muted tones

finished.

november 28th, 2003

I finished the track over the course of the past couple evenings and mixed it and everything today. It turned out a lot different than I thought it would in the beginning, but I’m really happy with it overall. My entry below (November 25th) explains a lot of the inspiration behind it, but there are some other things that I thought I’d detail a little more.

First off, I want to thank Josh @ mutedtones for giving me the chance to create a piece for the project. It’s a super cool idea and I’m happy to be a part of it. I only hope that what I’ve contributed is interesting…

Secondly, the whole project was a great experience for me overall. I tinker around working on music a lot (both on my own and part of the group Marianas), but rarely seem to actually finish anything. Having a timeline was helpful for me, and it’s something I’m going to do in the future. I need to give myself deadlines and at least try to stick to them.

I know I mentioned in my earlier entry below that it was going to be a headphone track, and after listening to the mixed-down version on several sets of headphones and speakers (including a small set connected to my computer), I want to reiterate that statement. It still worked and sounded like I wanted it to on the small speakers, but definitely gives more of the experience I was intending when listened to on either larger speakers (with some bass response) or headphones.

Lastly, I know that some people will wonder why I used a field recording of a thunderstorm to start the track when it’s supposed to be a winter-esque sound. One of the reasons I did this was because the night the temperature really changed here (where I live), we had a thunderstorm and a lot of rain and it was on my mind when I started working on the track. The other reason I used it is because I simply thought it sounded cool. Heh.

Anyway, I hope the above doesn’t sound too pretentious. If you’ve read through all this, I thank you and hope you enjoy the track.

I always welcome comments, good or bad…

coming along

november 25th, 2003

Well, I thought I’d made another entry a couple weeks ago, but apparently I made a mistake in entering and this will be my first entry.

Obviously, there’s only about a week until the track will go up on the site, so I guess I should explain my motivation and inspiration for starting it out.

After starting about 5 different tracks and completely scrapping them (just wasn’t feeling it), I actually got inspired by the weather here. Things had been unseasonably warm up until just over a week ago, then we finally got a cold snap. Walking out into the brisk air one evening, I remembered that one of my favorite things to do to clear my head is to simply put on a pair of headphones with some appropriate music and walk around at night in the cold weather (snow underfoot is a bonus).

With that in mind, I started about creating a (hopefully) lush and dense track that will be a nice accompaniment to walking around with headphones on (under a stocking cap) at night during these winter days. It will hopefully sound interesting enough listening to it through computer speakers, but to really get the true effect, it should be burnt to CD and listened to as above…

More soon…