I finished my track last night (and started going through others tracks to make sure there isn’t any file corruption or accidental clipping or what not–sounding great so far!)
I’ve now used field recordings and samples quite a few times in various musical things, and I think I’ve realized that my personal go to is to have them retain a lot of how they sound as they were recorded. I think I tend to treat using samples like a creative mixing challenge (and for live use–to compress them a lot and raise volume so they don’t get lost underneath other layers, especially if they have words). I also think I just enjoy the vibe of sounds that are blown-out and feel like they are played back through something less-than-hifi, heh.
For this track, I additionally added a drone under it that was in the key of a song playing in the background of one of the samples. I think that’s going to become common practice for me moving forward–adding synthesized elements in the background, so that when I play live with field recordings and samples, they fit into the vibe of what I’m doing a bit more.
Based on what I was hearing from everyone last night, I think this is going to be a really unique compilation. I’m excited to think more about the ways in which others approach the use of long-form samples and field recordings that’s different than how I do it to see if that might inform my own processes.
