sideways

5ideways
Video Games
Upcoming Solo Album

About Pete

About two years ago, K. Sandra Fuhr, an author, illustrator, and friend, approached me. She had told me that she wanted to try out an idea: a graphic novel specifically created for the internet, which utilised the entire of the internet's capabilities as a medium: pictures, words, animation and sounds. "Would you like to write the soundtrack to my new project?" she asked. I was, needless to say, intrigued. I had written music for plays, scored the theme for a flash cartoon before, and had certainly written my own music, but never anything quite like this.

And so, I began work on writing the score to 5ideways.

It's difficult to explain, but there were snags that I had never expected to approach as a songwriter that happened when I started working on 5ideways. Only because it was the more simple approach, I would be writing all the words and music, playing, recording, and performing everything myself, but there were going to be six characters in the first year alone. Even though they now shared a universe, would a song for the supremely straight-laced brit Tom have the same feel as it would for Axolotl, the being with a thousand mouths, whose only clarity of motive is that he has an ulterior one? I was told the story and given the gist of how everybody would turn out, but ultimately, the best way to flesh out the song for a character or a situation is to actually see it in action, and so frequently I wouldn't have the finer points of a song finished until days, and sometimes hours, before the actual upload.

Needless to say, this means that I need to give a big thank-you to the folks who manage the website. My sense of guilt pings every time I keep everybody up until late in the night as I fiddle with volume levels.

Anyhow, around the first anniversary of the comic (we’re about to hit our third, if you’d believe it— I certainly can’t), I started bouncing around ideas for how we’d approach an actual release of the music that had been made for 5ideways, so far. By going to the website, you’re able to download everything which has been (and will be) written for the comic, and so I didn’t think it would be fair to ask someone to pay for something like that. So, the idea was settled upon that I would re-make or re-imagine the
songs that had already been made for the story, and would add some new songs that were relevant to the story throughout the album. And so, after a year of tweaking here and refashioning there, Songs from Sideways: Year 1 was born.

We’ve got some samples up. Enjoy; and if you like what you hear, I hope you'll consider buying the album.