Ave Maria (Music by Vladimir Vavilov)
Artwork adapted from a painting by Sassoferrato
How It Began
I did not originally set out to make this “Ave Maria” for release.
It began with a live session, separate from FMT, in which I play piano. For the singer and flutist I would be performing with, I prepared a score of V. Vavilov’s “Ave Maria” in MuseScore and made a reference recording.
As I worked on it, I found myself liking the recording more than I had expected, and wanted to develop it into a finished piece.
The Production
I made no changes to the score used for the reference recording. Instead of rewriting the melody or harmony, I explored what kinds of sound and time I could create from the same score.
First, I slowed the tempo from the reference version intended for live performance, allowing it to fluctuate around 55 BPM.
Through conversations with instrumentalists and singers, I became aware that performing slowly also has physical and technical limits. It is easy to understand that there are limits to how fast a person can play or sing, but there are limits to how slowly they can do so as well. It seems obvious once stated, but the production process brought this home to me.
For singers and flutists, sustaining a note involves not only breath capacity, but also maintaining pitch, volume, and tone. Bowed string players need to control bow speed and pressure, and keep the sound connected through changes of bow direction. On the piano, notes decay, making it harder to maintain a melodic connection as the spaces between them grow longer.
A sustained note is not something that simply continues once you have started it. Realizing this made me want to explore the duration of notes and the spaces between them without being bound by the physical constraints of breath, bowing, or the natural decay of an instrument.
By extending the notes, I sought to bring out fluctuations in the sound and the spaces between notes—things that can be less apparent when following the melody—and explore the sense of time created by that slowness.
I then offset the tuning and tempo of the individual parts, so that pitch and timing never quite align. I also added pitch changes and distortion to the reverb. The fluctuations exist not only in the sounding notes, but also in the space where their resonance lingers.
I use familiar instrument sounds from Studio Pro 8’s built-in sound sources. Since the piece originally served as a reference recording for live performance, each part needed to be clearly identifiable. I shape these sounds with reverb, delay, phasing, and other effects, shifting their pitch and manipulating their phase to create the sound of this piece.
I used a compressor to soften the piano’s attack, and adjusted the compression on the melodic lead to keep it from coming too far forward. I looked for a balance in which the melody could inhabit the same space as the other sounds and their reverberation, rather than constantly standing in front of them. This, too, was part of blurring the boundary between musical tones and noise.
The flute phrase at the beginning, however, remains clearly audible. This is a trace of the reference recording, where I had emphasized the phrase to make it easy for the flutist to hear and learn.
Another element I added was a rhythm based on the flashing of fireflies. I considered bringing the sounds I had used in “After The Storm” into this piece as randomly occurring noise.
This rhythm is completely independent of the beat of “Ave Maria.” A separate stream of time runs alongside the time of the piece.
The original sine-wave sound did not sit well within the piece, so I used a ring modulator to turn it into something resembling industrial noise. Although the flashing of fireflies remained its starting point, I was not concerned with depicting a beautiful scene of glowing lights. My priority was how the sound could exist within the piece.
The aim of these processes was to blur the boundary between musical tones and noise. As pitched sounds and noise, melody and reverberation, and the beat of the piece and an unsynchronized rhythm overlap, the tempo and tonality clearly defined in the score begin to lose their contours in the listening experience.
At the same time, I wanted to blur the boundary between human performance and sequencing. I was looking for something whose fluctuations were not intended to imitate a human performer, but which did not have the character of perfectly aligned sequencing either. Notes are sustained for durations difficult for a human performer, while their pitch and timing remain imperfectly aligned. Both qualities coexist within the sound.
Revisions and Mastering
The first version was a provisional completion, intended for people in direct contact with FMT, so I did not master it. For this release, I have revisited the sound.
In the intervening period, I experienced sudden hearing loss this summer. The hearing loss itself resolved, but my preferences in sound changed. Strong attacks, high sound pressure levels, and sounds with pronounced harmonics in the mid-to-high range became very difficult for me to listen to. In terms of my own experience, the kind of production often regarded today as “good sound” or a “good mix” became uncomfortable to hear.
Even when listening to the first version of “Ave Maria,” I found passages that felt painful to my ears.
In this revision, I reduced the number of original piano strikes in many of the passages with repeated chords, rebuilding those repetitions with delay. The delay intervals are based on the beat of the piece, but do not align with it exactly. The intention was to preserve the movement of the repeating chords while reducing the sense of attack on each note as much as possible.
I considered mastering the piece for release, but ultimately decided to present it without mastering, preserving the depth and texture of the mix. Since experiencing sudden hearing loss, I have found sharply defined sounds that come forward in the mix difficult to listen to. I do not currently have the skills to master the piece in a way that gives it greater fullness and presence while retaining the sense of depth I want. The released version is therefore the finished mix, without a separate mastering stage.
Closing Thoughts
What began as a reference recording for a live session eventually became a process of shaping the sound of the recording itself.
Even with the score unchanged, the texture of the sound and the treatment of time can create a different listening experience. This “Ave Maria” grew out of that process.
TRACK DATA
Composition tool: MuseScore 4, Studio Pro 8
Recording tool (DAW): Studio Pro 8
Number of tracks: 22
Sound sources: All built-in sound sources of Studio Pro8
Composition and recording period: Jun 28 2026 - Jul 4 2026, Oct 13 2026
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