this piece is about two things: one, the exclusive use of the genmix7 sound pak, and two, the use of odd numbers of iterations. over time, over the previous compositions, I had become aware of the quality of the genmix7 pak, so I decided I should do a piece that used only sounds from that pak.
I discovered a new sound, that I had not previously used, called “aquatron”, and obviously, that is from whence the track gets it’s title. I used that sound, along with other genmix7 pak sounds that I was more familiar with, to achieve this particular ambience.
I used one very, very unusual sound, called “putney warble (occ)” which is very odd indeed, and occurs, only very, very occasionally in the piece; and because the rest of the piece is very ambient, and this one strange sound is not, I turned it’s level way, way down, and ran it through an additional reverb to further dampen and mask it’s rare appearances. so very occasionally, you hear, in the great distance, this very, very unusual sample – which I think really adds to the overall effect.
it’s often little touches like that – using a non-ambient sound in an ambient piece, and, getting away with it – that make or break pieces like this. it’s possible to just slap together a few “droney” elements and come up with reasonably interesting ambient pieces, but if you really work at it, and you search out unusual additions to your piece, that don’t seem immediately obvious (like, the use of the occasional putney warble in this piece) but in the end, you realise they make the piece utterly unique, and they push it away from being ordinary or obvious.
it’s fantastic though, that even within one sound pak, there can be enough musical variety, to create a complex ambient piece with one heavily-modified-non-ambient element – and to have it work so naturally and organically – it just worked out. I continue to shake my head in wonder at this remarkable generative music tool, and – hats off to the designers of mixtikl, wherever you are.
ambient loop guitarist dave stafford performed on stage with robert fripp and the orchestra of crafty guitarists in early
2009, and again with robert fripp and the symphony of crafty guitarists in 2015, and has worked with ambient music and looping for over twenty years. stafford has a rich back catalogue of ambient and loop music, +rock, prog or acoustic crafty guitar music: www.pureambient.com...more
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