Album Notes

Bio/Description:

Dan Brandt (alias Brandtoven) is a seventeen-year-old composer living in the middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania.
Brandtoven began composing when he was fifteen so he could have an excuse to abridge his chores. He began teaching himself aspects of music theory and aural skills; he has studied mostly the works of Sergey Rachmaninov, Edvard Grieg, Nobuo Uematsu, Richard Wagner, and Spike Jones.
During his spare time, Brandtoven enjoys chocolate milk, national football, and free speech. He resides in a hut in the burgeoning metropolis of Mercer, Pennsylvania (Population approx. 2000). He is in need of money for college, but he has successfully convinced his parents that college is both "educational and a great experience", so he may be in the clear.


For anyone musical and for those who really, really care:

“Brandtoven” music is inspired from many genres of music and his orchestral music does not fit into any specific category. Because he composes without a set format (for instance, ABAB), his music is unique to most classic music in that it can cover all ranges of dynamics and styles in one piece.
The music is written using a composition program on a computer—that is, every note is (painstakingly) clicked in and every dynamic is created individually. The music on the CD is composed of computerized sounds advanced at a studio for moderate realism.
Melodically, Brandtoven uses the “KISS” method: Keep it simple, stupid (special thanks to Tounch Ilkin). The complexity of the music can be found in the background of the music both rhythmically and in the instrumentation. For the most part, strings are vital to the music. Brass and woodwinds share the music with the strings; melodies are usually found on all three types of instruments throughout one piece. Usually, each passage has a leading “section” of the orchestra, and the other sections act as support—this is obvious in “The Thing in B Minor”. However, occasionally there are songs in which all the timbres in the background are balanced throughout most of the piece—this is eminent in “Snowy Let’s Goey.”