This record basically has 3 ingredients: analog synths, filter feedback moving along the harmonic series, and echo. Oh, and I did make it for my own insomnia. Enjoy!
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This album is super relaxing, I had the page open for a while and had meant to listen to more than the first couple tracks that I heard a week ago, then I finally listened to it yesterday in it’s entirety while trying to ignore something else happening in my periphery. Not only did it work for cancelling out environmental B.S./mellowing out my annoyance, it was also enjoyable and I was still able to work productively on what I was trying to accomplish in the first place. I just thought you should know that I thought it was pretty dope! Would definitely recommend it to anyone who needs a chill meditative vibe.
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Thanks for listening! Glad you liked it and that it worked. I had thought about writing something about the rewards of low volume listening, since so many records ask you to listen at high volume.
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I listened at a pretty average or low volume, but I was also wearing noise cancelling headphones, so that combined with the ambience made it really easy to focus and shut out was was going on around me. It didn’t necessarily make me want to go to sleep, but I can see how it would have the effect of not distracting you if you needed to put yourself into a clear state of mind.
I’ve also casually listened to a good deal of chant centric and other meditative music without strictly the intention of using it as a sleep aid, just for mental health, so it was very enjoyable and had a familiar texture, I guess. Anyways, glad you shared it.
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some of the best drone/ambient i’ve heard in forever, thanks for sharing.
#4 is my favorite texture, any color on your patching or ingredients for this one?
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Used it as fall back asleep medicine. Loved it.
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Love it, well done!!!
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I’ll be listening tonight to pass out to.
This is nice.
Side note: I’ve noticed a good many people here that show bits of Buddhist inspirations in their music, anecdotal words, or even just in a profile picture and I appreciate that.
I’m a layman and often given to desires, but if I had to say what religion or ideals I prefer, Buddhism makes the most sense to me.
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Thanks for the kind words. If you read the liner notes, you’ll see that the music is based on what I was listening to in order to fall back asleep – especially Eleh and Eliane Radigue. I think I’ll do a series in the end.
The project is named for a shower curtain in some dear friends’ apartment around 2012. Also my artist photo. While I very much believe in music as a path to (temporary) transcendence, I wouldn’t say there’s any direct religious or doctrinal influence on my end. But you hear whatever you hear when you listen to it!
There are two tricks to the record. The first is stacking and detuning oscillators. They generate their own rhythms through subtle detuning – it’s the beating you try to get rid of when you tune analog oscillators. I just kept it. You need some room to work here, and for most of the tracks I was using the Vermona Perfourmer which is just a gorgeous synth and give your 4 to work with. Even its relatively large tune knobs required very gentle tweaking to work. I manually add and remove beating as the pieces go on.
(X-posted from modwiggler) The other main “trick” of the record is the Éliane Radigue approach to getting harmonics to work with. You need a filter with a steep cutoff combined with a notch: some state variable filters let you do this between LFP and HPF, and the BB+N output of the Joranalogue Filter 8 is built for this. If you get it just below self-resonance right, you can then move from harmonic to harmonic in the harmonic series for whatever note you put through it. I started with the Filter 8 but also experimented with my Manhattan Analog SVVCF, and of course Radigue used the filter on her Arp 2500. But it’s the method, not the gear in this case. I sent the filter output through a Belton Brick reverb that could also be sent into self-oscillating feedback. I like the Intellijel Digiverb for this but you need to set up feedback with a mixer. Some pedals, like the Mantic Proverb, just have a button on them. (hot tip–I actually prefer Belton bricks to spring reverbs).
Beads had just arrived when I started this and you can hear it on a couple tracks as well, including #4, @Zzzz (awesome and apropos username here) – here it’s pitching the harmonics down an octave.
The exception was track 5, where I tried to evoke the same mood with different gear entirely: UDO Super 6 desktop, played with a Linnstrument. I’ve mapped pressure to cross-modulation and de-phasing the two oscillators, which does the same beating thing as manually detuning. I just played the notes I wanted to hear, so no extra filter needed. That goes through a stereo distortion pedal that gradually comes up during the piece.
I think that’s the important stuff. Happy to answer questions!
Very gratified that you enjoyed it. We make music for ourselves, but also for others.
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fucking great quote here, like literally, this is the zen realization of making music. It’s so easy for both artists and listeners to forget this incredibly basic notion.
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