Metronomica.blog
jamuary 25, 2025
There’s a special kind of longing and sadness to Micah’s Choir, an instrument for Decent Sampler via Pianobook, that I can’t get enough of. I love being able to load up a sample instrument and, without getting fiddly with it, feel the emotion behind the performance. Makes me feel like I know what I’m doing.
I’ve used this choir a few times in Jamuary, and today I wanted to use it again. I wanted to keep my AUM session simple — and I did, with only one instance of Decent Sampler sent through the usual battery of effects (Other Desert Cities, Weeping Wall, and Eos 2, plus a limiter). Today, I wanted to play:
- The effects
- The choir, live, without any midi sequencing
I also wanted to:
- Destroy the sound source
- Reveal the sound source
I think it worked out well.
For maybe the first time this month, I didn’t use a midi sequencer. I played everything on the iPad’s virtual keyboard live, from the first few mangled notes to the big block chords at the end. There’s a searching feel to it that I like, and, because the piece is so slow, I had time to consider my next move.
That’s how the end came about. I was playing individual notes and messing with dry/wet controls and decay times, and there were a few seconds where everything faded into a background bed. I knew I wanted to introduce the choir proper at some point. The bed was so quiet and peaceful, and it seemed like a great opportunity to announce the voices like a fanfare.
I guess this piece feels like a series of decisions, where a lot of my more midi-sequenced things feel like a puzzle that I pre-cut and am now putting back together. I’ve made a bunch of music I like this month but I don’t think I’ve made anything that yearns like this.
I spent a bit of time in post cutting things up and moving them around, layering the final choir over the sounds that came before, but I ultimately scrapped all that and used the original performance pitched down ever so slightly.
// tags: making music jamuary