Thematic piano music by Andrew E. Hanson.

I plan to release my next CD in June, in time for the my Relay for Life team’s rummage sale, which is on June 8th and 9th at the Erskine Community Center. All proceeds from the sale of my CDs that day will go directly to Relay for Life. I plan to include the following songs:

1. The Man Who Lived
2. Depress the Darkness
3. The Ultimate Sacrifice
4. Death and Discovery
5. The Road to Damascus
6. When I Turned My Heart
7. Amber Waves of Grain
8. Thy Spirit Within Me

More information about these songs and this release to come soon. Please stay tuned. Thanks.

It has been four weeks since the CD release concert, and I haven’t really sold that many CDs. I have quite a few left over from the concert. Either I haven’t done a good job at promoting them (I’ve never really liked self-promotion), or I have put too high a price tag on them.

I have decided it’s probably a little bit of both.

As of today, I am lowering the physical CD price from $10 to $5, the download on BandCamp from $7 to $3, and the sheet music book from $5 to $2. I made a bunch of download cards, which I might just hand out for free at this point, because no one has bought any of those. I suppose it feels a little ridiculous to pay $7 for a 2″ by 3.5″ sheet of paper.

Please go to the Order page above, take a listen to the songs for free on BandCamp, then buy the songs for $3 if you like them! Same with the sheet music book: if you like the songs and want to play them yourself, go download the sheet music!

Thank you!

“The Road Goes Ever On” is a piano piece from the concept album “A Middle-Earth Journey”.

All images were taken by yours truly at Rydell National Wildlife Refuge near Erskine, MN.

In honor of the new CD coming out this week, I created a video using one of the songs from the CD (The Golden Leaves of Lorien) and screenshots from the video game Lord of the Rings Online. I didn’t capture the screenshots, so they belong to their respective owners. Please view below!

I have finally finished burning all the CDs, printing all the covers and stickers, and now I am finally ready for Tuesday. I have been ready for a while to announce the “digital versions”, but I wanted to wait until I was done making the physical products first. Now that I am done, those of you who will not be able to attend the release concert or do not live in the area can buy a CD too. Click on the “Order” menu button above, and from there you can buy and download the album from BandCamp.com or the sheet music from DigitalDeliveryApp.com. Thanks!

December 6th came and went, and still I wasn’t ready to release my CD. I had wanted at the time to release my new CDs during my students’ piano recital, but realized later that the recital should really be about my students, not about me. So, I put it off again. That, and I wasn’t really ready to release them anyway. I am nearly ready to release them now, but I am holding it off so that I can take my time during the production process. Here’s what I’ve done so far:

I have finished writing the story “A Hobbit’s Tale”, the story that I had planned to write to go with the CD as a part of this “concept album”, but I have since handed it over to a friend of mine who has in fact written a book before (though I have not) to proofread for me. I am meeting with her on Monday to discuss details. I have finished creating the covers, the “insert”, and the CD stickers–what’s left now is to print them. I have recorded all the songs, and what is left now is to burn them on a CD, but I am waiting with that, because I want to make it an “enhanced CD”, in that it will include an eBook of the story on the CD that you can side-load into your Nook or Kindle from your computer. I am also printing copies of the sheet music for all the songs and binding them together.

A piano student of mine, Aaron, has also been working on a CD of Christmas music–Winter Wonderland as well as a few traditional carols–so we have decided to go together in a CD Release Concert at a local church. Here are the details for that concert:

Who: Andrew Hanson and Aaron Weik
What: A CD Release Concert/Promotion
Where: Grace Lutheran Church in Erskine
When: Tuesday, Dec. 20, 2011 at 5:00 p.m.
Why: Andrew and Aaron have been working on CDs and are ready to release them. If you are interested, come and hear us play the piano pieces from our CDs live, and purchase one after the concert. Admission is free, but a free-will offering for the Relay for Life will be taken. (If you are not able to be there, I also plan to video record it and post it on YouTube.)

I wanted to send a short message to say that, while I’ve been working very hard on my project over this Thanksgiving weekend, I won’t be ready for Monday, November 28th, as I had previously hoped. While the music is recorded, the story that I am writing to go along with the CD is not quite completed. The story much longer than I meant it to be, but then, the music is much shorter than I meant it to be. While the music is only 14 minutes (spread over 8 tracks), the story is, so far, just over 12 pages long (just over 6000 words). Besides that, I had to move my students’ piano recital from November 28th to December 6th, because I didn’t think I would have enough practice time with them to get them ready. Therefore, I have decided to move my CD release to that same date: December 6th. By that time, I should have my story ready, plus the physical CDs ready.

Those physical CDs wouldn’t sell very well if I didn’t have a semi-professional cover to go with them. Neither would MP3s, for that matter. I began working on a couple possible covers a few weeks ago, and I posted one of those possibilities on the Music page (above) at that time. This weekend, I took suggestions from friends, and edited it to a point where most of them, and I, seem to like it. What I believe to be the final cover is posted on the Order page now.

I want to apologize for the delay, but it can’t be helped. There’s just too much on my plate at the moment. I hope to find more time during the upcoming week to release this project on Tuesday, December 6th, so I don’t have to postpone yet another time.

I admit it has been a while since I have written here. Obviously, my work as an English and piano teacher must come first, so this music composition hobby has been set aside for several months. However, I have set for myself a deadline–a release date–for my current project, which will force me to take this project off the back burner and into the forefront for a while until I am finished. This past weekend, I was blasted with a jolt of motivation and inspiration to write some new music (for a future release) as well as notate some older music that I previously had recorded. I hope that motivation continues to come my way until my first project is complete.

On November 28th, I will be releasing a CD comprised of eight piano pieces that I have written. Some I have written recently, others I wrote way back in high school. Many of those earlier songs have changed names; the current track names now all share a common theme, that of Middle-Earth. Below, you will find a list of those track names.

1. As the Sun Rises on Hobbiton
2. A Party at the Green Dragon
3. The Road Goes Ever On
4. Taking a Rest at Rivendell
5. The Golden Leaves of Lorien
6. Crossing the Plains of Rohan
7. Coronation at Minas Tirith
8. On the Shores of the Sea

On the release date, I will also post an explanation of these songs in the form of a story. In addition to the eight pieces, which will be available for download from this website, I will be making physical CDs available for sale, some of which I can also sign and ship to you. These CDs will not be bland or black-and-white. Instead, they will come complete with a CD cover and sticker to make it look more professional. I actually snapped the pictures to be used on the cover and CD stickers myself. These pictures I have posted on the new page above, PHOTOS.

One more thing: not only will I release the eight pieces, a story-explanation, and a physical CD, but I will also release the sheet music for the songs, available for download via PDF, some of which I can also sign and ship to you.

Much of these items I do plan to give to some friends and family members as Christmas gifts. However, don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to appear self-promoting concerning my music. Writing music is one thing that I truly love to do, but I don’t always have the time for it. Often, I have to make time for it, so when I say that these things are going to be available for download or a physical product, I do intend to put a price to them, but just enough to cover the expenses of the physical paper, CDs, shipping, this website, as well as my time. It certainly won’t be an extravagant amount. Thank you for your understanding.

This website will be moving to its own domain very soon: aehansonmusic.com. It’s not there yet, but please, in the meantime, update your bookmarks. There is also a new Twitter account: @aehansonmusic, to go with the MySpace account, /aehansonmusic, as well as the PureVolume account, /aehansonmusic. There’s nothing to see at any of these links yet, but you’re welcome to bookmark or follow them and check back later!

No, no, I am not going to make this CD into a combination of Lord of the Rings-themed piano music AND a celebration of the birth of Christ. I simply wanted to clear up some confusion about the release of my “A Middle-Earth Journey” CD of piano-only music. I had hoped to finish it in time for the Relay for Life rummage sale on June 18th. Since June has been a very busy month for me, it didn’t happen. July looks like it might be even busier, so it’s unlikely that I’ll finish then either. Actually, while I plan to work on it some during the month of August, when I will have more time, I don’t plan to release it until December. I don’t want to rush this process; I want to do everything right. Last year, I made a CD entirely for charity, one that I brought to the Relay for Life rummage sale. It was a basic burned disc, with a black-and-white paper insert with the list of songs, all of which were terribly poor recordings, all wrapped in a flimsy paper case. This time, I plan to hire an artist to create the cover for the CD insert, plus the artwork for the CD sticker. I plan to write about each song in an almost storybook fashion for the insert, rather than just printing a list of the songs. I plan to notate each song, and release that too, so that my piano students, plus others who play piano, can play the songs if they want. I am actually done with the notations, but I don’t plan to release them until after the CD release, and then only after I have thoroughly checked each song over to make sure I didn’t make any mistakes. It will be released in time for Christmas. If time is on my side, it may even be in time for Thanksgiving. I’m very excited about this project, but right now, more time must be devoted to this project: my main website, FictionRow.com. That’s where most of my time will go during July, and perhaps some during August. Check out that website for news and reviews about products from the fantasy genre!