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the so​-​called silent forest

from music for apps: drone fx - an eternal album by dave stafford

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“the so-called silent forest”


track: 02

recorded: 20140105

duration: 21:17

type: ambient

tempo: 34 bpm

chords: Dsus2 Em Bm Em D

mixer sounds:

01 Pads: Blue
02 Effects: Distant
03 Bowed: Mod Bows
04 Pads: Shimmer
05 Pads: Warm Pad


next, for my second drone fx composition, I started fresh, with a new tempo, a new set of five carefully chosen sounds, and with a new chord progression, this time, a real chord progression (see above).

this is the first time I’d created a new drone fx session “from scratch” while recording (since track 1 re-used an existing set of instructions) and it was incredibly quick and easy to do – just select each instrument, select the chord sequence, select how many times each chord repeats (one, two, or three times), set the tempo - and you are ready to go.

I did run a quick test just to check my levels, and to also make sure that none of the voices I’d chosen were too annoying, and while the track played, I just felt so relaxed and utterly mesmerised by it, even though it’s more dissonant that “…in those quiet spaces” it still has an extremely ambient feel to it, enough so that I felt it relaxing me and telling me to sleep, sleep…

this is actually a real problem that ambient musicians face (all 51 of us) – when you create so very much ambient music, and you have to listen back to it, at length, whilst mixing and mastering – I often find that the more serene, beautiful ambient pieces tend to make me feel very, very sleepy, they can be incredibly relaxing, and I often have to fight the urge to take a cat nap at the mixing desk!

one of the other challenges when recording a piece like this live to digital is finding a good place to “end” the track. often, generative pieces will play phrases that gradually fade to silence, to with practice, you can quickly fade your piece when one of those fortuitously comes along. that works great – except when no suitable space comes along! that happened during the recording of this track, originally, I had intended for it to be about 9 minutes in length.

when the recording got to about 8:35, there was a great fade spot – but I didn’t use it, because I wanted at least nine minutes. of course, then, no other fade spot appeared – so I just let it continue recording. and recording…and recording. finally, in the 21st minute, a suitable spot appeared, and I was able to quick fade the track and capture a natural ending – which I would ALWAYS rather do, than “fade” a track during mixing – that’s a last resort.

I always want the ending to be tool generated, not manually faded, whenever possible. in this case, I am actually really glad that the piece ran long, because I love the content, I love the chord progression, I love the sound of the samples – and I think that drone fx did a great job on these two pieces – and I am very excited about creating more, because these first attempts have turned out well far beyond my expectations – it’s not just a good ambient generative application – it’s a great one.

the mood that the tool creates on these two pieces is undeniable, it screams “ambient” – and, the kind of ambient that I think of, pure ambient, although I believe, like mixtikl, (and unlike scape), drone fx has louder, non-ambient sounds in it too, but we shall see about that – I’d be very interested to see if, again, like mixtikl, it’s possible to create active pieces using it. I think from the evidence of these first two tracks, that drone fx rightfully deserves equal standing with it’s two biggest competitors, scape and mixtikl, and I will need to get used to saying “scape, mixtikl and drone fx” when talking about the main generative tools that we use at pureambient!

no more “scape and mixtikl”, it’s the three musketeers now, I have a new mantra: “scape, mixtikl and drone fx” – if you repeat that like a mantra, you can almost hear an incredibly atmospheric, ambient piece playing in your head…

as 2013 was the year of scape & mixtikl, so 2014 shall be the year of drone fx. of course, I will always create with all three tools, but since drone fx is new to us, it’s only fair to build up a catalogue of songs similar to the way I’ve done with the other two apps – and these two are a cracking start to that task!

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instrumental

credits

from music for apps: drone fx - an eternal album, released January 17, 2014
dave stafford: drone fx application, treatments

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dave stafford Stirling, UK

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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