But How Do You _Feel_

A late night meditation.

Here’s the process:

Started just auditioning sounds in my Live library. When I do this, I play some random chords or two note intervals; often not looking at my hands or the keyboard. That’s the spark. Here I started with the mallet sound.

Then I look at my hands, note the notes I’m playing and start building. Here I just added a deep bass synth drone, set it back in the mix with a big hall type reverb.

And just listened. Awash. Insert anti mp3 rant (the mp3 crushes this sense of space).

Then I whip out my trusty axe and lay down two long e-bow takes. I record the second one with the first playing so I can improv with it rather than simply trying to dup the first. Also, e-bow only works on one string at a time, so for each track I e-bow a different string; yielding a subtly different tone.

By now, I’m asleep on my feet. So sleep. Figure out if it’s servicable in the morning. Now I mix, which includes adding and automating effects to the e-bow tracks. There are many, and on one, there’s beat-repeat and livecut going into a flanger. One implication being that it’ll never happen the same way again (a feature, not a bug).