Creating Elemental Codes: The Meaning Behind Water, Air, Fire and Earth
Updated: Oct 5
Elemental Codes began with one song.
I wasn’t sitting down with a plan to create a four-song concept EP when I wrote Water Codes. At that point, I was simply writing from what I was living through.
Water had become an important part of my own healing. I was spending time at the ocean, seeking nature, learning to play my RAV Vast drum, and allowing music to become another way of processing what I was experiencing.
Then Water Codes came through.
It was the first song I ever fully completed where I wrote both the words and music myself, and once it was finished, something opened.
It felt like a floodgate of ideas.
Suddenly I wasn’t thinking about only water anymore. I was thinking about Air, Fire and Earth.
And before I knew it, one song had begun growing into a four-song concept EP.
Why "Codes"?
Around that time, I had been learning about ideas such as genetic codes and light codes.
When I wrote the first song, the name Water Codes seemed to arrive intuitively. I don't remember having to struggle to find it. It simply felt right.
Once I decided to continue exploring the other elements, I knew I wanted the titles to remain connected:
Water Codes.
Air Codes.
Fire Codes.
Earth Codes.
Then came the larger question: what was the whole collection called?
I knew it would be something Codes because I wanted the songs to feel like parts of the same system—different expressions of a larger idea.
Eventually, Elemental Codes became the name.
And the more the project developed, the more appropriate it felt.
These weren't simply songs named after elements.
Each element had its own emotional meaning, sound, color, symbolism and story.
Building a World Around Four Elements
Once I knew I was creating music around all four elements, I approached the writing almost like I was building four separate worlds.
I had a giant sheet of paper for each element.
I wrote down properties, meanings, colors, phrases, associations and anything that interested me about Water, Air, Fire and Earth. Then I began circling ideas, scribbling lyric phrases and thinking about what I personally wanted each song to express.
Nature had always been important to me, so the elemental theme didn't feel artificial.
Even as a child, I noticed things like wind differently.
I remember writing a little poem in about fourth grade:
“The wind is blowing in my face,
it swirls and twirls with beautiful grace,
it touches my cheeks and swings my hair,
it blows about without a care.”
That connection never really left me.
Throughout my life, I've felt recharged by wind, storms, sunrise and sunset, stargazing, gardening, floating in water, sitting in forests and being near a campfire.
Nature has always been one of the places where I restore myself.
It makes me feel energy and power, but it also creates a deep sense of gratitude for the world around me.
Looking back, Elemental Codes gave me a way to translate that relationship into music.
Water Codes: Release and Healing
Water came first.
Water Codes emerged during a difficult emotional period and became a song about pain, release, faith, healing and transformation.
I wrote the earliest ideas while spending time near water and then began singing the lyrics over my RAV Vast drum at home.
The song came very quickly.
It was almost as if some higher part of myself—or a muse—had opened a door and said, Here. Start here.
Musically, I wanted water to exist inside the production itself.
The layered vocal harmonies and wordless “oohs” were created to move almost like waves. The RAV Vast gave the track a resonant, fluid foundation, while guitars, drums, strings and layers of vocals helped create the ethereal atmosphere.
Water became release.
The beginning of healing.
And the beginning of the entire project.
Air Codes: Rising Into Something Lighter
Air Codes felt like the next stage of that journey.
I began it at home much like Water Codes, working with the RAV Vast, lyrics and melody before bringing what I had into the recording studio.
By then, though, I wanted the energy to change.
Water had carried a lot of emotional weight.
Air needed to feel lighter.
I wanted it to move.
I wanted more tempo, more rhythm and more celebration while still keeping the dreamy quality that connected it to the rest of my music.
I was taking ballroom dancing lessons at the time, and I remember imagining how wonderful it would be to eventually create a music video where I could actually dance to the song.
That desire for movement influenced the way I heard it.
When I brought the song into Cove City Sound Studios, I worked with my producer, Brendan Keenan, and we collaborated to finish it.
I loved that Brendan added beatboxing, and we worked together on shaping the rhythm and drum beat.
I also added kalimba because I loved its unusual, magical sound. The arrangement also included my RAV Vast, acoustic and electric guitar by David Connolly, and Wurlitzer and synth by Brendan Keenan, which together helped give Air Codes its own character.
As I usually do in the studio, I began with the main vocal and then built harmonies around it before continuing to layer instrumentation.
I wanted everything to feel as though it could move.
To breathe,
To flow.
Air Codes became a song about perspective, freedom, self-worth and finding strength again.
If Water was release, Air was rising.
Fire Codes: Passion, Love and the Dragon
Fire Codes came from a very different place.
This song was connected to dreams and imagery I had been experiencing involving a dragon—a powerful protector who appeared within this larger inner world I was beginning to see.
The song was about love.
But not only romantic love.
It was about self-love, divine love, passion, protection, intimacy and the extraordinary energy that can be created through a deeply meaningful connection.
The recording process reflected that.
For Fire Codes, I went into the studio and recorded all of the vocal parts initially to a click track.
Then Brendan and I built the musical world around those vocals.
I knew exactly what kind of emotional journey I wanted.
The beginning needed to feel softer and magical—almost like discovering something extraordinary and responding with gratitude.
Then I wanted the music to become increasingly powerful.
Sexy.
Dramatic.
Raw.
I wanted an edgy, alternative, slightly grungy guitar sound. And I wanted the rhythm to have a provocative physical quality—almost like the movement and intensity of two people making love.
By the end, the vocals open up completely.
I belt them.
To me, that ending feels like a climax—the point where passion becomes something larger than either person individually.
Discovery becomes desire.
Desire becomes union.
And union becomes power.
Fire became transformation through love and passion.
Earth Codes: Coming Home
Earth Codes developed while I was also working on Air and Fire.
My longtime friend and musical collaborator David Connolly kept playing me a guitar progression that caught my attention.
Finally I told him, essentially, Record that so I can work on it.
He sent me a video of himself playing it, and I began developing lyrics and melody over his progression.
Dave and I have performed together for decades in different bands, and he is also one of my best friends.
So getting to create original music together was incredibly meaningful to me.
When we eventually brought the song into the studio, Dave recorded acoustic guitar and mandolin, and we continued building from there.
At one point I remember saying that the song needed a climactic solo section, so Dave recorded a guitar solo.
Later, I was playing flute and adding sounds when Dave suddenly said something like:
“Why don't you record a flute solo?”
So I did.
I improvised it right there.
I recorded the flute solo in two takes.
Then Dave listened and said he thought the flute fit the song better.
And that's how the flute solo in Earth Codes came to be.
I remember the feeling of that day very clearly.
We were high on life and music.
There is something very special about being in a studio with people you trust, creating something that didn't exist before you walked into the room.
My good friend Peter Pizzo Jr. also became part of the song. He had a recording studio set up in his garage, so I sent him Earth Codes and asked if he could record a natural drum kit for it. He emailed the tracks back to me, and we used a combination of samples created from his drum sounds along with some of the beats he played live.
I also invited my husband, Guy Brogna, into the studio to play bass on Earth Codes. Guy is the bass player from Scatterbrain and Ludichrist, so I knew he could bring his own instinct and experience to the track. I had a very specific bass sound in my head, but I wanted to hear what he would naturally come up with first, so I let him play a take his way. After that, I sang the bass line I was hearing for certain sections, and together we shaped the part into what I had imagined for the song.
Earth Codes also carried another influence from my life at the time: Taiko drumming.
I had been taking Taiko drum lessons, and I wanted that huge, physical drum energy represented in the song.
To me, those drums became almost like the heartbeat of the Earth.
The heartbeat of life.
And the culmination of the journey.
Release. Rise. Transform. Ground.
Looking back now, the four songs form an emotional progression that I don't think I completely understood while I was creating them.
Water releases.
Air rises.
Fire transforms.
Earth grounds.
Water was about letting pain move through me.
Air was about becoming lighter, finding perspective and rediscovering strength.
Fire was about reopening to passion, love and creative power.
And Earth brought everything back into the physical world—to the body, nature, gratitude and the ground beneath our feet.
Earth Codes became my thank-you to Mother Earth.
But it also became something else.
I wanted it to feel like an anthem for people trying to bring something good into this world.
The light workers.
The helpers.
The creators.
The people choosing kindness, courage and love even when darkness is present.
In my mind, it became a kind of anthem for the good guys.
A reminder that you're not alone.
Dreams Becoming Music
Dreams and visual imagery were becoming increasingly important to my creative process during this project.
With Air Codes, I kept imagining an ethereal, almost elf-like feminine figure high on a mountain overlooking the ocean.
She felt powerful.
She could harness the wind.
She could use air almost as a cleansing force.
Eventually, I began to think of her as another aspect of myself—perhaps a higher-dimensional or symbolic version of me.
Her growing power mirrored something happening inside me.
Then came the dragon imagery surrounding Fire Codes.
I imagined traveling across dimensions and through the universe with a powerful dragon protector.
There were images of flying, battles, protection, alternate worlds and profound love.
Years later, many of those ideas would continue developing into the larger creative universe that eventually became my fantasy series Tabytha Polaris Of Ocram.
But at the time, I wasn't sitting down and consciously saying, I'm going to build a fantasy universe.
I was following what I was seeing.
The songs came first.
Then the imagery.
Then characters.
Then worlds.
Creating the Elemental Codes EP
I knew fairly early that these songs belonged together.
I wasn't thinking of them as four unrelated singles.
I knew I was writing four songs around the four elements, and they felt like one package.
Eventually I researched how music releases were categorized and realized that four songs could be released as an EP—a short album.
That gave a practical name to what I had already been building creatively.
Elemental Codes.
Four songs.
Four elements.
Four distinct emotional and visual worlds.
But one journey.
The Hardest Part: Knowing When to Stop
Writing and recording the songs was only part of the process.
Then came mixing.
And mixing nearly drove me crazy.
I knew exactly how I wanted things to sound.
The problem was that the song would sound one way through the studio monitors, another way in the car, another way through a laptop and another way through a phone.
So I would change something.
Raise the bass slightly.
Lower a guitar.
Adjust a vocal.
And suddenly that one small change affected the way I perceived everything else.
Then I'd listen somewhere else and question it all again.
It became agonizing.
Eventually, I had to make a decision that I think every artist faces at some point:
Is it more important to keep chasing perfect—or to allow the work to be finished?
I finally decided that I would rather release music that sounded good and actually let it live in the world than delay it indefinitely because I was still wondering whether the bass should move one more level.
There comes a point when you have to trust the work.
When It Finally Felt Real
Something shifted when the EP went into mastering.
That was when I started thinking:
I did it.
I had actually completed my own original music.
I had written songs.
I had collaborated with people I loved and respected.
I had recorded them in a beautiful studio environment that felt safe, supportive and loving—something I deeply valued.
The project was recorded at Cove City Sound Studios in Glen Cove, New York, produced by Brendan Keenan and me, and mixed and mastered by John Arbuckle. David Connolly co-wrote Earth Codes, while Brendan collaborated with me in completing Air Codes.
The project also brought together musicians and collaborators whose performances helped give each elemental world its own character.
When the finished masters arrived, though, I didn't sit around celebrating for very long.
I immediately moved into artwork.
Distribution.
Release preparation.
Lyric videos.
There was always another piece of the world I wanted to create.
Dreams Bigger Than the Budget
The visual side of Elemental Codes was already alive in my head.
I could see the music videos.
Not just little fragments.
Entire scenes.
Storyboards.
Characters.
Locations.
Movement.
I had huge dreams and a much smaller budget.
So I made a decision.
I would release the music first.
The larger visual world could come later when I had the resources and technology to bring what I was seeing to life properly.
That meant allowing some of those ideas to wait.
But they never disappeared.
They're still here.
And now, years later, I finally have new ways to begin bringing some of those worlds out of my imagination and into something other people can see.
Letting My Children Go
Even after everything was finished, I held onto the songs for a while.
I kept preparing.
Thinking about timing.
Planning the release.
Trying to make sure everything was right.
And then eventually came the moment when I had to upload Elemental Codes to my distributor TuneCore and send it out into the world.
I expected to feel only excited.
Instead, I also felt sad.
It was almost like my precious children were leaving me.
These songs had lived inside me for so long.
They carried my memories, healing, dreams, friendships, voice, imagination and pieces of my life.
Now they weren't going to belong only to me anymore.
But that sadness came with another feeling.
Hope.
Because maybe one of those songs would reach a stranger.
Maybe it would inspire someone.
Help someone.
Entertain them.
Comfort them.
Or simply bring them a few minutes of joy.
And ultimately, that's why I wanted to let them go.
The Beginning of a Larger World
Looking back now, Elemental Codes represents much more to me than my first original concept EP.
It was where I began realizing that a song could become an entire world.
Music could connect with dreams.
Dreams could become imagery.
Imagery could become characters.
Characters could become stories.
And all of it could exist inside the same creative universe.
The layered harmonies, cinematic production, nature symbolism, fantasy imagery and emotional storytelling that emerged during Elemental Codes became part of the artistic language I still use today.
At the time, I thought I was making four songs about the elements.
I know now that I was opening another door.
And I'm still discovering what is on the other side.
ELEMENTAL CODES EP
Released in 2022, Elemental Codes is a four-song concept EP exploring Water, Air, Fire and Earth through personal experiences, dreams, nature and symbolism. Each element shapes its own musical and visual world, blending ethereal layered vocals with organic and electronic instrumentation.
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