River works

I finally got to work in the studio again. It's been quite a busy time lately and making music came last in line. Today I worked mostly on the K146 project. I now have some five parts that I work on and which I will or will not glue together later on. I am contemplating whether I should just present them as tableaux vivants in separate parts. That would make sense since each of those five parts concentrates on one (or two) original recordings. One particular place that I worked today was Combe au Moulin.

The original water recording was edited with a ducking technique and then reverberated with the special DFX Transverb. Think of it like a tape loop with two independently-moving read heads. There are a lot of parameters that can be controlled and a parameter randomizer for the impatient. I was able to extract a cool ringing sound from it. After that a second movement focused on further layering that recording with harmonized subchords. It seemed to magically come together.

Below are three short samples of the mix:
First is a sample of the first rework of the original. I have used a noise gate to cut out all of the more silent parts and thus enhance the loud parts of the running water [ listen ]
Secondly I added the transverb into the mix [ listen ]
Thirdly you can hear the transition from the first section into the second part where I start working with harmonic layers of the original recording. [ listen ]


Another work started with the recording of a bird. This recording was at the Dognon. There's actually no water sound in this piece but I guess it was recorded somewhere on a slow streaming part a bit off the bank. The call of the bird was isolated and then repeated. After a while a heavily filtered version of a river recording shows up. Interestingly in the original recording it's most of all the water that you hear. In this filtered version you can hear cows mooing in the distance.. funny.

Listen to a provisional mix [ here ]