Thanks very much for checking this out, Frantz. I wanted to make something a little more relaxing than my regular tracks, so maybe I have succeeded, to some degreeFrantz wrote:A relaxing piece. The guitar and bass are very well integrated with the synths. These instruments give it an organic feel. I am hoping to hear more guitar and bass in future pieces.
The composition is quite mellow. There is a unchanging, underlying part (except when muted at the midpoint) over which additional instruments are added. For me, this combination of mellowness and sameyness makes it work like background, ambient music. Not a bad thing but it tends to fly under my mental radar unless I intentionally focus on it.
The Vangelis-type synth that first appears at 1:39 has some harsh high frequencies at the peak of the filter envelope of every note. Listening at low volume helps minimize this.
I think the guitar and bass worked fairly well (apart from my playing, which has been characterised as sloppy). I think those sounds work quite well in this format, but probably less so in my more uptempo pieces. I have got some ideas for more guitar parts in the future, but they involve varying degrees of processing, which means that the casual listener might not even recognise them as guitar, although I won't be able to fool you guys, and I doubt that "casual" people listen to my stuff anyway.
I hear what you're saying regarding the mellow, sameyness on here. I thought that it suited the style, and I guess I have been paying quite a lot of attention to ambient music over the last 18 months. I'm working on a couple of new pieces at the moment, one of them much livelier, and the other, a darker, ambient/cinematic piece.
I'm probably going to remix this one later in the year anyway. I always refer back to these KVR threads before starting so I'll bear your comments regarding that Phonec patch in mind.