Lumi (Piano)

Please feel free to download the sheet music PDF or to download the source file.

A piece of flow

The term Lumi means 'River' in Albanian and 'Worlds' in Romanian. Both describe well the feeling that guided the creation of the piece: Lumi aims to create a sense of gently riding the waves - high and low, positive and negative - as they come.

I have written this piece during a transitory phase of my life. One of the insights that drove my decisions in this time was that I did not find joy anymore from the 'journey' of how I spent an individual day. What remained was extrinsic motivation. I eventually decided to induce a change to create intrinsic joy in my day-to-day journey. This way of thinking has influenced my writing of Lumi.

A few words on the Main Theme

My process of writing Lumi started with its main theme:

It does set the tone for the piece right away and opens several sections of the song. Below a few of my thoughts that guided the writing:

Layered chords

The song heavily layers tones throughout each bar. In the main theme, the entire melody plays nicely with the underlying harmony and gradually builds complexity of the underlying chord. For example, in the first bar the melody's E and F# notes keep ringing and build a lush D9 chord overall.

Re-contextualized tones

Similarly, some melody notes ring through bars and - with that - through chords. This gives these notes an opportunity to take a different role musically in between bars. This makes transitioning between sections of the song fluid, as ending of one section "melts" into the beginning of the next. This smooth transition is cemented by a fitting rhythm:

Heavy use of off-beats

Most of the melodic action happens on off-beats. This contrasts nicely with the steady (on-beat) arpeggios in the accompaniment and removes the expectation of "landing" on a beat fast and feeds into the song's concept.

Make your own music

The sheet music is designed with minimal directions for the performer (dynamics/tempo/etc.). This is an intentional decision made to enable creative freedom in how to breath life into the piece when playing. Make it your own.

Fine Print

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

In short: You are free to use this for most purposes - including commercial. You must give appropriate credit.