A track I made in Ableton Live with Push 2 using a single pre-recorded bell sample. You can hear the original sample begin to enter just after the 4-minute mark. Well...almost original, I shifted it down 3 half-steps to match the key of the track.

There are four tracks in this mix. Two different pads created from a single bell hit, a drum rack with 10 sounds (one per each bell sound in the original sample), and a melodic lead instrument created from the lowest bell sample and processed with a distortion amplifier.

Workflow-wise, the first thing I did was to create the drum rack and begin finding different textures for each pad, making the samples as different from each other as possible as I created rhythm patters in a step-sequencer. There was one exception, two drum pads that shared the exact same pitch: for those two, I panned them mid L and R and de-tuned one sample by 10 cents while filtering out the overtones for the in-tune one so that the whole drum rack had these spooky slightly flat overtones. I also used an LFO to make the highest-pitched pad warble quite a bit, which comes in around 2:08.

To transfer from session to arrangement view, I experimented with loop lengths of each element across seven different scenes, eventually expanding to a total of twelve scenes. During this process, a clear notion of where the lead solo would be emerged, and I created follow actions so that scenes 1/2 and 6/7/8/9 would all flow into each other automatically once I triggered them, allowing myself time to free up mental bandwidth to perform a solo in scene 10. 

I plan to use the session view of this set for real-time live performances in the future. That was my notion behind follow-actions: so that once scene 10 is looping, I can riff freely over it on the melodic lead track and then trigger the scene 11 fade-out once the solo is nearing a conclusion.

Simpler Bells

Phlegmsy Elephant Sneeze

22 - 05 - 21 WOAAAAAH - Painted - Corners Mi - 1

22 - 05 - 23 Forest - Level - 14 Mix - 1

A little journey I went on using Ableton Suite with Push 2 and my 7-string electric viola just now at my desk. Made in a single sitting improv session. Three tracks: two loops and a solo line. Solo line was improvised over the two loops, and is a complete single take with NO edits. Track is mixed very simply: designed to sound exactly the way it did to my ear when I improvised in the moment.

Not sure where this came from, grateful that it made it out of the bottle so to speak. Could be that I got a nyckelharpa gig for Blizzard today and am in nyckelharpa-spectral frequencies headspace? Could be that I'm feeling connected to the winds and breezes of mother nature as I rode my bike through windswept lava fields and and seaside jungle farms today? Could be I just was feeling music munchies? Who knows...but thanks for listening!

Lughnasadh Moon

Something I made just now by grabbing 5 instruments I thought would sound interesting together in Ableton and letting them figure out something to play! The starting sound for this was one of those Dylan Bastian Emit tree sounds

Bell Fruit on the Cello Tree

This one started out initially as a way to practice some new ideas in Ableton, wound up grabbing my fiddle and laying down a bigass solo!

Fig2-23-01-30-mix1

Ambient music based on "As through the woods I roamed" from J. O'Neill's Music of Ireland.

487-woods-mix-1

341-dream-mix-1

909-cat-mix-1

🌲✨ Forest Dream ✨🌲
The soundtrack to a recent lucid dream, in which I rode a horse through a forest not far from my home, following a grey-green river of gold through an ancient canopy of earthly wisdom and quiet intelligence. 

Forest Dream is a string quintet centered around a luminous violin solo. The shimmering textures are subtle reverb with gentle distortion on random delays. The various looping elements were inspired by the physical, tactile memories I carry within my own five senses of the feeling of total immersion in a forest of deep, and mysteriously calm...life.

Made with gratitude, from inspiration kindly given and most warmly received.

Forest Dream -- mix 1

fiddle-tune

bach-4th-suite-prelude

My own arrangement of "Cockleshells" as found in John Playford's "English Country Dancemaster"


This tune moves me to the depths. Here are my thoughts in prose:

when you feel a tune take you up in its breath, when you set sail through its phrases into the Beyond. Where there is no time, where your spirit is taken to forgotten places you've never been. Your soul is warmed by the tune's wisdom, a gentle guide to times that could have been, that might have been, that never were, but that live on in your heart as you continue to soar. Such magic touches the depths of the heart, leaving a mark that grows deeper with the waves of time, and the certainty of truths that never fruited. This is when a tune holds you in a love eternal and you hope to be ever bound in its spell. You continue to weave its story ever deeper into yours, and you learn wisdom, care, understanding, and sorrow from it each time it flows through your hands. This is a small part of what music means to me: a drop in the oceans of time, humanity, and empathy when I am asked of certain tunes, "What do you hear?"

Moshalto

Popular tracks