The Sound of Sleet

Another horrible day, another tune - this time a slow waltz. So named because it is indeed sleeting outside despite the protestations of the time of year. Oh well, nothing i can do about it but sit around and make up music...

This one was again written on the fiddle, with guitar and a bit of improvised 2nd violin added later. Same mics used as yesterdays... here:

The Sound of Sleet.mp3

Trad tune with fiddle, guitar, and a wee bit of Tibetan singing bowl...

Have a listen to this little effort - a tune that I wrote and recorded on the morning of the 22nd of April - fiddle recorded using an AKG414, guitar with 2 mics - the 414 just off the soundboard down from the bridge, and an AKG C451B on the fretboard side... Mixed in Logic Pro. As i'm sure you all wanted to know...

Singing Bowl II.mp3 (right click, save as...)

Back to my traditional music origins. Rob

Parc de la Ciutadella

Guitars double-tracked with violin pitch shifted to sound more like a cello...

aqui:

Parc de la Ciutadella

Enjoy!

Walk in the Snow

Have made a second version... a bit of extra piano (by the way the whistling is me, recorded on the same walk). Not sure about the overall "flow" of this, but fairly happy with it... May end up doing another version from scratch, but sometimes it's better just to leave it and move on!

p.s. just had a listen on tiny computer speakers - sounds a bit terrible! I only have headphones for mixing at the moment - no monitors so its a bit tricky to know how things will sound on speakers. Anyway:

Walk In the Snow v2.mp3

Another tune based on "found sound" - this time collected on a wintry walk near to my parent's house in Kingussie, Scotland, when i was home for Christmas and New Year - the originally titled:

Walk in the Snow.mp3

All of the sounds except for the slightly distorted delay affected melody near the end are from field recordings of snow, ambience, water, ice, various sounds from steel fence wire, snapping twigs, and various other percussive hits from trees and stones. The tune is arranged and mixed in FL Studio 9. Y ya está...

The aforementioned non-recorded sound is a distorted piano from a FL Studio synth - i was a bit short on nice tuned sounds for a melody... I'll get a picture of the scene up soon. rob

Salvem

Named after a sticker on my borrowed cheap Spanish guitar... a 20 minute piece made entirely in Ableton Live, recording loops live into Live with guitar, clay drum, and voice, then sequencing and adding lots of effects to the loops whilst mixing with the loops. The first thing i've done with this new technique which interests me a lot, based on the idea of mixing laptop and live instruments in a fluid live performance. Anyway, here it is.... (listening back over it i think i need to tone down the liberal use of delays!!).

Salvem

Ascend

Another slightly unusual tune with lots of glitchy noises and confusing delays with 7 step repeat intervals and other "challenging" rhythms...! Again produced in Reason 4, with beats made in FL Studio which were exported and then mixed with the tune inside Ableton Live.

Ascend

Poblenou

Reason tune, put together in an afternoon in Poblenou, where i live in Barcelona. Included is a sample recorded during a thunder storm last month, added in FL Studio 9; all the rest of the sounds are generated in Reason from Subtractor and Maelstrom synths...

Poblenou

Ktchen

A tune using recordings made in my parent's kitchen on 5th august 2009, along with some guitar samples i recorded when back in antarctica.  The melody sounds come from these guitar samples and from hitting pan lids and a large glass vase.  The vocal samples and tapping beat were recorded at the same time and pitch-shifted and cut using soundforge to fit them into the tune...

  Ktchen Download... (Right Click & Save As...)