Toad Hall (the return)

jimbouchard

The title comes from reading “The Willows in Winter” to my son Maurice, which is the sequel to “The Wind in The Willows” and thinking of Toad and the sort of idyllic natural landscape. While messing around in Logic, I ended up creating a “Drag and Drop Sample Kit” in Ultrabeat from some random samples that I’ve collected, and some of the sounds reminded me of croaking sounds when played. Lots of ambience in here. Most of the samples come from soundsnap.com, but they are really from all sorts of places, and I don’t remember where. Then I added some more Logic software instruments. There’s a Junosphere preset that reminds me of a Juno I used to play a lot back in the ‘80s. I had a studio that a roommate had used for some practice and his musical mate left the Juno there and I did a lot of recording with it on my little Fostex. In a drugged up delirium when I was laid up due to back pain, I scored a nature movie using that and other tape samples. Just for personal interest but I remember there were frogs in it at some point. I wonder where that tape went?
Back to the subject at hand: then I added the mandolin and guitar real instrument tracks and a really great pump organ soundfont, as well as an ambient track of some neighbors talking late at night on their back porch. I opened the window to get some air in my studio, and I had a live mic near the window and captured some random conversation. It’s pretty quiet but you can hear it at the end, if you can just manage to listen through for the full 8:40+ you’ll hear “at the end of the day”. Then I added more marshy sounds and the acoustic instruments, inspired by a group called The Books.