Candles (Aural Realms Version): A Song That Has Grown With Us
Some songs are written, recorded, and eventually left behind.
Others seem to follow you.
“Candles” has been following me for more than twenty years.
Lately, I’ve been wanting to find the time to simply sit down and listen to it again—not while working on something else, not while checking a mix, and not as background music.
Just listen.
So, in the early hours of this morning, when everything was quiet, I finally did.
I put on “Candles (Aural Realms Version)”, let the entire piece unfold, and spent some time reflecting on where it came from, how much it has changed, and just how long this particular piece of music has been part of my life.
Because its story didn’t begin with the Aural Realms version.
It began more than two decades ago with my daughter.
Her Words, Through My Ears
The beginning of “Candles” goes back to 2001, when my oldest daughter was in high school and wrote a poem called Candles.
It was her work—her words, her emotions, and her expression of a personal journey.
Not long after she wrote it, I began doing what I naturally do.
I heard music in it.
That became the first musical version of “Candles.”
There is an important distinction in that story, though.
The music I created was never necessarily the music she heard in her own head when she wrote the poem.
It was my interpretation of her words.
I responded to them through the musical language I understood at the time: the sounds I loved, the abilities I had, and the way I personally translated emotion into music.
That has always been part of what makes “Candles” special to me.
Her poem provided the words and emotional foundation, but the music became something filtered through my own perspective.
Over the years, she has come to appreciate that distinction as well. What I created may not have been what she originally imagined accompanying her words, but she has come to appreciate the particular musical talents and sensibilities I brought to them.
For a father, that means more than I can easily put into words.
It Never Really Became Finished
That first musical interpretation came relatively soon after she wrote the poem.
But it wasn’t the last.
I have created several versions of “Candles” over the years, and the piece has continued to morph along with me.
My equipment changed.
My influences changed.
My understanding of composition, arrangement, atmosphere, and production changed.
And naturally, I changed too.
Each time I returned to “Candles,” I was approaching the same words from a slightly different place.
Certain musical ideas remained. Others evolved. New textures appeared. Things that once felt central became less important, while other elements began to reveal themselves.
Looking back, I don’t think “Candles” has ever really been a fixed composition.
It has grown with me.
And listening to it again this morning made that especially apparent.
I wasn’t only hearing the piece that exists today.
In a strange way, I was also hearing all of the years behind it.
Two Creative Voices Across Time
What fascinates me about the piece today is that it represents two distinct creative voices.
She wrote the words.
I heard music around them.
We didn’t necessarily hear the same thing.
And we didn’t need to.
Her poem came from her experience and her perspective. My music was a response to what those words stirred in me.
That difference has always been part of “Candles.”
Over time, however, something else happened: she came to appreciate what I brought to it as a musician.
There is something particularly meaningful in that for me.
It isn’t simply that my daughter once wrote a poem and I turned it into a song.
Her creative voice gave me something that inspired my own.
And through several versions spanning more than twenty years, those two voices have continued to coexist within the same piece.
The Aural Realms Version
Now there is another chapter.
“Candles (Aural Realms Version)” isn’t intended to replace the versions that came before it.
It is simply where I hear “Candles” today.
With this version, the composition has expanded into a nearly twenty-minute ambient journey, giving me the space to explore slowly evolving textures, atmosphere, reflection, and emotion in ways that weren’t possible—or perhaps weren’t yet part of my musical vocabulary—when I first approached the piece.
That is very much at the heart of what I want Aural Realms to be.
It is a place where I can return to earlier compositions and hear them through the musician I have become, while also creating entirely new works built around atmosphere, immersion, and storytelling without words.
More than two decades separate my original interpretation of “Candles” from this one.
I have different tools now.
Different experience.
Different influences.
And a much deeper understanding of the kind of music I want to create.
So naturally, “Candles” has changed with me.
But the most important thing hasn’t changed.
Underneath everything I’ve added, removed, rearranged, or reimagined remains the same spark that started it all:
My daughter’s words.
Taking the Time to Listen
There was something important about listening to the piece again this morning without trying to accomplish anything else.
As musicians, I think we sometimes spend so much time making music that we forget to simply experience the things we’ve already made.
There is always another mix.
Another track.
Another project.
Another idea waiting for attention.
But occasionally, I think we need to go back and listen—not to critique, not to determine what we would change, and not because we’re preparing it for another release.
Just to hear it.
Sitting in the quiet of the early morning and letting “Candles” play from beginning to end gave me a chance to do that.
And instead of thinking primarily about production or arrangement, I found myself thinking about my daughter.
About a poem she wrote in high school.
About the first time I tried to put music around those words.
About all the different versions that followed.
And about how neither of us could possibly have known then that, more than twenty years later, I would still be returning to them.
Listen to Candles (Aural Realms Version)
If you listen to “Candles (Aural Realms Version)”, I would encourage you to approach it the same way.
Find a little time when you don’t need to be somewhere else.
Put on a pair of headphones if you can.
Give yourself permission to sit for a while and let the piece unfold.
This isn’t really music designed to rush toward a destination.
It’s meant to take its time.
Watch and listen on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCB508WpOdw
Featured by New Age Music Guide
Candles (Aural Realms Version) was also featured by New Age Music Guide, which explored the history behind the composition and its transformation into a nearly twenty-minute ambient experience.
The feature also marks Candles as the beginning of my Aural Realms series—a space for reinterpretations of earlier works alongside entirely new ambient compositions.
Read the New Age Music Guide feature:
https://newagemusic.guide/new-releases/keith-richie-candles-aural-realms-version/
Something That Grew With Us
Perhaps that’s why I continue returning to “Candles.”
It carries history.
Not simply musical history, but personal history.
When I listen to its different incarnations, I can hear different periods of my own development as a musician.
At the center of every one of them, however, is something my daughter created when she was young.
Her words remained while the music surrounding them continued to evolve.
And somewhere along that journey, she came to appreciate the musical world I had built around those words—even though it wasn’t necessarily the world she originally heard when she wrote them.
I think there is something beautiful about that.
Two people can experience the same words differently.
Two creative voices don’t have to hear exactly the same thing to complement one another.
Sometimes one person’s creation gives another person something entirely different to hear.
And sometimes, more than twenty years later, you can sit alone in the quiet hours of the morning, listen again, and realize just how much of your lives has traveled alongside it.
“Candles (Aural Realms Version)” is the latest chapter in that conversation.