Ambient "guitar" piece... from an unexpected source...

[alan_b]

Hiya folks,

I've done a nice short piece using only the Wavelore American Zither, which I've entitled "Dark Matter I" as it is the first of a(n eventual) series of related pieces.

This was originally conceived as a "proof of concept" piece... the "concept" being that, with only minor processing, you can transform the sharp, bright dulcimer sound into a universe of real and as-yet-uninvented instruments of all shapes, sizes and timbres... which can sit quite nicely in musics of virtually any style.

In this case, I was shooting for the ambient guitar sound of artists like Roy Montgomery, Stars of the Lid, Ash Ra Tempel's Manuel Göttsching, and so on.

At the end of the day, I was rather pleased with the results... both conceptually and musically... so I passed it along to Wavelore's Belbin... and now you can hear it, and read a little bit about it, on the WLAZ home page: http://wavelore.com/demos.shtml

Playing with this library and thinking of new ways to use it rekindled some of my fun former habits from the "good old days" of electronic music, where it was so exciting to just muck about with whatever few synthesizers or electronic gizmos I could get my hands on, just to see how many new and exciting sounds I could create with whatever limited tools I had at my disposal. I've been very happy to see how much mileage I can get out of this library (and myself)...

Alan