KVR Audio

declassified · Post by **declassified** » Thu Apr 09, 2009 10:31 am

It's been a very long time since I last posted music, but anyway

This is 開いた (hiraita), a remembrance of my one-year stay in Japan. 開いた is the simple past of 開く (hiraku), which means "to open" or "to open up".

Martin Finke - 開いた. Thank you for listening, any comments are appreciated!

folderol · Post by **folderol** » Thu Apr 09, 2009 4:37 pm

Very original, and full of surprises. I like this a lot.

Jazzyspoon · Post by **Jazzyspoon** » Fri Apr 10, 2009 7:32 am

Nice textures and sound choices, declassified. Love the vocals, what are they from? Nice tension in the delay work, too. Love it. Found myself wishing the drums had a little more punch to them in the lower spectrum, but that creamy bass more than compensated for it.
Good work.

core · Post by **core** » Fri Apr 10, 2009 7:57 am

Really, really nice declassified. Can you tell a little more about how you made it?

declassified · Post by **declassified** » Fri Apr 10, 2009 8:36 am

Thank you for the replies!

Software used: Ableton Live 3.0, WaveArts TrackPlug 3.0 (for EQing), Luxonix LFX-1310 (for Reverb), Voxengo SPAN.

The ambience is a field recording I did in Kobe. The beginning pad was made by taking a very short snippet of one note from the guitar, looping that and sending it through 100% wet reverb. For the bass I looped a single waveform cycle from a moog sample pack, filtered it and used volume envelopes to make it decay. The guitar loop (0:55) is a guitar sample, chopped to play the melody I want it to play. For the drums I cut out single hits (e.g. kick, hihats, snare) from an old breakbeat. I then bound them to QWERTY keys and played them to the click track.
For the delay effect, I ran the "arimasen" through a delay with slightly different delay times for the left and right channel. After four bars, I swapped the delay times. This causes the echos to diverge first and converge again. After 8 bars I set the left and right delay to the same time, so they would echo in sync.

The pads (3:20) are made out of 2 (3:20) and 3 (3:45) layers. First I looped about 1/4th of a second from a flute tone for 2 bars. I then made a volume envelope to make it fade in and out again gently. I then looped a different flute tone for the next 2 bars and so on. I added a second layer using the same technique (only with different pitched notes), so I would get a 2-note-chord. Same for the third layer (coming in at 3:45). From here to there, I used a vibrato tone in one of the three layers, giving kind of a "dreamy" sound. In the end I put heavy reverb on it.

I hope that explains a bit and isn't too technical

core · Post by **core** » Fri Apr 10, 2009 8:45 am

Thanks for the details, creative work! Love what you did with that delay effect.

wavephonic · Post by **wavephonic** » Fri Apr 10, 2009 2:52 pm

very cool how you created some of this. hearing a bit of Sakamoto stuff.
dig the way you incorporated some of the dramatic moments, a bit of meat on the kick could've worked.
enjoyed the different moods, good stuff

runagate · Post by **runagate** » Fri Apr 10, 2009 11:11 pm

core wrote:Thanks for the details, creative work! Love what you did with that delay effect.

I second that. I was actually thinking it sounded a bit like Towa Tei remixed by core

And of course I like explications of techniques - the more technical the better!

What an incredibly clean mix

declassified · Post by **declassified** » Sat Apr 11, 2009 7:33 pm

Thank you again for listening and commenting! I appreciate it

I agree about the kick drum...somehow I don't really like the drums after listening a few more times..but I'll leave them in, because that's just how the song ended up being

Klemperer · Post by **Klemperer** » Sun Apr 12, 2009 11:49 am

Hi declassified - great to hear a song of you after quite a lot of years (the last one was about 3 years ago, as I did not always look at music café?

)

The tempo is a bit more slower than the last songs I heard. Superb beginning, and I really like how you did this pad! Indeed, it is great to hear all those technical details, even if usually I prefer to listen to the piece before reading it as for me somehow it changes how I listen to the song a bit.

This is a wonderful song, quite a new direction for you, meaning you do many kinds of great songs. Yes, it has a "dreamy" sound, which I very much like, just great. I'll answer your mail soon, have just a different mail address so didn't find it earlier

Will you do more songs that have to do with Japan, or influences from there? I think this one would surely fit well in some (well hasn't to be a "concept" behind it) larger work! I think of an older work you sent me once, very different in style, but I liked the way you do music where one piece fits well with the others.
Thanks for sharing, will listen to this more often, learning a bit of possible backgrounds, like what wavephonic mentioned.

Klemperer · Post by **Klemperer** » Sun Apr 12, 2009 12:09 pm

...and just remembered that this beautiful passage after the voice stops, from around 3'05 or so to 4'25 or so, reminded me of some totally different music, to be heard on early albums by Steve Hackett. The atmosphere is a bit similar, dreamy soundscapes, which in Hackett's case then dropped to loud guitar work if I remember right, so only in small parts similar. Song runs in loop here, very very nice!

runagate · Post by **runagate** » Sun Apr 12, 2009 5:44 pm

declassified · Post by **declassified** » Sun Apr 12, 2009 10:30 pm

runagate wrote:bump

wow, thank you

Klemperer: Danke!! I'll answer your email soon

Klemperer · Post by **Klemperer** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 6:28 pm

wanted to add (runagate's idea of bump is great

)that the nice thing of this piece is that after listening you might find yourself searching for music you like and which has, maybe only remotely, to do with this great song. Thus my Steve Hackett idea, even if the man does quite different music often.

runagate · Post by **runagate** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 10:29 pm

I hope this means you'll be posting music a tad more often that triannually!