This morning I woke and noticed that a Twitter creative favourite of mine, @mapmap, had posted a recording of a rather sweet and wonderfully self-crafted Music Box. As I began to wake from slumber I opened up Live and started to see how much I could harness the beauty of the sound he had made and manage to hold on to its essence for a longer period.

Firstly I recommend that you check it out via his blog (and then stay for a long while on his site to look though his many inventive and beautiful posts). Then come back to this…

So this ambient drone, is the result. Turn out the lights, put headphones on at a lower volume, lay down and relax. It sent me back to REM sleep.

I hope you like it? I hope he does too!

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Lull.mp3
Lull 96kbps.mp3

Work and other technical hitches seem to have hogged my last 24 hours. After very little sleep, I decided to play around with the Lithuanian Eurovision entry and this rather short odd drone evolved. I thought of extending it, but I think I need to shift the mood away from the tone of my most recent pieces to a lighter place, if you know what I mean?

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Lithuania.mp3
Lithuania 96kbps.mp3

After a wonderful weekend, I am alone again for a few days and this always makes me become quite reflective and in search of some quieter place, mentally. For a couple of weeks I have struggled to find a sample from the UK Eurovision entry that worked well.

Early this morning, I found a small snippet that when treated to a reverbed graincloud effect, seemed to perfectly match my mood.

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United Kingdom.mp3
United Kingdom 96kbps.mp3

Apologies, but I am off-line for the weekend. It’s a combination of lovely company, warm sunshine and a need to upgrade WordPress. I will be noodling with sounds later this evening so expect something new tomorrow. Thanks, J

Not having much time today to be creative I spent my lunch looking for a single sweet sound from the Croatian entry and this was the result. Pure and simple.

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Croatia.mp3
Croatia 96kbps.mp3

Made this in my lunch-hour. It’s a rising wall of sound. One small but rich sample from the Azerbaijan Eurovision entry has been layered over and over with tons of reverb, maybe a little too much? ;) I then played it over a few octaves to create this almost stellar-like sound. All done within Ableton Live.

I know this is the second piece today, but it’s too difficult for me not to share it straight away. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did making it?

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Azerbaijan.mp3
Azerbaijan 96kbps.mp3

The French entry was difficult as I really had to delve into the overall waveform to find something I liked. In the end, I managed to create a very simple, but sweet electronic lullaby. Its rhythm seems to fit in with the pattern of the rain outside that is falling upon the rooftops. It’s a shame I can’t include that too. I have no decent mic. :(

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France.mp3
France 96kbps.mp3

Next for re-working is the Icelandic entry, which I thought was one of the better songs from this year. Once again, I feel I have to push it as far away from its origins as I can. This piece has a strange, almost mechanical/electrical feel to it. Everything you can hear is the gathering of some really high-end harmonics that fizz and crackled when run through some Live effects.

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Iceland.mp3
Iceland 96kbps.mp3

Back to the Eurovision series we go then. This time it’s Denmark that gets the treatment. Forgive the rather obvious Beat Repeat effect from Ableton Live, but I like how it worked on this one. Anything is going to sound better than a Danish crooner with a Ronan Keatingesque tone to his voice? At least I hope so!

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Denmark.mp3
Denmark 96kbps.mp3

Here is the tenth zip file containing the latest ten tracks posted. I guess this is a bit of a milestone!

There are two zip files, one for lower bitrate MP3s and the other for the rather better 320kbps files.

All of the tracks here are free for you to download.

Thank you for your continued support.

091 to 100 – 96kbps – zip file (22Mb)

091 to 100 – 320kbps – zip file (92Mb)