life" but one Christmastime, in a more rueful holiday moment, I expanded the phrase to acknowledge the actual dualistic aspect of life, and this song chronicles the plights and pleasures of life and the at-times risible human conditions we find ourselves in.

This song has even denser cluster chords, touches of beautiful dissonance, and plays with major 7ths and the Devil's interval (which is exactly half an octave or a flattened sixth).