here is a cool ambient track i'm mixing

[pounce]

i think it's a lot of fun. i've worked with this guy for some time. i'm not the musician, but i enjoy this stuff.

[mousdrvr]

That is Cool.

Thanks Pounce :Thumbsup:

[MudCat]

What a refreshing piece......nice job, Pounce.

[pounce]

some miscellanious location recording for this was the most fun.

there is a local bar in columbus whose building used to be a funeral parlor. folks claim it's haunted. it has a non working piano in the basement. very few keys, totally out of tune.

of all nights to go there, we picked a monday early evening. before the happy hour crowd was due in. almost nobody at the bar. then blammo, the rain and thunder started. it was a whopper of a storm. the rain was coming at us sideways. it was ugly.

then the power went out. it was kind of a bummer. we had decided to start our casual evening by having a beer each, so at least we were relaxed, but didn't want to have our field trip be in vain.

the good news was that with this power out, the few remaining folks shuffled on out of the bar. only my friend and i had a reason to stay in the dark, the recording.

at the time, the field kit was a sennheiser shotgun mic fed ultimately into a portable DAT machine. i think this was the last thing i did with my portable DAT deck. i was smart or lucky, i had a small maglight with me. enough to get the job done.

we made our way into the basement of the bar and proceeded to record he and i alternately strumming and striking the strings and all other manner of noises. we had a long tape full of a variety of sounds, some kind of clean, occasionally weird and distorted, but somehow it was all ok and usable.

so the haunted piano, played in pitch black during a power outage, did get recorded and made it's way into the composition. there were some other field recording elements that got added before we had it all in there, but the haunted piano was my favorite.

[Unfcknblvbl]

Very nice, Pounce - and a great story to go with it.

[pounce]

if you have any comments i'd love to pass them on the the musician. he's been real slow to let this stuff out there, maybe some positive reinforcement will help motivate him to release some of this stuff already.

ps: i've tried variations of mixing this with more compression, but it always seemed so inorganic. this piece is more like classical music in terms of it's dynamics. i'm ok with leaving it like that even though it will never win the loudness war. suggestions about how i can keep a reasonable volume level going and still have this be dynamic and subtle are welcome.

[MacGregor]

i think it's a lot of fun. i've worked with this guy for some time. i'm not the musician, but i enjoy this stuff.

I enjoyed that song a lot, very atmospheric and a bit scary.

More please!

Mac

[waterboy]

Great work, Paul. I really liked the tune. I think you did a wonderful job with the mix - and I agree, there were parts that made me blink - acutally, I jumped during a couple of parts because I had the volume up. I really dig the eerie effects.
Y'all did a good job. Thank you for shraing with us!

Scott

[pounce]

i'll pass the info on to shammy, my buddy on the bass.

i still cannot think of any other way to mix this that wouldn't also ruin it for me. there is no way to approach this material like a pop song.

btw - all of his songs are fun and in this vein, and they all tend to be like 10 minutes long.

[MacGregor]

btw - all of his songs are fun and in this vein, and they all tend to be like 10 minutes long.

A 10 min ambient song is actually the short radio mix :lol:
This stuff just needs time to develop.

Mac