I have been wanting to flip some of Tone Matrix wonderful piano noodles for a long time, like since my first year here in 2016, and I'm glad I finally did it. Maybe I'll try it again someday.
I'm picturing this as a bit of a springtime walk. Then stopping to change directions, smell some flowers, soak it all in before going down a new path and then just laying in the grass and gazing at the birds playing below the clouds.
‹ Production notes and stuff
I almost quit making this. If not for the short deadline and wanting to get something done, I may have. After getting started and hitting a wall, not hearing it, I realized I had some high expectations since I wanted to do this for so long. Meeting the lofty expectations unlikely in a quick weekly beat. Then I got to thinking I had to do something he and others would like and somehow approve of ... that old silly blocker we all probably encounter. I pivoted to Plan B for a while and just used the samples heavily chopped as a kind of hazy wash, unrecognizable. Then I thought hey, I really like some of these melodies as they are, and I want to hear them shine through. They are part of walk in the park. So a deep breath or 12, push out the naysaying thoughts and just move on and do my best with what I have. It was fun working on it and I enjoy the walk in the springtime.
Some process stuff:
First thing, I took his track and picked out some loops, adjusted timing a little, warp to grid ... I thought at one point his song was in 5/4, didn't want to attempt that, but tempting. Sliced my faved loops to Simplr in Ableton and played new parts on the Push.
Picked out a few of those things, and the original loops that sounded good and played drums along with them, that was fun. I needed to play some drums this week. My happy place.
Then listening back I panicked and thought I need to quit, as I said above.
So 12 deep breaths and a good night sleep later, did the arrangement, had to pick just my favorite parts. Went about experimenting, making it sound like something it would end up sounding like. Tried some new Puremagnetik plugins to tweak audio, as well as some other plugins. It can start to be a tricky game with multiple devices (especially new ones I don't know much about) stacked up, slowing performance down and getting some mysterious happy and less happy accidents happening, but hey, fun to live on the edge. I think more tweaks could be made, but here's a version. Had some ideas to try some guitar chords or strings, but resisted that urge, try to keep it simple.
The vocal sample was sitting in the project I already had open from trying something else, so I decided to use it. Nice when they just kind of appear on their own.
