Mrs. Miracle Miles and I were hanging out one night talking about and listening to meditation mantras as people sometimes do. The Apple Music bot then played us a lovely version of Om Asato Ma Sadgamaya (I'll add hear if I find which one). The ancient sanskrit mantra has nice meaning which can be read here: http://www.greenmesg.org/mantras_slokas/vedas-om_asato_ma_sadgamaya.php.

Mrs MM wanted to try singing it so into the studio we went. I played a slow pattern on the drumkit, mostly toms, then another in the Djembe. Recorded both with one overhead mic. Looped that and she sang the vocals heard here.
This week I decided to finish it. Kept all the live drums and picked a vocal take or two to loop and slice. Warped and sped everything up from 72 to 109 bpm. I sliced the vocals, live drums and djembe recordings up on the Push into Simpler and tapped out some additional parts. Lowered the vocal a step or two, duplicated on another track and added the Live's Filterbank vocoder (wanted to play around with the vox sound more, but if it ain't broke, play with drums I always say). Then added some parts using sampled instruments from Behr's Santuri Safari Live pack. Lovely sounds he captured on a trip to Africa, read about it and download here: (http://emilehoogenhout.com/santuri-safari/). I used his Endere flutes, Adungu strings and Ohanga drums (the drum part with the stick hits and the only drum sounds here not from my live recordings). I also utilized some of his pack's cool arp and delay presets. Was not feeling motivated to get something finished all week, but got inspired by the thought of working on something that represented a moment with a loved one. I hope to tap into that source of inspiration again and repeat the experience many more times.

Tags: 109bpm, ableton, african, djembe, drums, live, mantra, sanskrit, vocals, week 7 2016, View by:miraclemiles