Album Release: Diary

I've added my album, Sonic Dialogue: Diary #3, to streaming platforms. Here are the links: Spotify, Apple Music.

The album was produced over one month, and I worked on it every day. I tried to incorporate ideas from things I experienced that month, in an abstract way of course because it's ambient music. This included painters I read about, books I read or remembered, and time with my family.

I kept notes about the instruments used and musical techniques, including eurorack modules, synthesizers, samplers, and acoustic instruments. There's also one of each of my favourite kinds of tracks on the album — a few drone tracks, a Plumbutter drums weird track, drama, softness, and all sorts of textures.

Here's the last diary entry:

Friday September 1st

I've probably got enough material now for an album, but I wanted to record one more track based on my wife's voice, her recorder (the woodwind), and a few found sounds.

It worked like this: two sustained vocal samples were used to make drones using OP-1, Vongon Ultrasheer, and some filtering. In parallel more vocal drones using a second sample were played using Morphagene in a little 4ms Pod with a 4ms I/O module, and this went through some pedals to get saturation and filtering. Meanwhile, I hand played the woodwind sounds (another simple sustained looped sample).

I also used the OP-1's mic to overdub sounds of me typing on a mechanical computer keyboard. This particular keyboard has a satisfying thock sound. I re-pitched these sounds using Morphagene and Cocoquantus to make digitally distressed textures that sound a little bit like some kind of wooden aquatic movements.

Gear

Looking back at my notes, I obviously wanted to throw all of my favourite instruments into this.

• Eurorack: ER-301, Just Friends, Crow, Mutable Instruments Beads, Stages, Ripples, Intellijel Quad VCA, Instruo øchd, tanh, Cuir, Make Noise Optomix, Morphagene, ALM MCFx2
• Audio interface: ES-9, Teenage Engineering TX-6
• Synthesisers: Digitone, OP-Z, OP-1, Ciat Lonbarde Plumbutter
• Guitar pedals: Chase Bliss Mood, Generation Loss, Vongons Ultrasheer
• Other effects: Ciat Lonbarde Cocoquantus, Meng Qi Wingie 2
• Acoustic: Guitar, piano, my wife's voice, recorder, ukulele

I do still have cassettes of this album left, so if you enjoy it and want one find me on Discord or Instagram and I'll send one over.