I’m struggling to be creative again. A work project that is pushing me way out of my usual sphere of expertise, the imminent arrival of darker, colder, wetter months and a hundredweight of thoughts are not helping.

This piece is not reflective of my usual work, but is an attempt to put down a aural example of just how my mind is working right now. I’m OK, but I really miss my more prolific bursts of sonic output. Where did it all come from and where did it all go?

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A Hundredweight Of Thoughts.mp3
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This simple piece was made during late yesterday evening and finished in the small hours of this morning.

On a personal level, I have been trying to reach the light at the end of what has felt like a never ending tunnel of darkness, hence the lack of output for many months. Thankfully, the thoughts and sounds in my head are getting brighter and more uplifting as the days move on.

September, usually a month I dread for a few reasons, has unusually been a month of reawakening.

Using Ableton Live and a few home-made Absynth patches, this is how it all sounds to me.

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Reawaken.mp3
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This piece is my initial attempt to play with decaying and distortion effects to create a delicate dirty brittle and melancholic sound. I’ve taken a small loop of a monophonic brass instrument recording and created several loops with slightly different start and end points. I’ve then layered them adding decay and distortion of varying amounts to each single layer and groups of layers. It’s a shift away from my lusher soundscapes.

It almost sounds like it’s from analogue tape. Tape is a medium I’d like to experiment with. I think this would be a richer piece for it.

It’s something that suits my mood right now.

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Brittle.mp3
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Just a little announcement to let you know that my latest release ‘hiemal’ is now available to download for free from Bandcamp. Grab it while you can as Bandcamp does limit the number of free versions.

There is something about the end of winter that lifts my mood and has my mind daydreaming of better days ahead.

However, it’s also the time when all the bugs and colds seem to flourish. You go to bed feeling fine, have a restless night (no change there) and awake in a totally blocked up state.

I have a sore throat, raspy cough, headache, super-loud tinnitus and a general wish to stay in bed.

So with my coldhead, I quickly made this representation of the sound of the inside of my head when I woke and the mood I am in because of it.

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Coldhead.mp3
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A restless night with lucid dreams led to my being wide awake at 6am. This piece was an attempt to make something that would help me drift back off into some kind of slumber.

The birds were beginning their dawn chorus, but I didn’t really want to have to go outside and record them, so I searched online for something I could use. The background birdsong sample used is from http://www.freesound.org/people/klankbeeld/sounds/117113/. It’s a lovely dawn recording of a Dutch village, yet it closely resembled the sounds eminating from the garden into the bedroom. This helped me stay warm, for which I am grateful, but alas sleep never returned.

Maybe it will prove useful to you as an aid, easing into these tail-end of winter mornings?

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Early Bird.mp3
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My creative juices are not quite as flowing as they sometimes can be so in the early hours of the morning as a light flurry of snow was settling outside, I decided to try and make something generative in Ableton Live using a Max for Live step sequencer and its randomisation feature. Just like the individual snowflakes, as each note landed and was captured the overall piece seems to have a natural feel to it.

Hope you think so too?

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Snowfall.mp3
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Spurred on by yesterday’s little piece, I turned my attention to using a couple of single second samples of Judie Tzuke’s vocal, from the magical Stay With Me Till Dawn, to create a gentle lullaby soundscape. Made in the early hours, just before the sun came up.

All done in Ableton Live using multiple instances of Simpler and internal effects.

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Alba.mp3
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It feels like a slow start to 2012 and I need the light to improve and yearn for the daylight hours to be just a little brighter. The darkling is getting to me. Here’s how it sounds.

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Darkling.mp3
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Happy New Year to you all.

Unable to sleep, with my brain a little fuzzy, I’ve noodled with an old track in Ableton Live and used it to make something new that reflects my head on this first day of 2012.

I hope it eases you into the new year.

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New Year’s Day.mp3
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