The sole purpose of "Scratch and Porter" was to break out of my own conformity. I wanted to try something different in my compositional approach besides doing another solo-piano sonata again. I also wanted to embrace my Irish heritage in my regular every day life in some sort of way. I came up with the idea of writing a jig so that I could accomplish both of these things: writing in a different style of music and celebrating my heritage. I also chose to stick with my classical roots within the passage work by having the instrumentation as a piano trio (piano, violin and cello). To imitate an Irish atmosphere, I composed so that the sound that me and my players would make are emulating the instruments that would be found an Irish ensemble. An example of this is when the piano plays high trills in the right hand to imitate the sound of a flute.

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The third movement, titled "Sprightly Pace" also contains melodic ideas that stem from one of my oldest compositions. This was originally from my string quartet composition in high school. The actual performance of this string quartet did not go very well, so I wanted to take ideas from that piece and reanimate them in "Scratch and Porter".  Thankfully, my performers did an amazing job with the performence this time around, so I was able to relive that moment from high school in a much more content and fulfilling way.

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The purpose of "The Scratch and Porter Variations" was to not only challenge my compositional ability by rewriting my material in many different ways, but to also practice my promotional ideas for Scratch and Porter in a creative way. I chose to perform the variations before the original so that I could create speculation among my audience about what Scratch and Porter was supposed to be. If these are the variations of this piece of music that I've never heard of, then what on earth does the original sound like?  I aim to do more promotional tactics like this in the future, since it was so fun to perform and it also expanded on the "world" of Scratch and Porter that I was creating.