If you’ve read past entries covering some of my ambient tracks and how I go about producing them, you’ve learned some of my tricks. Things like drawing in periodic oscillations for moving faders and filters, or copying and pasting tracks between different instruments and finding fun ways to make them interact.
And all of that was my plan for the evening, especially after I found the primary sound that would anchor this track. I quickly loaded up the various sounds and zoned out for about an hour just letting the relatively long loop play. While the main chord progression is relatively short, the larger loop is 16 bars long, and takes about a minute to play. If you’re in the same relaxed state I was when writing it, it’s a really nice piece to lose an hour to.
- Mare Imbrium Ray Toler 6:04
The patches I was using were pretty computationally intensive, and in order to continue working with things that overpower my CPU, I render the parts out to audio tracks. The hour was getting late, but I knew that I wanted to add a change in the pattern at least once or twice. Because of the way I had arranged the tracks, this represented a bit of a pain in the ass, but I knew it would bother me forever if I didn’t do it, so I took the time, brushed my teeth, and got ready for bed while everything was rendering.
But in the morning… well, it’s kind of boring. Not to me, but I think it would be to others. I used some of my typical tricks, but nothing was working as well as it normally does. I think this is due to the specific sounds that I chose, a mixture of synthetic and orchestral, static and arpeggiated. But my normal approach of bringing things in and out didn’t have much impact.
While I really liked the only rhythmic elements coming from the arpeggiators, when I added a couple of drum loops, it made things a little more coherent and interesting. Well, if not interesting, it carries things on a bit.
There’s not a whole lot more to say about this one. I like it, and it will fit will in context with similar pieces. I may keep a version without the drums, because I actually like it that way for my own personal listening.
Colophon
Instruments & Samples
Choreographs, Olafur Arnalds Chamber Evolutions, London Contemporary Orchestra Textures, Auras, Stylus RMX
Mixing & Mastering
Valhalla Vintage Verb, Movement, Gullfoss, Pro-Q 3, Pro-L 2
Image Credit: NASA
