Destinations
Notes On "Destinations"
TRACK DATA
Composition tool: MuseScore 3, Studio One 5 Professional
Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 5 Professional
Number of tracks: 78
Sound source: Presence XT, Impact XT, Mai-Tai, Mojito (All built-in sound sources of Studio One), TAL-NOIZEMAKER
Composition and Recording period: Apr 16 2022 - Jun 17 2022
Concept: It sounds natural but is unnatural
(TM writes:)
When you imagine what some place of your destination is like before you visit there for the first time, it tends to be somewhat strange even though you try to envisage it as really as possible. It's like I had an image of many English people wearing a silk hat before I settled there. That could be just me, though...
Wheareas "the image that looks quite strange after you visit the destination" is the theme, there is another meaning in the story of the whole album. "It's neither East, West, South nor North. It's just nowhere. It's not the past or future, either. I'm here and will get started from here. That's only a thing I can say for sure. I went to East, West, South, North and Middle and then I see the destination to go to from now on." This track is positioned at the end of the story. The four (or five) directions imply religious analogies, which I wrote in the notes on the album "The Anomalous Folk" like this:
Folk music in general is related with the religion and we have religious analogies in it. The direction (to Mecca) is always important for Muslims and so is that to Jerusalem for Jews. The four directions imply the cross for Christians. The Anemoi has four Greek Gods of winds (ie, four directions), whereas the Indian myth has four Gods as guardians of the four directions, which were absorbed into Buddhists. Śākyamuni (later Buddha) allegedly walked in the four directions from his home and recognised people's sufferings.
The tentative title was “9-8”, meaning the time signature was 9-8. “9 beats” sounds like 3 beats with triplets in every beat. When I first opened a blank notation sheet in the software (MuseScore), I set 9-8, which we perhaps have never used so far, as the time without knowing what to build from then on. (We did 9-4 in the track called "Things Are Unstable" but not 9-8.)
As I often write in the other notes, there are too many 4-4s in this world, though I know it sounds natural, of course. But at the same time it sounds natural just because there are so many. Thus, I feel like working on something other than 4-4 and I've made many 6-8s, 5-4s and 3-4s recently. Okay, why don't we take on a 9-8 time. As simple as that. That's how I reached the 9-8.
After setting the time signature in MuseScore, I found it same as 3 x 3, in other words, a triplet waltz. It's nothing quirky itself. But I didn't remember immediately music pieces on 9-8, both in FMT's tracks and others' and decided to apply it.
Composition: Triplet waltz
(TM writes:)
There was only one part (of two rows) in the sheet, on which I was first writing the choir motif. Why was it choir? One day, one year ago or just a half – I don’t remember – I complained to TI that I was tired of the choir sound when he tried to use one in the Studio One software. But I felt sorry at the same time because I knew that was because of the limited range of sound fonts Studio One could offer. What I was thinking this time was to design the line from the beginning suitable specifically for the sampled choir.
Nevertheless, I didn’t mean I hated the sound. Rather, I intended to make most of... how can I say, the abnormality and artificality of the sampled choir. It's inorganic despite the human voice. So what if we use it organically just to some degree, rather than completely, in order to position it as something like "it's not inorganic but not natural either"?
And that is very similar to 9 beats, isn't it? 9 beats is also a sort of not artificial at all but not very familiar either, and even more so is the triplet waltz.
Such an odd rhythm as 9 beats lessens the percussionist's willingness to play it, I guess, while maximising that of the rhythm designer, which I found very interesting. That's not only because digital music enables to realise it so easily, but also since it's an unknown world my body and sense (at least) doesn't have in me. Such a world intrigues me a lot and accelerates my enthusiasm to write very real percussion. I wonder why. (The track called "Underground", which is a work in progress at the time writing this text, is another good example.) Anyway, I designed the percussion in this work as what is like a human is playing.
In overall, this is a track that flows naturally at a glance, but in fact, it comprises many odd, inorganic, and artificial elements.
(TI writes:)
To TM's choir, string and organ-like synth parts, piano, bass, rhythm and overall song structure, I added bell riffs and drone-like parts. It's like TM created the skeleton of the song and I fleshed it out.
There are different ways of making drones, but I wrote the long-toned harmonies in MuseScore and then worked on them noisily during the sound production and mixing stage. So it sounds like a completely different vibe in MuseScore.
Sound production and mixing
(TI writes:)
For the choir, I used the choir preset voices that come with the Studio One playback sampler without any processing, just basic equalisation and compression, no effects. 4 different preset voices were combined.
For the drone, I used Violin, a free GM instrument used in MuseScore, with a Studio One guitar amp simulator and pedalboard fuzzs and reverbs. This setting is based on that of Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine.
For the parts other than the rhythm and bass, I have clearly separated the parts that are blurred by reverb and fuzz (Drone, Bell, Strings, Piano) and the parts that sound clear (Choir, Organ), so that the roles are completely divided. The bass is delayed in places.
The volume is fine-tuned and complex volume automation has been written for each channel to make every part fade in and out in places on the track,the mix screen itself is very simple (not a lot of effectors stuck in each channel strip), so to speak, it is created by just moving the fader up and down.
Visual
The visual we use for this track on SoundCloud is from a photograph of The Adriatic Sea in Croatia.
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