Album: Kadonneet Maat (atmospheric organic techno)

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Four or five years ago I realised I want to lay the project I have been releasing music under for almost 20 years to rest. I had to break free from a lot of manners I had developed.

http://kadonneetmaat.bandcamp.com

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I embarked on a journey of learning, diving into music and DSP theory, modular systems and so on. It was a very healthy period of time when I could focus almost full-time on music, gardening and spending time in nature. It was very liberating to not think of releasing anything for years.

An album did grow out of those experiments however, and finally it's out. Now I'm back to the city, a father, and have a full-time job, so a project like this won't be possible anytime soon.

I used many acoustic instruments and modular effects of my own design on the album to give it an unified and unique sound. (for Bitwig users, many of the fx can be found in the user library btw). Most of the pads and atmospherics are built from my own recording sessions.

I have also dropped VST plugins almost completely in favour of creating everything with Bitwig native devices. Some things like Kontakt libraries have no alternative since NI is very aggressive towards attempts to create a converter for their format, which is sad. For the reverbs I used Valhalla Room a lot, and I use some Zynaptiq stuff for specialised DSP that can't be achieved otherwise. I did use some of my own analog gear, but not so much for this album because I was interested in finding out what's the inherent sound of Bitwig in itself. I also used some great hardware remotely through Access Analog and Mix Analog. There are a few sounds from Composer Cloud, but I had to drop it because Ilok is such a problem under Linux.

I have never spent so much time in polishing the details of an album, and I'm very content with the result. I hope you'll enjoy them too!

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atmospheric organic techno
Definitely atmospheric and organic! 'Techno' - such a widely used term now in so many different ways that I'm NOT gonna comment!

Listened the whole way through all the tracks...they just dragged me in...that has to be a good thing!

1.Prologi - Kuiluun
Loved it...just too short!

2.Ruoste
Like all the tracks - plenty of variation and development...loved the passionate vocals at the end.

3.Lumilla
Effective change of mood after the dense 2nd track - much lighter in touch overall. Loved the metallic percussion sounds, especially the hang drum - if that was 'live' ...a sod to record...tried a few times!

4.Vetten
Much more minimalist and hypnotic - again a nice change of focus...loved the soaring Vangelis-esque brass sounds

5.Kadonneet maat
An almost folk song edge to this one for me? OK - until the 3rd minute when it goes into progressive territory...shades of YES! Dramatic change after this into the more spacey, female vocal led section. Lovely 'heavy' build up towards that dropped ending.

6.Kiteet
Here we have some 4 on the floor!!! Psychedelic Techno indeed! Mind-bending...consider my mind bent! Well needed change after 3 mins...that first section was intense!

7.Epilogi - Eläinten poluilla
Such warm, rounded opening sounds - awesome! The 'flute' led, gentle finale was spot on!

Amongst the contrasting, multi-faceted ideas there is a definite, strong musical identity here - shines through each and every track. Production is excellent - warm yet tight...dynamic, yet well controlled.

Very impressed (and I rarely say that nowadays)

One of the very best things I've ever heard on KVR and I've been on and off here for 12 years+ in total!

Purchased - will listen again!!!
Mark Taylor, Chameleon Music - Professional composition and sound design for all media since 1994.

https://www.chameleonmusic.co.uk/

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Thank you very much for that beautiful review, I rarely see people on forums go through the trouble anymore! Maybe it's just my nostalgia, but I recall that before Facebook etc people were more active in commenting on music here...

I'm so glad to read that, since that confirms that at least for some people the composition and presentation of the whole package works as I hoped.

I tried to walk that very fine line between being experimental, easy to approach, and avoiding too clearly defined genre cliques. You're right, that "techno" there was just advertising since the word does not really mean everything :)

Here's instruments used on the album that I've designed and built.
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I rarely see people on forums go through the trouble anymore! Maybe it's just my nostalgia, but I recall that before Facebook etc people were more active in commenting on music here...
You're correct - that's sadly my experience as well on a lot of forums...truth is that I don't really bother with them very much at all nowadays, but still keep coming here occasionally as I 'know' and respect quite a few old regulars!
I tried to walk that very fine line between being experimental, easy to approach, and avoiding too clearly defined genre cliques.
You succeeded!

Instruments - wow! I appreciate those as I have a pretty decent collection (acquired rather than made in my case) which I use in pieces as much as possible...everything from traditional djembes, udus and balaafons to a Chinese zither, a Radong Dungchen Trunk Dunchen (Tibetan trumpet) and a 200+ year old didgeridoo created the traditional way - live eucalyptus branch hollowed out by termites!

Bottom middle / right - Kantele?

Top right = water-phones, I think?

Top middle - what is that? Don't recognise it at all.
Mark Taylor, Chameleon Music - Professional composition and sound design for all media since 1994.

https://www.chameleonmusic.co.uk/

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Well they were supposed to be kanteles, but I didn't know so much about them so they are closer to zithers of the rest of Europe. The kantele does not have a bridge traditionally, and the attachment of the string is different than the anglo-saxon sources give. The way I started building instruments was that I checked out some photos, googled around and started building :D I haven't even seen in life many of the things I have been making. Also a major of these were made between 2006-2011 when there were less good Internet resources and communities available.

Yes, there's waterphones, figuring out the materials and construction of them was a bit tricky indeed since very little in-depth information exists!

Top middle is my own experimental design, an aluminum kantele that is actually by design quite close to the most traditional ones. That means an "wing" construction without an enclosed body. It's half art object and was a very experimental design, so there's some weird design brain farts like those holes in the soundboard 🙄 If I'd have the time, workshop and funds I'd like to further that design for sure.

The way I actually work with these a lot is just to sample some sounds that I like and just edit the samples directly on the Bitwig timeline instead of mapping them into the sampler device. This way I can use time stretch and more accurate volume and pitch envelopes, altough this works really the best for long notes or sparse melodies because otherwise changing anything gets quite messy.

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Top middle is my own experimental design, an aluminum kantele that is actually by design quite close to the most traditional ones.
Got it..I can see the strings now I've enlarged the photo!
Mark Taylor, Chameleon Music - Professional composition and sound design for all media since 1994.

https://www.chameleonmusic.co.uk/

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A very convincing album. Rich, deep sound to it all.

I enjoyed all the first two tracks and scanned through the others. Will listen more tomorrow.
Just an old bloke who likes listening to a wide range of music. I also fart quite a lot!

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some soft sounding hard breaks stuff - glimmering along with eternal, arctic pads ..

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I have to say, I've been getting very very good feedback from everywhere, which makes me really happy! Especially since this one was so finely and slowly crafted, that another album like this will have to wait until my son is a bit older and I'm not the sole supporter of the family anymore.

Then again, I think it will be an interesting challenge to instead think of a way to finish stuff fast and in a way that does not require endless tweaking. Probably looking into some more dry and less layered modular things since Bitwig plays so nicely along with CV gear.

Also I was happy to hear that the long lead passage in the middle of "Kadonneet maat" wasn't too much. I was kind of terrified it would sound too cheesy. I'm still not sure how the thing holds up when the flute comes along with the saw lead at 4:33, to me there's still maybe a bit too much chaos... That was probably the part of the album I was most unsure about, but decided to leave it as it is on intuition. Fun fact: I did a load of modular analog recordings for that lead but ended up replacing them all with the Bitwig native Polysynth since it really nailed best the sound I was after :D

The hang is not a real one, I used the samples from the 8Dio library. They were not really that good, so I had quite a hard time with that part. Eventually I ended just mixing it kind of to the background. I haven't heard samples yet really that nail the sound of a real Panart hang, or even any of the copies for that matter. I guess it's like the waterphone, where the coupling between the vibrating objects is so complicated that just sampling the individual notes fails to capture it correctly.

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The hang is not a real one, I used the samples from the 8Dio library.
Don't like the 8Dio one either!

This is much better for me:

http://www.soniccouture.com/en/products ... pan-drums/

There are some superb sound design patches based around hang drums in Omnisphere.

There's also this freebie that I've just downloaded to check out:

http://www.darkarps.com/hang-drum-multi ... nstrument/

and this dirt cheap one (never tried it):

https://samplehero.com/collections/virt ... e-hand-pan
Mark Taylor, Chameleon Music - Professional composition and sound design for all media since 1994.

https://www.chameleonmusic.co.uk/

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I'm still suspicious about sampled hangs because afaik one ringing note will affect another via some sympathetic interaction.

About mastering, great to hear it works, I tried to keep it dynamic but still have a bit of punch. Especially I wanted to avoid an overtly bright and saturated sound. I think the LUFS is moving between - 10 and - 12, which is about the flattest that I felt sounded still good. In some way I think that a well mixed sound should not need that much "mastering" compression etc at all since the user can usually adjust the main volume at will, and to me a more dynamic mix sounds almost invariably better.

Most of the mastering is done with Bitwig internal devices (you can build very intricate interactions between tracks and quite inventive fx chains) using just the slightest bit of Zynaptiq Intensity to push up the details a bit. To glue everything together and smoothen off some of the excessive digital detail, I recorded everything through either a Studer or Telefunken tape machines. On a few tracks I used also Pulteq and Fairlight gear just to let the sound see the real world a bit before being canned :D The settings were fairly conservative at this point because I fixed the basic dynamic balance already in the digital phase.

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I'm still suspicious about sampled hangs because afaik one ringing note will affect another via some sympathetic interaction.
I'm suspicious of all sampled instruments for similar reasons - having played in ensembles, bands, orchestras all my life they just ain't the real thing! I regard them more as new instruments in their own right that happen to sound like the 'real' thing to some extent.
and to me a more dynamic mix sounds almost invariably better.
100 agree! Mastering should NOT squash the life out of a mix!
I recorded everything through either a Studer or Telefunken tape machines.
That explains the warmth! I used to go 'outside the box' through stereo tubes into an Alesis Masterlink..loved the sound!
Mark Taylor, Chameleon Music - Professional composition and sound design for all media since 1994.

https://www.chameleonmusic.co.uk/

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Yup. I sometimes end up ripping the samples out of Kontakt libraries and using them as such as a
basis for new sounds. It's a shame that there is no official way to do this so shady tools have to be used. Sampled instruments do have their place too. I recorded some duduk sounds myself for the beginning of the track "Kadonneet maat" but they were really nasal and "duck-ish", so I overlaid them with a one from East West library (Ra, IIRC), it had a beautiful tone.

I listen to a lot of 60s and 70s folk, many albums of that time have just beautiful chamber ensembles. You just can't get that kind of sound with samples. For ensemble sounds they are one kind of a clean sound that I guess everybody is used to nowadays, but especially for solo instruments, really problematic.

I'm kind of looking forward to where this goes, the timbre transfer that they do allow to capture slight details of articulation that's hard to achieve with samples:
https://magenta.tensorflow.org/ddsp

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I'm kind of looking forward to where this goes, the timbre transfer that they do allow to capture slight details of articulation that's hard to achieve with samples:
https://magenta.tensorflow.org/ddsp
Interesting!
Mark Taylor, Chameleon Music - Professional composition and sound design for all media since 1994.

https://www.chameleonmusic.co.uk/

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ChameleonMusic wrote: Tue Nov 10, 2020 11:54 am
I'm kind of looking forward to where this goes, the timbre transfer that they do allow to capture slight details of articulation that's hard to achieve with samples:
https://magenta.tensorflow.org/ddsp
Interesting!
slight details of articulation that's hard to achieve with samples
One of the advantages that Physical Modelling has over simple sampling as well.
Mark Taylor, Chameleon Music - Professional composition and sound design for all media since 1994.

https://www.chameleonmusic.co.uk/

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