a tranquil place




track: 17

recorded: july 4, 2015 - november 27, 2015

duration: 8:03


this piece has a long history, begun way back in the beginning of july - starting out with a little bit of glockenspiel, drums and some jazz horns.

over time, it began to take on a life of it's own, built up, slowly, deliberately, section by section. a trombone solo would appear one day. then, on another day, a duet between trumpet 1 and trumpet 2.

english horn, flute, and all of the other instruments gradually being added in, including some judiciously placed distorted guitar, a beautifully graceful clean electric guitar, and thick, lovely bass guitar that doesn't appear for quite some time into the piece. when it finally does arrive, it's deep, soothing tones, just knock me out - I love it. this is the first time I've ever made the bass player wait this long to come in - and it was a good decision, let me tell you - because he played all the better for his late entry to the song.


this piece, was with me, haunting me, day and night, and I can't remember enjoying the creation of a piece quite this much - I like taking my time with this kind of thing, to see what is possible.

sometimes, the most amazing things would happen, like a section where two or three of the horns suddenly "hold down" some long, long whole notes, which utterly changes the character of the piece - in the beginning, there are a lot of solo and duet horn parts, but at this one point, they all slam down with these long, long notes and it just works - I don't know how or why.

I had very little plan, I just worked a little bit at a time, maybe a few measures each day. sometimes, I would stop working, and just listen.

then it eventually got to the point where, I could not find anything else that needed to be improved or fixed, I was making only very, very minor changes, and then I spent a lot of time on the mix, trying to make sure that each and every instrument could be heard - at least, when it mattered.

I had also wanted to see if I could transfer this piece from Notion for Ipad to Notion on the PC, but that idea didn't pan out, because Notion on the PC doesn't feature the unusual jazz horns I have in my Notion for Ipad, and re-buying them for the PC would have broken the bank at this point - the pricing, and the set up of the Notion store, is not useful if you are trying to recreate a score done on the ipad, in Notion on the PC. Don't try it. Well, if you have just won the lottery, then you could just plop down £242.00 plus and have ALL of the possible instruments. But I couldn't see that as a viable option, and, no guarantee I could get the mix to sound as good or even "right" - so I decided to return to the original Ipad mix.

I won't ever try to transfer a score again - it's a nightmare. So - I did what I had to do - I took my latest and very best mix, brought it down to my PC, loaded it into SONAR, and used some of my standard mastering tools to make the entire piece work a bit better.

EQ, a tiny bit of reverb, compression, these were applied in subtle quantities, just enough to take away the slightly dull mix that came from Notion - and now, I am really happy because this "treated" mix, has come out really nicely, so I am quite happy because I am very happy with the original Ipad mix, which I never probably would have been able to recreate in Notion for PC anyway - so it's all worked out fine in the end.

This song, to me, should be the start of a brand new genre, which should be called "melancholia", or if you must, "melancholic jazz" - I prefer "melancholia" - because, so much of the track is so very minimal, one lonely horn playing over one timpani, pounding out a simple beat, a lot of "solo" horns in fact, and a lot of very minimal "sections" too.

"a tranquil place" is the notion piece that right now, I am most proud of - of course, Notion itself has been a journey, learning more and more about it as I have worked on the various pieces - but in the end, while I've been astonished by the appearance of classical music, in a way, it's these more adventurous, alternative tracks that I love the most - because of the freedom to go absolutely anywhere - and still resolve things in the end.

this is not quite jazz (although sometimes, it is very much so, jazz) it has some almost heavy guitar and bass and drums sections - it's a strange hybrid, I think, but whatever it is - I really, really enjoyed creating it, it's been a constant friend and companion to me for many, many months, and I am so glad that I can now set it free to the universe - I hope you like it! I had a blast making it, and seeing which horn could outdo all of the others - and I ended up with a lot of winners.

a very happy experience, taking a long, long time to emerge, a lot of time to listen, to consider, and then, to walk out on ledges, take risks, see what crazy places I could go to next within the structure I had built - an absolute joy to construct and experience. "a tranquil place"...indeed.