The Pads of Paddington 2

The Pads of Paddington is a set of 2 pieces (this being the 2nd one). I took inspiration from train sounds/noises.
For this second piece, I used actual recordings of train sounds made by me with my faithful Zoom H1 recorder.

For this piece, I wanted to blend peaceful sounds with the ‘industrial’ noise of trains.
The piece is like a journey from a peaceful nature garden to a busy train / train station. In a way, this reflects the multitude of environments that can be found in and around London…

I faced some interesting challenges when creating this piece. Selecting, cleaning up and adjusting the train recordings into loopable portions took much more effort than I had anticipated. Then, when I was putting the second part of the track together, it was difficult to combine and control all these elements - There is a massive dynamic range in the sounds involved (from peaceful flutes and water trickling to noisy train recordings. Even within the train sounds themselves, there is a lot of dynamic range, from subtle creaks to overbearing train engine and wheel noise).

For this piece I also tried to combine a selection of drones, orchestral instruments and synths - and, of course, the noise sources mentioned above.