Gandalf

It took quite a long time for me to make a new piece of electronic music. Learning new programs (Renoise, Finale), and too busy with earning €€€ are the main reasons for the delay, but last week I felt it itching again, so turned back to FLStudio and started with a simple beat. Then I tried the Sytrus synth and scanning the presets for a useful sound I found the “Gandalf” preset. That’s synchronicity, because this week my interest for Tolkiens work had a small revival.

So I created an ambient soundscape with some strange chords without any tonal relationship. Then I recycled the pattern in FL’s chord editor and arpeggiate tool. This – although simple – is a quite new technique for me, but it worked. Of course I wanted to try some more new features: I entered the chord sequence in Band-in-a-Box and let the soloist random-generate a solo melody. I copied the pattern and imported it in FL, with a Poizone (one of my favourite synths) preset.

Finally I turned to Tolkiens own reading (in Elvish) of his small poem “A Elbereth Gilthoniel” that I used earlier for other learning purposes. I chopped it up in 8 little parts and let the samples run via the OhMyGod Vocoder. You have to know it’s there to hear it.

Hm, not completely satisfied again; but I think you have to get easy on yourself when learning, I’m already thinking about my new masterpiece. This is it for now, and this blog is after all only for archiving my own learning process.