Reiki Chant Themes

Today I thought I’d share what I’m up to on my latest recording project.

I have been commissioned to write an album of original music involving setting Reiki chants to music. The music will be used by a Reiki practitioner to play for clients during treatments and to sell as a product.

I chatted with the client on the phone on a Thursday afternoon to determine what her needs were for the project.

There were four short chants to be set to music. Five tracks were needed, four for each chant, and a finale track where all the chants were sung sequentially and repeated 108 times. Each track would be approximately 12 minutes in length, adding up to an hour of music.

I decided that since all the chants would be combined in the finale, I would start by composing a melody based on all the chants as would be presented in the finale.

After I finished talking to the client over the phone, within ten minutes or so I worked out a melody and arranged it for piano. It sounded something like this:

Main Theme excerpt (piano):

I called the client back and played the theme. She seemed quite thrilled with the result.

For the next hour I worked out melodies for the four individual chants by taking melody fragments from the main theme, or just something that was similar in mood (I was not totally strict in this process of deriving melodies from the main theme).

I called back several times during the hour and played piano arrangements of each theme. Again she was extremely pleased. These are excerts from the first and fourth themes respectively:

Cho Ku Rei theme excerpt (piano):

Dai Ko Myo theme excerpt (piano):

I’m currently in the process of drafting piano arrangements for each track. I’ve done an initial draft of about 12 minutes for each song. Once i finalize the piano arrangement, I’ll begin adding other instruments, and once the final instrumentation version, I’ll add the vocals.

My process of making music is usually quite systematic since I like to always be certain of what the next step in the process will be, and to be as efficient as possible in a field where the final results are always unknown. I thought it might be interesting to share how making music can work when producing a project for a client.

Until next time,
Bryne