Open for Collaborators - PerthAmbient Social Distancing Edition

[_VM]

Thanks for all the replies, one more slot open. DM me with your email address to get in the loop.
Cheers

[_VM]

For those interested in how this turned out:

Details in the album notes - enjoy!

[ether]

I missed this entirely thanks to the chaos

Hello from Fremantle.

[bassling]

This was fun, cheers.

Really enjoyed the relay process.

[_VM]

Edition Two currently underway!

If you are interested in collaborating, feel free to get in touch. You will become an honorary Perth citizen for the duration of your contribution, and will have your passport stamped with a couple of cool tunes afterward.

[pyrene]

Hi everyone. Really looking forward to this round The contributions from last round were great.Thanks for organising this again and happy music making

[samarobryn]

Hey fellow Westralians!

Also, I’m up for this if there’s still space?

[Arbaouti]

Hey team looking forward to use my exact function generator Type 250.

[DJKL]

Hey all! Excited to make my Perth Ambient debut I’m Kael from Ambient Zone, and I’m starting off track 2. I did some recording last night and I’m just finalising the wav to pass on to the next person, so hang tight…

[pyrene]

Hi Kael mate I’m a big fan of the show lol… I’m showing my age but I think the first time I listened was probably around 94 … when FSOL Lifeforms came out, actually… that was the album that got me in on electronic music and I heard it on Ambient zone hahah … madness! … good to have u involved

[DJKL]

Showing my age too, as that was when I first started listening, and FSOL was also a massive influence on me…along with all The Orb stuff, and I’ve always been a massive Eno-phile I can’t take credit for the show back then though, I’ve only been presenting since 2011, but I’m making up for lost time! Stoked to be on board here, just exporting my wav from Audacity now!

[pyrene]

haha awesome yep the Orb and Eno … so much great music from back then… and its great to have such a proliferation of music coming out these days! Even better having all this hardware and software thats so much more attainable (and powerful) than it used to be. Yep looking forward to getting stuck in to this project for sure. Take it easy justin

[DJKL]

I’ve really enjoyed this process so far, looking forward to hearing the end results. Just wish I had some proper bloody internet - ADSL2+ at 5mbps download and pretty much 0 upload makes life hard at the moment…

[pyrene]

Hi everyone. Quick update I’ve just send the files for the first track to Skwid for the final piece.

My thoughts : This one took me a while to be honest… so apologies for the delay I recorded a whole bunch of dreamy pads and synth stuff on the deepmind12, slept on it and then deleted it all the next day, opting to carry the torch with some darker / harsher and grittier sounds, although I couldn’t help but sneak in a little bit of cheeky toy piano, run through epic amounts of granular delay…

actually Ableton’s granular delay and “texture” playback algorithm was my main tool on this one to be honest… Theres a few cool tricks you can use to get some very interesting granular synth effects using either of Ableton’s sampler instruments. The samples I used were literally just a random beat loop sliced up and a 2 second riff on a toy piano hope you enjoy.

Take it easy.

Justin

[_VM]

Nice one. Track 1 was interesting - as the first person in the chain, i was tossing up between two approaches:
a) peppering the track’s duration with little flurries of sound to act as a thin thread/layer throughout the piece
b) opening the piece with a strong thematic statement that was much more ‘full’, and which did not continue at all past about 3 mins mark

I opted for B, because i wanted to see what would happen by passing along a more fully-formed torch, and see where other people took the idea. Sonically i wanted the sound of electricity pulsing/surging, industrial electromagnetic devices, etc.

[pyrene]

Definitely a good choice Max. The results are going to be vastly different to the first round which is great i think. Variety is the spice of life … and he who controls the spice controls the universe
I really liked that bass. Very fullsome
Have a great long weekend everyone

[DJKL]

After starting Track 2 and then getting Track 1 as third in line I was concerned that my parts were too strong and prescriptive and took up too much of the track… Max assured me that it didn’t matter, but I will probably still rein it in if I get to do another one! Weirdly Justin’s description of what got deleted sounds a lot like my parts on Track 2 (dreamy pads is my one true love) so you might have felt the “change direction vibes” through the ether…
Also weird: I think Max and I both started of in some form of F chord

[pyrene]

Track two is progressing
I really liked Kael’s pads. The separation between the beginning, middle and end is great, and the way the last is a variation of the first is nice.
I added some bass / synth tones with the korg monologue after figuring out some note progressions that fit. It was a bit touch and go to be honest and in the absence of any tempo / bmp cues (just how I like it!), I ended up programming some simple sequences (without grid-locking) and assigned them to launch buttons on the APC40 from Ableton so when Kael’s pad chords changed, I could switch sequences manually. I think I just went with octaves of C and F and a few variations of those in the end
The second section was quite different so I used the “random” clip follow action in Ableton to play some notes with various lengths and delays and recorded two takes, with different note sequences and using different settings on the monologue. It was a lot of trial and error and the FX played a big part here. I used u-he’s MFM delay plugin extensively to generate soundscapes and processed further and further to get where I needed to go It gets a bit hot, so sorry about that
I also added some field recordings of children playing, since its something we haven’t heard for a long time!
My stem is a lot louder than Kael’s, due to the layering (and I was running short of time) so hopefully that can be sorted out in the mixing process (sorry!)

Justin

[_VM]

Distance Edition II is now live.

Apologies for the delay - turns out working 12 hour days whilst doing a Masters isn’t as compatible with mixing long-form ambient music as i’d originally thought! Thanks to all involved, it was such a pleasure to hear each of your contributions come together in such a harmonious way.

I realised when listening back and mixing that at the end of Track 2 a very intriguing setup was played by Samarobryn, and it would have been a shame to leave the album hanging on that. I then noticed it was in a compatible key to the opening drone of Track 1, so I switched the order up and cut the tracks so that one bled into the other. Alas, bandcamp won’t allow me to upload the continuous version of the two songs stitched together (too big), but if anyone wants it i’ll send it to them - it’s 30 mins and just under 300 MB.

Thanks again!

[samarobryn]

Thanks so much for organising this! Was listening to the tracks yesterday and loving all those ideas and textures happening. It’s a credit to everyone that the tracks sound so smooth and integrated.