Communing with Animal Spirits
By jegasus on May 24, 2026 11:17 pm
### Lore
You seek guidance. The Old Wise Ones can surely help. You find the right spot in the the forest and kneel down, sitting on your feet, your eyes closed. You lower your whole body and touch your forehead to the ground, your palms feeling the raw earth. Your soul calls out. Once. Twice. Three times. No response. You don't give up, though. You know this is the right place. They can't have left. They just can't. Your throat starts to clench up and your eyes begin to well with tears. They can't have left... They can't have... Then you start to hear it. So softly that, at first, you question if it's just your imagination. The sound gets louder. Not only that, but you can feel Them. Their wisdom so deep it generates a protective and soothing aura. You even feel their footsteps as they approach. An enormous brown paw touches your shoulder with unspeakable tenderness, beckoning you to get up. You abide and the spirit wraps you in a massive hug. You are safe. At least for a moment.
### Production details
Howdy folks!!!
I tried something super different this time. I was inspired by Huabun's "Descent" (from WB2026 W20) and others like PeterM and Tone Matrix (among others) who often have these super pretty improvisational sessions, so I decided to try my hand at doing the same! I thought it would also be a good way to incorporate the Expressive E Osmose synth I got a while back but rarely use in my compositions.
Since the M8 Community Jam's theme was "Animals", I wanted tried to find a bowed or fluted preset that sounded like a wounded animal in a forest pleading its hunter for mercy. But then playing around with the presets, I found this one I really liked called Arcadia Pan and shifted gears - instead of a wounded animal, I thought it made more sense to have something more spiritual and mysterious. So I started playing around in A-minor (easy to remember because it's all white keys) and after a while, I got a 1-ish minute take that felt self contained enough that I could call a song. I then put that through the M8 to add lots of reverb and OTT, then I exported it to Reaper. In Reaper, I also added another layer of the original take, but pitched up an octave.
Super happy with the results, but MAN is it hard to make a continuous take properly, holy crap! Hahahahaha... Keeping time is so, so hard!!!
Anyways, hope y'all had a great week!!!
Cheers, folks!
Audio works licensed by author under:
CC Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike (BY-NC-SA)
