One Moment

[jonetsu]

A short piece also revolving around piano/synth and bass. Laid back.

https://soundcloud.com/nominal6/one-moment

jam770.jpg (6.28 KiB) Viewed 713 times

[milo]

I like it. A very chill piece

[jeanette_c]

Hey @jonetsu , I love the dreamy atmosphere. Nice arrangement of the fretless, piano and the synth strings. Did you use a loop for the drums again? Lovely, jazzy sound for the cymbals.

[Basslint]

It reminded me of Talk Talk, a great band.

[jonetsu]

Thanks for the comments. I have heard of the name Talk Talk, not their music. At the technical level this piece has pianoteq's piano as solo piano and MSoundFactory's sampled piano for chords, two instances of Loomer's String synth as piano solo backup, one with a string sound he other with a more synthier sound, u-he's Hive as pads, and an instance of Bitwig's sampler for a percussion transition. On the wine/linvst front, a rediscovered Morphine (Image Line) as fretless bass as well as another instance for a pad. Yes, the drums are from loops, namely the Loop Loft Brushes vol.1, "jazz ballad" to which is added a loop of percussion from the recent Perimeter Sounds "Little Ambient" collection. Recorded in Bitwig, mixed and mastered using Mixbus32C. Xubuntu 18.04. As audio processing for the creative stage there's MTurboReverb, MDoubleTracker and Psychic Modulation's Undertow for some delay. At the mixing level there's the Mixbus32C EQs and compressors, plus Auburn Sounds' excellent Panagement (Linux native, the author has dropped a word about it here) for stereo imaging. At the mastering stage only MturboCompressor was used. All plugins starting with an 'M' are from Melda Production in Czechoslovakia.

Nothing much more. Perhaps the only note is that the Bitwig sampler was used to extend a brush noise in order to absorb the audio drop made by a drum loop abruptly terminating. I initially fired up Redux (Linux native) but considering the simplicity of what was to be done, I reverted to Bitwig's sampler. At the creation stage, there were many Linux native plugins, notably also rediscovering the sounds of Loomer's String synth.

Thanks for listening.

Cheers.

[oscillator]

It reminded me of Talk Talk, a great band.

Yes, I thought of them too! They used a fretless bass too, this sounds like some of their later stuff. Maybe the bass is a bit too loud in the mix?

There is an asian vibe in it which I like! Relaxing track, without being boring.

[jonetsu]

@oscillator: Thanks for the comment ! The problem with the bass standing out more than it should was mostly with the compression at the mastering stage. Which makes me think I should try using the Mixbus32C built-in compressor on a master track one of these days. So I removed the compression and added Voxengo's newly released TEOTE (hmmm, stands for 'That's Easier On The Ears') to balance everything just a bit, then added u-he Presswerk (Linux native) limiter. I think it's a bit better now, I replaced the original file on soundcloud.

But the general problem remains for me, still have to find more about that: how to level the loudness of a piece so that it reasonably falls in the expected range for the listener (not having to adjust the volume between different tunes, basically) while still respecting the atmosphere of the original piece.

@all: Is there a piece or two by Talk Talk to recommend for me to listen to ?

Cheers.

[oscillator]

But the general problem remains for me, still have to find more about that: how to level the loudness of a piece so that it reasonably falls in the expected range for the listener (not having to adjust the volume between different tunes, basically) while still respecting the atmosphere of the original piece.

I think you should concentrate on sounding good to you/the way you want it. People listen in so many ways and different places.

@all: Is there a piece or two by Talk Talk to recommend for me to listen to ?

These two albums:
The Color of Spring: https://youtu.be/j6e7ttprEpM
Spirit of Eden: https://youtu.be/HSfGvuiFOWI
These are the later ones. My favorite is the "It's my life" album, but that is more 80s synth pop. Mark Hollis, the singer, unfortunately died not long ago.

[Basslint]

These two albums:
The Color of Spring: https://youtu.be/j6e7ttprEpM
Spirit of Eden: https://youtu.be/HSfGvuiFOWI
These are the later ones. My favorite is the "It's my life" album, but that is more 80s synth pop. Mark Hollis, the singer, unfortunately died not long ago.

There is also Laughing Stock from 1991. I think @jonetsu will quite enjoy all of them, given that they are highly appreciated even among prog rock fans (http://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=1129). I would go as far as saying that if one enjoys their latter, more experimental albums, they should check out at the very least "It's my life" which is no conventional pop record, although it's more in line with what the other post-punk bands were doing at the time.

I was truly saddened by Mark Hollis' death, he retired at the top of his game to care for his family and I think that was a very noble action from a very noble person. A few years before his death he finally got some of the recognition he deserved for kick-starting the whole post-rock movement and some of his albums got into some "best of all times" lists.

[oscillator]

I was truly saddened by Mark Hollis' death, he retired at the top of his game to care for his family and I think that was a very noble action from a very noble person. A few years before his death he finally got some of the recognition he deserved for kick-starting the whole post-rock movement and some of his albums got into some "best of all times" lists.

I truly admire him for that decision (familiy over career), and that is one path I have followed in life myself, to the best of my abilities.

The Talk Talk records have meant a lot to me, personally, from the start.