As has become a pattern so far this month, or at least for the last 5-6 days, I start out floundering, decide on just something to get started, and end up with a piece that actually kind of works. Sometimes the initial ideas are more baked than others, but none of them have outright fallen apart. I attribute this very much to the old John Cleese statement that “creativity is not a talent, it is a way of operating.” While I’m not positive that I’ve got a good idea, I keep chipping away at it (or adding to it) until something emerges that makes sense.
- The Crossing Ray Toler 4:06
Right? was certainly one of those, and I was in a decent mood going back in to start on today’s track. But it was one of those nights where nothing I did worked, nothing I played stuck, and I somehow kept reaching for my phone or a web site I needed to check or email, or anything but writing a piece of music.
Finally, I opened XO and found a low-tempo shuffle-ish beat, and decided that I’d try to make a lo-fi beat, but using XO as the primary sample instead of playing chords in. I like the sounds that you get that way, but normally don’t think about working in that manner.
I had a decent pair of beats going, good enough, in fact, to save and name them. XO has a cool function where it will give you a random name. I clicked the dice several times until I found one that made me think of what was going to be the name of the piece: Willow Creek.
And Then Things Turned Ugly
As you may have guessed, I couldn’t stick with the “stick with just XO” idea and wanted to see if maybe I could find some better chords. I’ve had reasonably good luck with theory plugins like Cthulu and Chord Generator, and decided to see if I could finally grok Scaler. I’ve had it since version 1, but have never really gotten along with it. Scaler 3 came out last fall and was receiving really good reviews, so I went ahead and upgraded it during the Black Friday sales.
I’d installed it but not activated it. They shifted to an online-only activation mechanism. Strike one. They also made it so that you have to create an account on the Scaler web site to enable the activation. Strike two. Hey, you can still score a home run with two strikes, right?
Sadly, this was not the case. Scaler 3 is now so overly complicated that I couldn’t figure out how to do anything but get it to launch and play its own internal piano sound. And even then, I never figured out how to select the chords or order I wanted. It seems like it really wants to be an environment of its own, rather than a theory and composition support tool. Now, that’s fine if that’s what you’re looking for, and I suspect a lot of younger musicians, especially those who are almost entirely self-taught or learning via influencers, will derive a massive amount of value from it.
For someone like me, though, who already has the basis I need and is more needing a tool to help me zag when I want to zig, Scaler 3 isn’t the one. After February, I plan to spend a bit more time with it because the reviews are almost universally positive. I just need to figure out if it can do what I need it to do.
The short of it, though, is that Scaler 3 pissed me off so much that I almost stopped writing for the evening. I certainly wasn’t in the mood for a chill lo-fi thing. Ambient maybe? Sure. Ambient.
Close It and Move On
As unhappy as I was with Scaler, I am continually happy with Cycles. It’s a never-ending bucket of ideas, and I’m still largely using presets. I do tweak it a bit more now, but I can pretty much guarantee that if a sound grabs me, I’ll make a track out of it. Such is the case here. Cycles is providing that vaguely distorted cello sound. It pulses and is raw, and reminded me internally of Heilung, a Nordic neo-folk band that interprets ancient proto-germanic writings into tribal stories. I hope to see them live at some point.
This is a fairly typical atmosphere piece for me, and is in line with a lot of the things I did last year like The Gathering, The Sentinel, and Convocation. Hybrid orchestral, ominous, brooding, mood pieces. The unique thing about this one is that I wrote the entire thing in a single improvisational take.
When I listened back, intending to find the places I needed to change, I liked it. I grabbed another couple of sounds to layer in, added the drums. I went to bed a bit after midnight, happy that the piece was more or less finished and just needed some decoration.
Know When to Say When
Listening back in the morning, I realized that my drums were wrong. They were the same sounds, but I’d done this kind of funky pattern that was all kinds of wrong. Cool, but wrong. That’s one reason I’ve really liked writing at night and listening fresh for polish and final mix in the morning. Things that often seem good in the moment become clearly not right in the light of day. Or, I find that it’s missing something and my brain has figured that out while I sleep.
I pulled the drums way back, added a high string part, some noises and distorted creaks, the metal percussion, and finally the horns. I wasn’t completely sure about the horns until I listened at volume, and they were good.
The mix was easy – I only used a mastering EQ and limiter. I couldn’t quite get the crescendo for the end with the instrument programming, so took a shortcut and started the entire mix at -2.5 dB, then raised that to 0 over the last eight measures. The overall level is still in line with my usual mastering volume1-14 LUFS, more or less but the end is much louder than I normally go. It has exactly the emotional impact I was looking for!
Finally, the title. Up until almost the last minute I was continuing to call this Willow Creek in my head, but I thought that sounded too much like an old battle. Which would have been fine, but it’s sort of constricting when it comes to how the listener might perceive the music.2I hate putting too much of a guide on these things – I even waffled about the featured image on this post, simply because it forces one interpretation of many. I think this piece works as the background for any type of trial or danger. I also have no idea what genre this is, so I’ve started using “cinematic” in my own tagging.
So once again, victory snatched from the chasm of despair. Now to walk back to the edge…
Colophon
Instuments & Samples
Cycles, Oblivion, Gravity 2, Damage 2, Albion III Iceni, Albion V Tundra, Spitfire Percussion
Effects, Mixing, & Mastering
FabFilter, Gullfoss, Cinematic Rooms
Notes
- 1-14 LUFS, more or less
- 2I hate putting too much of a guide on these things – I even waffled about the featured image on this post, simply because it forces one interpretation of many. I think this piece works as the background for any type of trial or danger.