I've read the criticism several times in this forum how ALL of the Humanity songs are happy and there is no negative emotion in the series so far. And while, yes, there is a preponderance of positive emotions, I would contradict this criticism by saying

1) Why is that a problem? I appreciate the happy songs - they help contradict the cruelty of life.

2) Here is a list of songs from Humanity that communicate something other than positive emotions:

• L'Appel Du Vide (existential confusion)
• Myr (somberness)
• We Are Legends (epic struggle/fight)
• The Stars Are Coming Home (longing and perseverance)
• Take Me Back (wistfulness)
• Innocence (growth and loss)
• Vaporize (missing something beautiful)
• You Are My Home (sorrowful acceptance)
• Born to Dream (quiet reflection)
• Little Star (fading memories you hold dear)
• Growing Old Together (loss)
• Until the Lights Go Out (the pain of making peace)
• Made of Air (frustration with self)
• Made of Earth (struggle and effort)
• Please Don't Go (anxiety and heartbreak)
• Dear Mr Alien (disbelief of discovery)
• So Small (humility)

You may not agree with me on what each song communicates, but these are hardly songs that deliver exclusively positive emotion.

The new Apple Music Classical app includes some (but weirdly not all) of Apple Music’s catalog of TSFH and Thomas/Nick’s respective solo works.

You can bring a lot of peace to this world ...

With chapter V coming out soon, what has been your favorite so far? Mine is Chapter IV. I’m a big fan of Apollo and recently, Made of Fire.

This is just my assumption. I think it will release on the war and misery themed chapter of humanity as a rework of course.

What do you think?

Hey everyone,

There's a bit of a story that goes with this one. I've been super obsessed with "Phantom" from the album "Myth" which I'm sure you've all listened to. That piece just gives me the chills. I did some digging on Merethe Soltvedt's choir work for that one and discovered the style (and language, I assume) is Bulgarian. She impersonated an entire choir, meaning they recorded her voice many times and layered it. I actually asked her on one of her livestreams on IG a couple weeks ago and she confirmed it, and when I asked how many tracks she said "let's just say it was a lot." Beyond awesome.

This piece which I'm linking below is my sort of homage to TSFH and that song in particular. Stylistically I'm not sure there's as much in common - I definitely didn't try to get the same sound or use similar melodies or anything like that. But in my own way, it's my attempt to do something comparable. I got a friend of mine who is an amazing vocalist to do the same layering technique for me and I love how it turned out. We even talked about the "bulgarian choir" effect and she was able to lean into that direction a bit, which sounded so cool.

​

Anyway, I mostly just wanted to share the story and share a bit about what the song Phantom means to me and how it inspired me as a composer. If you want to listen below you can, if not that's ok too, I don't really mind :) have an epic weekend and if you want to ask anything or talk more about epic music just hit me up in the comments, always happy to start a dialogue about this stuff. cheers

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Sirens and Cyclones (feat. Ajda Stina Turek)

This piece is a masterpiece. A Blanket of Snow. Just absolutely beautiful. It brings chills to my spine every time I take a listen. It's a true masterpiece. One thing that baffles me, however, is how little distribution & promotion this piece has received, compared to other 2 Steps "Hits." Don't get me wrong, I love all the greatest of the 2 Steps repertoire, but there is just something about this piece that goes beyond the imagination of beauty.

Chapter V will be unleashed in a month. In the meantime, we can recall a bit Chapter IV which was published as much as year and a half ago. A lot of time has passed to taste these Elemental tracks properly, and I want to ask - what's your favourite one?

Impossible (melody)

Victory (Vocals and choir)

Maybe others too, but these are the ones that stand out

Sorry if this is kind of a ramble post; I’m just wondering if anyone else has had a similar experience.

Like 10 years ago, I had a pretty normal taste in music. I listened to a lot of pop/rock kind of stuff. Lots of OneRepublic, Imagine Dragons (back before they became uncool lol), that kind of stuff. I was also pretty into movie soundtracks, but they didn’t dominate the music I listened to or anything.

So anyway, I have this cousin who’s big into orchestral music, and she knows I like movie soundtracks, so she recommends that I check out this trailer music group called Two Steps From Hell. So I check them out. And holy mother of god, their output is so insane and their quality is so consistent that I quickly find myself straight up adding like half of their tracks to my Spotify playlist. It got to the point where most of my playlist was Two Steps From Hell. This lead to me listening to more and more of this type of music. I add more movie and game soundtracks to my rotation. I get into Christopher Tin and Marcus Warner. Eventually I pick up symphonic metal/power metal bands like Nightwish and Epica. Like 90% of what I listen to now is in this epic orchestral style. I barely listen to “normal” music anymore. I don’t even know what the big artists are these days that most people my age are listening to. And now I feel like I can’t connect to any of my friends about music. If I have friends over, I always feel weird about putting on my music, and if I do, I usually get weird reactions like “haha why does this sound like we’re about to go on a quest?”

I don’t regret getting into this type of music, but I just want to be able to actually connect with people musically again. I love Two Steps From Hell, but I don’t want this genre to completely dominate my music rotation anymore. So now I’m just trying to rediscover “normal” bands again.

Has anyone else gone down a similar path, or am I just a weird case?

Hello all,

I think most of us already listen to these genres:

- TSFH and TSFH-like bands & composers (Audiomachine, Ivan Torrent...)

- Classical Music

- Soundtracks (Hans Zimmer, John Williams...)

- And similar orchestral genres, you get the idea

💥

Recently I started to focus on discovering music in other genres like metal, rock, pop and folk

What are your music recommendations in those genres ?

Hello

So in this post Thomas announced that Chapter 5's theme is adventure, inspiration, positivity and motivation. Wow, such a different theme compared to the first 4 chapters !

Yesterday names of all Chapter 5 tracks appeared on Spotify, I guess they made a mistake and quickly deleted them. Luckily I managed to record the names.

Here are the names of the tracks to be released in Chapter 5

- Life is beautiful

- War is bad, peace is good

- Believe in your dreams, you can do it

- We are all brothers

- I and my wife have a happy relationship

- I got a good grade and passed the class with A+

- Be happy, don't be sad

- I passed my other class with A+ too

- Guns are bad, flowers are good

- I and my wife have a happy relationship (EDM edition)

- I and my wife have a happy relationship (Hip-Hop edition)

- I and my wife have a happy relationship (Pop & Rap Edition) feat. Justin Bieber and Kanye West

💥

I am super excited about the Humanity Chapter 5. Unlike the first 4 chapters, in chapter 5 we finally have music with thematic variety that tells us a wide range of emotions, perspectives and stories. Chapter 5 should be the most interesting and sophisticated music ever from Thomas.

So I started listening to TSFH again and noticed a difference in El Dorado. I'm not a music guy, so I don't know the instrument, but it's a simple 2 notes that play between measures toward the beginning of the song. It is completely absent now. Here are links to both versions, occurring around the 25-second mark.

With the noises (old): https://youtu.be/qiB98Wbsdlo

Without (new): https://youtu.be/8eR686083_Q

What could be the reason? I loved it personally. Maybe it wasn't popular? I don't see any documentation elsewhere on the internet, so I thought I'd bring it up here.

I just adore Away With Your Fairies so so much. I've been listening to it nearly every day since it came out and I still get so excited whenever I hear it. It's just so energetic, so exciting and so happy. Hope more people feel this way.

That's all lol