I was inspired by the idea that a solstice is both a minimum and a maximum (globally), coupled with the initial suggestion to use a single instrument. So I wanted to see how much music (maximum) I could get out of a single sustained note (minimum). I wanted it to be fairly consonant and to expand in a kind of branching way.
I initially imagined using what I thought of as a pitched delay, where each repetition of the sound would be raised or lowered by a given amount, to build the vertical structure. I made several attempts to build one in Max/M4L, and was finally successful, when I found that there was already such a beast in the tutorial devices! I ended up using that one, set up in an effects rack, coupled with a ping-pong delay I had built a while back (the native Live one has some limitations I don’t like).
Initially, I imagined several waves of this kind of thing weaving in and out of each other, building over time, but as I worked through the different approaches that I had taken, I realized that one of my initial tracks was pretty much exactly what I had had in mind, just shorter. Voila!
Thanks, all, for your welcomingness (izzattaword?) and support. I’m so grateful to participate in this community.
