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WeeklyBeats.com / Music / sleepside's music / Meeting a Deer God on Yonah Mountain

Meeting a Deer God on Yonah Mountain

By sleepside on May 24, 2026 11:59 pm

This is inspired by a hike in which my wife and I saw a deer less than 20 feet (6 meters) away from us, totally unbothered by our presence, majestic in the golden hour light. We both agreed it must have been a deer god.

The bridge directly uses part of the 1928 recording of Vaughn Williams's "The Lark Ascending." (In the USA, this recording is considered public domain).

Other than this, I have used Christian Hansen's Tunnel Bodhran sample pack for low drum, noise for snare, my own lyre for the main lyre part, a triangle synth bass, an FM-based organ, my own recording of a rainy forest, and bone and bug sounds from MrdrCat

Audio works licensed by author under:
CC Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike (BY-NC-SA)

Seeing that deer (god) in person must have been a really cool experience.  The music has a bit of a low-key feel, but there's still a sense of majesty, magic, and wonder.  I like the field recordings of the nature sounds.  They provide a nice ambience.  I'm guessing the strings that came in are from the sampled recording?  They fit in seamlessly with this piece and were a nice addition.

Sweet folky/prog vibes from the lyre and organ (amazing patch!). The percussion gives it a bit of a filmic vibe.
When the strings come it's just absolutely magical, feels so natural. It's as if they were written and recorded for this piece. It al fits in beautiful with the background story. Lovely work!

Cosmic Cairns wrote:

Seeing that deer (god) in person must have been a really cool experience.  The music has a bit of a low-key feel, but there's still a sense of majesty, magic, and wonder.  I like the field recordings of the nature sounds.  They provide a nice ambience.  I'm guessing the strings that came in are from the sampled recording?  They fit in seamlessly with this piece and were a nice addition.

Thank you! The lowkey-into-majestic move was what I was hoping to do, so I'm glad that came through. You're right, the strings are from the classical sample.

Dustsucker wrote:

Sweet folky/prog vibes from the lyre and organ (amazing patch!). The percussion gives it a bit of a filmic vibe.
When the strings come it's just absolutely magical, feels so natural. It's as if they were written and recorded for this piece. It al fits in beautiful with the background story. Lovely work!

Thank you! The transition to the string sample was the part I was most uncertain about, so I'm glad it worked. I need to dig more into prog-folk, but I'm a big fan of Comus and of the Decemberists album "Hazards of Love"

(Happy to share the organ patch if you're interested. I meant to share the bundle here, but it is already in the Jam 53 submissions thread)

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