We had a rare day where it snowed continuously from sunup to sundown. It was a lazy Sunday, and Mary and I enjoyed watching the snowfall through the front windows while drinking coffee, reading, and chatting.
Periodically, the wind would kick up and snow would blow in multiple directions simultaneously. At one point, Mary said, “now that’s perfect snow globe snow!”
- Snow Globe Ray Toler 1:36
The peacefulness of the day definitely comes through in Snow Globe. I initially sat down thinking I’d be writing a solo piano piece, but the melodic line headed squarely into music box territory. I do have some more realistic music box samples, but preferred the pure tone of a celeste for this one.
The track was mostly laid down in one or two improvisational takes, then I went back to alter a couple of notes where I didn’t play what was in my head or where I heard something even better when I was listening to the playback and not concentrating on playing. There’s not a lot of editing, just a few notes here and there.
Mary, hearing the piece from the other room, said she wanted it to wind down at the end, so there you have it. I thought about adding a wind-up and some clockwork noise underneath, but didn’t find anything suitable. It doesn’t really need it, though.
I did make some micro-timing edits to get more of the manufacturing imperfections you’d hear in an actual music box mechanism. They’re generally subtle, but become much more important and obvious as the tempo radically slows.
Colophon
- Celeste: Keyscape
Next up: A Sad Jingle
Mary was right. The wind down was the perfect touch. My inner ballerina came out for this one. ☺