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Link to Streaming Service
https://turtlebox.bandcamp.com/album/far-reaches-impressions-composing-jam
Description
"Far Reaches" - an OST inspired by the artwork of Katsushika Hokusai. Six tracks composed with a mix of Analog Synths to create lush pads and waveforms and live instrumental to create a sense of immersion and space.
Six full tracks created in just under 24 hours, an experiment in recording and mixing live audio in single takes by creating looping ambience and melodies and layering them to create an OST bordering on light-noise and acoustic ambience.
Music Visualizer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GheikdaEQtM
Please feel free to provide comments and feedback.
Synths(Analog / FM) used
- Poly D
- Korg Trident
- DW8000
- Moog One
- Korg MS-20
Physical Instruments used
- Andon Shamisen ( Shamiko )
- Fiddlerman OB1 ( Violin )
- Baldwin B-52 Professional (Piano)
- Fender Paranormal Gold (Guitar / Feedback)
Amps and Pedals Used
- Fender Ultimate Chrous (Amp)
- Walrus Audio Melee (Feedback + Reverb)
- Strymon Bigsky (Ambience)
- Suhr Analog Delay (...Delay, lol)
Screenshot of DAW (required, but it can be uploaded shortly afterwards)
https://theturtlebox.itch.io/far-reaches-impressions-composing-jam
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Comments
Great sounds! I love the blend of acoustic guitar and synths. Very nice work
Thank you!
I uploaded a version of the opening track with just the isolated guitars and violin. It's weird that I kept it and worked with it and now folks keep bringing up the guitars, lol.
Thanks for your comment, I'm very glad you enjoyed the tracks.
Solid professionalism. Each track has its distinct character, the attributes of all tracks are on point with the jam's requirements. Right down the middle. Nicely done.
Intro sound is very trippy. I love the guitar/synth melody with its somewhat offbeat melody. You understood the assignment! :)
The big thing I'm liking here is that it sounds fresh. For constructive feedback, I think maybe some of the composition itself is maybe a little more straightforward, but overall it's very good.
Solid work!
I'm in love with all the textures, spaces and environments you've created. The music feels full and alive, the frequency spectrum is dancing with all sorts of different luscious sounds. Each song seems to define a certain mood, or thought pattern to me, like I'm stuck in some sort of auditory rumination. The mood improves as the songs progress. There is melody, but it all blurs together a bit. I wish I could hear "Sword and Ice" where the guitar stops to catch it's breath and lets the bass play a bit. I want to hear the instruments vying for the listener's attention. I want to hear distinctive motifs, but it all tends towards meditative. But that's purely subjective and based on what I like to listen to. This is an excellent work of music and you've shown you know how to bring complex, warm timbres together into a cohesive whole.
It's actually really funny you bring up Sword and Ice. I initially had it as a bonus track, something recorded with the Violin, Harmonics, and a 12 string acoustic running through my Fender twin's clean and a pedal called the CP-508, an ambient "wonderland" style pedalby the company Caline.
This version of the track also has some Mendini Glockenspiel which I mic'd up and ran through the same CP-508 pedal, right in the pre-bridge sections.
The difference in the tracks is the mixing mostly, but the version in the OST has the overall guitar feedback sound I wanted to experiment with and went for. That's what inspired the restructure of the track, adding a third segment to let the feedback have more space to loop.
You can listen to it here - https://turtlebox.bandcamp.com/track/sword-and-ice-isolated-strings It's a lot more straight forward and doesn't trip over itself by trying to have a ton of different tonal sounds coming in and through. I hope you enjoy this one a bit more, but regardless I would love to know what you think of this version.
EDIT: Here's a demo of the pedal on amazon - https://www.amazon.com/Caline-Wonderland-Ambient-Modulated-Aluminum/dp/B0B2BXG7B... Caline is a weird brand, not really known for anything but knock-offs, clones, and cheaper pedals. I like the CP-508 because it's decay is insanely aggressive and in mixes like this it really just kind of sits back and gives that Supermasive type of wash without being super up front in the mix.
You just nailed it. Each track is on point in my opinion.
When you said you did this in 24 hours, do you mean in one litteral day? If it is the case that's really impressive, well done!
Yeah, I've done all of these composing jams with a 24 hour limit to sort of challenge myself. I'll usually take a day off from everything, spend the day before setting up everything in my studio so when I wake up I can just get right to composing, and then kinda just start going.
Each track gets recorded back to back and I try to mix as I do, or do as much mixing as possible. This session was especially fun because it let me just run analog synths through obnoxiously wide reverbs and then swap cables and run guitars / pickup'd stringed instruments through those same pedals.
Every track here uses feedback from a smaller amp, I didn't finish listing my equipment but I ran the strings (guitar, violin, ect) through a Fender Ultimate Chrous, and faced that into a Fender Champion 100 with just it's preset Delay and Reverb, both amps on the clean channel, both EQ'd with the Para-EQ, the Ultimate Chorus the classic original Para-EQ Empress, and the Champ-100 ran through a clone called the Para-Q Nano made by Sine Effects I believe?
Being able to EQ feedback and utilize it to create pads is something I've wanted to do for a long time and felt like it fit perfectly in a project like this.
I guess I started to ramble, but my point was that I spent 24 hours live recording guitar feedback. Each feedback is 4/4 at 80bpm which let me experiment with double time melodies when I wanted too, and even tempo change from 4/4, to 2/2, and even to 3/4.
It's cool, I guess. How I end up abusing these projects to just demonstrate how wild composing music in a traditional yet modernized mindset can be. Is recording feedback and filtering it with analog synths composing? I think so. But I was more than glad to throw some cool stringed instruments into the mix! Especially since it meant I could finally just play some scales on my Samiko Mini, lol.
Thanks for the detail answer mate. As I thought this is really impressive. You love what you're doing, you are passionate and obviously this feeling is felt in what you do. Well done again! :)
This is one of my favorite submissions I've listened to so far. I appreciate the work you did over a session to create some ambient pieces featuring different instruments and ideas while maintaining some connective tissue to form a whole. The overall mix sounds good on my end as well. Great stuff! :)
Thank you!
I discussed it elsewhere, but I tried live mixing with this release which is why it has a bit more loop kinda melodies and as it goes on the melodies expand and become less repetitive, throughout the 13ish hours playing and live mixing I was lucky enough to get to a really fantastic balance in the mix, and from there it was only another 6ish hours of actually sitting down and mixing out everything else.