[ambient] Threnody

[rorystorm]

Four ambient tracks I've made during the month long cononalockdown in my city.

Blatant, blatant Brian Eno ripoff. But there's nothing wrong with that, is there. IS.....THERE.......

[bossa]

Wonderful! Tell a little bit which instruments you use!

[Jackjackdaw]

Very nice, I enjoyed that.

[rorystorm]

Thanks for your kind words. It only took a couple of days to record but it was a surprisingly emotional process, much more so than usual for me - particularly because I'd kinda intended it to just be pleasant-enough-but-not-outstanding wallpaper music.

Instruments:

Most of the short pluck sounds were made either with a sine wave from a Subtractor with a very short amp envelope, or samples from the NNXT stock library - some mallets, a harp. On the second track I also used the tabla sound from Maelstrom, with the motion turned right down. The arpeggiating ripple sound on the third track was made with Europa.

Most of the pads were made with Thor or Europa. A couple of times I put used the formant filter in Thor which I haven't done before, to get that music for airports sound. The quite synthy sound on the first track was made with the flutes from Pangea through some unison, and I used Layers for one of the pads as well. The mid rangey vocalish pad to panned to the right in the third track's actually the English Horn preset in NNXT completely un-effected. That's my second favourite sound on this.

My favourite is the piano on the last track, using Retron through the tape setting in Scream for extra saturation. Originally I'd used Radical Pianos but it was too glossy. I wanted something that sounded early seventies and shitty so it felt more nostalgic and melancholic. I'd tried turning the drift setting on Radical Pianos up but it didn't quite do the job. I love Retron and use it quite a bit - some of the high sounds on the third track are from its Vibes setting.

All the Europa sounds were made with User Waves - again something I hadn't done before and I'd wanted to try out. The swelling pad in the last track is actually a cymbal. I also used a couple of samples in Grain to provide some texture.

I used Complex-1 for the bass sound in the 1st and 2nd track. It's taken me a while to get my head round it but it's now it's my go to. I also used the Legend a couple of times because, you know, it's the best synthesiser in the world.

Almost everything was put through Synapse's DR-1 Deep Reverb. It's a beautiful device ideal for this kind of thing (although not great for short room sounds). It has a nice warm sound and can do up to a minute long reverb trail, simple to use and the controls have quite wide ranges so it can be quite expressive. For delays I used multiple chained DDL-1s, some The Echos, and some 2Plexes. The shimmering sound on track 2 was made with a 3Plex with the LFO on each tap's filter turned up really high but mainly dry.

For programming - about 2/3rds of the sounds I played manually and didn't quantize to give it an organic feel. The piano on the 4th track, for eg, is a two bar loop. In the middle section I pulled out the left hand notes which anchor the melody and that gives it the emotional impact. The rest of the notes -mainly the plucks - are generated by a PSQ 1684 which is an amazing device. I've only just got it recently so I'm just in the first stages of getting my head around it, but I'm really looking forward to knowing it better.

Hope that's not too much detail! Really interesting exercise writing a little about the methods I'd used.