This is the background score I composed to Hikarian's animation "Little Merry Ego" which was an entry in the NATA 2013 final round.

First off I'd like to say that it really is an honor to OFFICIALLY be part of the NATA Contest and in the final round! I have been working with Hikarian for a while now and I feel that we do some really great work together! Anyways, when it came down to this piece I pretty much worked on it last minute and it seemed quite a challenge when Hikarian presented the animation to me so I could then score it. The hardest part was that it was requested to be piano only. All in all, I gave it some thought and applied a lot of orchestration technique to make it seem like a bigger score than it is since it's only for piano. There are many elements of minimalism that I feel best fit Hikarian's style. Some shifts in tonal centricity help to complement the shift in events, mood, and expressions as seen in the animation. Other compositional techniques in regard to harmony are relatively simple only really using modal and octatonic chord scales. Rhythms were a bit tricky, but that's what you commonly find in film scores as the music needs to change and adapt to the timing of the picture.

Because this was a pretty big contest I decided to notate and score the piece with my spotting notes for those who are interested in looking at the score. You can download it here:
tinyurl.com/k8fgjsu

Find the animation here:

Again, it was really great to work with Hikarian and to officially be part of the NATA contest.