[LAU] In Good Time - deep ambient track

[Dave Phillips]

Mark Knecht wrote:
> Quite a piece of music ... Would love to know more about how you did it.
>   

Hi Mark,

Sure, I'll unveil the mystery. :)

I usually begin my work with a more or less complete vision of the 
effect I'm after. In this case I wanted to make a long piece, relatively 
calm on its surface but with interesting and surprising internal 
activity. I knew what sort of "character" I wanted it to have, and I had 
a definite idea about a starting-point.

My first plan was to record the first 8 measures of John Dowland's 
Lachrimae Antiquae with my guitar and then use that recording as source 
material for a series of permutations in Csound/AVSynthesis. No problems 
there, except the result was not what I wanted. The recording was fine, 
it just didn't fit in with my plan.

Last Sunday I spent a chunk of the day listening to classics of 
tape/electronic/computer music. While rummaging through my collection I 
found a recording of the Dowland piece by the Kronos Quartet. I loved 
the sound of their tuning - I think it's in just intonation - and 
realized that their performance included characteristics I desired in 
the source material. So sound source #1 comes from the first 8 bars of 
the piece as played by the Kronos band. Source #2 is simply #1 in 
reverse. I used Rubberband to time-stretch those two sources to 300 
seconds each. Btw, they're very beautiful just "as-is" after the stretch.

Sound source #3 is a piece by Harold Budd (First Light) played in 
reverse, with no time-stretch or other alteration.

Once I had my sound sources prepared they were ready for setting into 
AVSynthesis. AVS is the Special Sauce here at Studio Dave, it does the 
heavy lifting for mixing and signal processing. Frankly, the settings I 
use in AVS are too complicated to go into here, so I'll just say that 
the parameters for the waveguide filter and global reverb are under 
constant modulation. The arrangement of modulation is extensive and not 
haphazard, and there are numerous planned relationships between the 
tracks. Sorry, it's hard to explain, though easy enough to do.

The piece is in three sections. The first two are 5 minutes long, the 
third - a brief coda - lasts a little more than 30 seconds. The mix is 
rather complex and took the greatest amount of time to get it where I 
wanted it.

It all sounds simple enough, and in some respects it is very simple. In 
others, not so simple. The piece is experimental in some parts of its 
design (modulation), rigidly deterministic in others (mixture and 
arrangement).

The tricks are in the mix. :)

I hope that explains at least a little bit about how I sometimes work 
with AVS. Other works are more deterministic and concern themselves with 
detail at the note level, others - like this piece - have a broader concern.

HTH, but I don't like talking about music, so I've probably explained my 
processes badly. Well, I tried. ;)

Best,

dp