Hope For Tomorrow

Metamere

This piece is somewhat programmatic, somewhat expressive. I wanted to tell a story of moving from a dark place of drudgery and powerlessness to finding courage, strength, purpose, and joy.
Created for the Record Every Month challenge for July 2023. I’ve been a part of the community for a bit, but this was my first submission. I was excited to use my updated and repaired Synthstrom Deluge to make something cool. I wanted to make full use of its new OLED display, but it didn’t make much difference for this particular song, since I was mostly using my older methods of midi sequencing of synths and multisampled instruments, recording keys improv, and simple beats with synth drums. Oh well. Next time I’ll make some intricate beats with lots of samples where the OLED will be really helpful. I did advance my skills a bit using the new printed guidebook to learn to use the arranger, which allowed me to make a more complex structure for the composition and free up my hands for twisting knobs and doing some keys improv with the lead in the first section during the recording. On the Deluge I used the Drumuge synth kits for the beats, and a TAL Fairlight vibraphone multisampled instrument, which I adore. The other gear used in it were the Dreadbox Typhon for the drone and lead (a patch I modified from the Biblos7 preset), the Korg Minilogue xd with a strings patch I based on the synth strings from Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays’ “As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls” (that section was used in a famous cologne ad, apparently). I recorded it onto SD card on the Tascam Model 12 Mixer, which I also used to apply a hall reverb effect to the Deluge sounds, since I like it better than the default Deluge effects and it also takes some CPU burden off it. That was my first time using the mixer’s effects, but it seems like that and the compressors will be useful for compositions. I only had to use the PC for the Audacity software to trim the ends and convert to mp3.