Upon returning to campus in late January after a delayed start of the semester thanks to the Omicron variant, I was promptly greeted by a black-capped chickadee, whose beautiful voice I recorded at close range while perched in a tree on the academic quad. This morning I returned to the brief 12-second sample and tried to build a song around it. The bird's main pitch rested at around F#, so I worked primarily with that as a tonal center. I ended up taking inspiration from primarily Brian Eno's work with world music-oriented and synthscape albums from artists like Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel, and David Byrne. To round out the song and create an effective outro, I also utilized a much older sample of rainwater cascading down an open manhole cover outside my practice room building, probably recorded last September or October. Trying out new panning/mixing techniques as well.
{Instrumental}
@headfirstonly Mar 2022
The drums nicely pick up the rhythm of the initial bird call, and I think it's the rhythmic sensibility to the source that makes this work so well. When the full arrangement arrives, it drops into a groove that reminds me as much of another talented producer, Daniel Lanois as it does Eno. I'm also getting hints of Michael Brook from the guitars, and he's worked with both of them...
The end section was unexpected, but works really well. This is good stuff!
@gordon Feb 2022
This starts off so sweetly and then really takes off when the instrumentation comes in. A really lovely soundscape you have here. Thanks for posting,
@kenmattsson Feb 2022
Very cool piece. Some great sonic structures in here. Love the rain like sounds at 4:45. Keep going!