mind yourself

June 23, 2010 1:17 PM

piano, double bass, a rhodes piano and a mellotron wander around a bit.

...not a real mellotron alas. or rhodes, or piano. but they sound not unlike them. the keyboard parts for this were recorded as a doodle while i was helping a mate of mine set up his studio. he has a nice yamaha electonic piano and some software synths. a couple of weeks later i remembered it, so here it is. the bass was added later, as was the digital percussion. i didn't mess with the original keyboard parts apart from a dash of reverb here and there. i should add that noodling around in this odd sort of mode is the only thing i can do on the piano. ask me to play anything else apart from 4.33 and i'm stumped...

posted by peterkins (12 comments total) 5 users marked this as a favorite

ps i should apologise for the slight distortion on the piano. them yamahas have a big dynamic range and i wasn't being that careful with my levels (basically i was just glad we got the insanely complicated studio running).
posted by peterkins at 1:23 PM on June 23, 2010


God, so nice to hear something ambient that isn't a bunch of fucking loops hacked together in Ableton. I really like the wandering tonality of the piano part, fourths stacking up her and there, very BITCHES BREW Miles in a minimal sort of way.

I wondered if you had a chordal structure in mind or if that was something that was produced later by the bass part. In other words, without the bass, does it have a harmonic progression?
posted by unSane at 2:11 PM on June 23, 2010


thanks! there was absolutely nothing in mind, really. i think that was one of the things i liked about it when i heard it. it was almost done absent mindedly, and it doesn't really hang together. except it does seem to get a bit more focussed at the end. you're right, the bass does give a sort of movement to it, but it never really resolves or makes much sense. though i have heard it quite a few times now so it is starting to make some kind of sense to me...:-)

and i could so easily have gone down the route of mulching it into loops. glad i resisted the impulse for once!
posted by peterkins at 3:04 PM on June 23, 2010


Oh, simply gorgeous, as usual. I love the fact that this was basically a four-man improv, done entirely by you, but it still sounds improvised, the whole way.
posted by askmeaboutLOOM at 4:00 PM on June 23, 2010


Rather, I should say, holding the group free improv feel while actually just tracking yourself in overdub is...difficult, to say the least.
posted by askmeaboutLOOM at 4:35 PM on June 23, 2010


Finally, because I keep hitting "Post Comment" before finishing a thought:

improv tag, plz.

I like keeping the improv tag at the top of the charts, and it doesn't work if all the improvs aren't tagged the same...
posted by askmeaboutLOOM at 4:36 PM on June 23, 2010


This is breathtaking.
posted by man vs sun at 5:54 PM on June 23, 2010


This is so beautiful... Feels like it should be in a sad scene in a movie or something. Absolutely gorgeous! Makes me feel sad, which is happy for deep people. :P I love it!
posted by MaiaMadness at 6:11 PM on June 23, 2010


This is really nice, especially for a "doodle."
posted by Karlos the Jackal at 3:06 AM on June 26, 2010


thanks all. you're very kind.
posted by peterkins at 5:36 PM on June 27, 2010


As Noel Coward would say: 'darling, you've done it again'.... crying out for a film to go with it. Beoootiful
posted by Jonesisdying at 6:19 AM on July 1, 2010


oooh, lovely.
posted by dubold at 8:03 AM on February 17, 2012


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