Stratosphere
Notes on "STRATOSPHERE"
TRACK DATA
Composition tool: MuseScore 3, Studio One 6 Professional
Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 6 Professional
Number of tracks: 64
Sound source: Presence XT, Impact XT, Sample One (All built-in sound sources of Studio One)
Composition and Recording period: Aug 31 2022 - Dec 27 2022
Concept & Composition: Naturally Sounded Gating
(TM writes:)
The tentative title before being released was "Funk Gate." As you might know, we created some tracks under the "Gating" concept, including:
- Pebbles In The Garden (Featuring ANSOUND)
- Blanket Of Moss (by SuZanne Ledwith)
In short, Gating is a means of rhythmic use of long sustained noise. In this case we've used airplane noise. For details on the Gating concept please have a look at the notes on "Pebbles..."
All the three past works above, more or less, sound very experimental. On developing the "Placid Wanderings" series, which is endeavours to make such experimental musical concepts sound natural, I planned to implement some "natural Gating." Furthermore, I wanted to listen to some Gating music with funk groove. That's how "Funk Gate" was born.
Once we worked on creating the sounds and mixing after the composition, this piece mixed with the Gated airplane noise sounds like flying through the stratosphere. Within "Placid Wanderings" there is a small "vehicle series" consisting of "Coach To The Airport" and "Train From The Airport." It seemed very suitable to join them.
I love this groove made of the Gated noise, percussion, bass and harpsicord. It's like moving continually and not slowly but somewhat quietly. The harpsicord with the bass has no obvious triad chords but slight implications of A-flat major. You could say if the tonality reminds us of the ground (on the earth) and the atonality the space, this is somewhere in-between like the stratosphere.
But it doesn't sound like the stratosphere on MuseScore, our composition software, and that was not my intention either. It sounds very differently on it, which I also like very much, but after we put the name of Stratosphere on it TI made it as if it had been written for it.
If you take a listen on your flight, how the Gated noise sounds is quite interesting but it may disappear, I suppose.
(TI writes:)
As a technical concept, it exists as an extension of what we have been presenting as 'Gate Of Moss', which is On and Off switching of acoustic files to create new sounds. This will be discussed by TM.
Another thing, for myself, I imagine 'post-industrial baroque music' (which didn't become classical and went in another direction), or baroque music in Alvin Toffler's Third Wave world. I myself wanted to represent a past that 'could not have happened'.
Sound Creation and Mixing
(TI writes:)
For this song, I mixed it according to the blueprint (filled in as notes in Musescore) for the On/Off switching of each track created by TM.
For the timbre, I used samples of very normal live instruments such as Violin, Cello, Trumpet, Harpsichord, ElectricBass, Acoustic and ElectricGuitar, etc., except for the TB303-like synth bass in the middle part.
The other sounds that sound like electronic sounds are the overtones of the aforementioned live instrument samples that have been emphasised, modulated or distorted.
For this song, the production concept is clear and more experimental, but I wasn't sure about the finished form, and it was finished as I was creating it, or rather, as I listened to it again and again as a listener, I began to think that it might be the finished form.
In that sense, too, I feel like I was finally able to see the whole picture after about a year had passed since I started creating it.
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