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Monthly Archives: December 2009

Away In a Manger

December 25, 2009
Holiday, Single Tracks

Download courtesy of loopproject.com

According to Wikipedia, this song has origins in American hymnals from the late 1800′s.  Though those hymnals tried to attribute the song to Martin Luther, it appears to be a lyric composed by an American and set to a Scottish melody.  I know of at least three melodies for this song, so in my piece I have attempted to include them all.  Notice how they all have waltz time, and all sound like they could easily be played as bagpipe marches; perhaps one could argue that this is a medley of unknown Scottish folk songs.

Darkest Night of the Year

December 24, 2009
Holiday, Single Tracks

Download courtesy of loopproject.com

In a global culture that gradually moves itself toward 24-hour days that are, on a vast majority, spent indoors, the aspect that maintains our agricultural sense of the harvest is the collection of holidays celebrated around the world between October and January. It is no coincidence that Christmas is four days after Winter Solstice, and that we celebrate the beginnings of hope for a better life and a better world on the darkest night of the year.
An interpretation of Stille Nacht by Josef Moht and Franz Xaver Gruber.

I made this for SounDevotion’s holiday-themed round 34 last year.  There’ll be another for this year too.

Broken Machine

December 12, 2009
Single Tracks
3 Comments


Download from battleofthebits.org

A garbled wall of happy ambience, made for the Battle of the Bits’ Ann Arbor 8 mix contest.  The samples for this mix were very lush and large.  The lesson I take from this round is that the lush samples can do a lot of work if you leave a lot of space in the mix for them, otherwise, they have to be filtered, thinned, and chopped down so that the big sounds don’t beat each other up.  Just as a composer should work with a variety of sounds and styles, a good mix should have a good range of sounds- small. medium, and large.

Congratulations to µB who won the contest by creating a very fun song from the same pallette of sounds.

Found, At the Edge of the Forest

December 1, 2009
Single Tracks

Download courtesy of loopproject.com

This came in second in SounDevotion competition, round 44!

A snow flurry invites a walk, but a devil lurks in the woods.

A semi-orchestral progressive background music kind of piece.

This time around I accidentally rediscovered something I read somewhere a long time ago- slight delay can help individual parts (especially unison parts) stand out in a mix where playing the parts dead-on exact may make them disappear into each other, even when panned apart.

Enjoy!

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