This past weekend, I decided to once again dig through the loops that have been accumulating on my looper pedal in my practice room.    As I've said before, most of my guitar practice nowadays consists of creating loops and soloing over them, or just creating ambient textures.  Because I save a lot of the loops I create when I'm improvising, there's a lot of stuff there.   For the most part, I forget all about them immediately, so listening back periodically can be surprising!   Mainly, they consist of drums and guitar, or just guitars,  in layers and layers of loops on top of each other.  Amongst the many ideas that I uncovered was the about the grimmest, saddest wash of sound that I've heard in a long time.   A modal, unapologetically Fripp-ish Ebow thing.  I don't have any recollection of creating it, but it must have been done sometime in the past couple of months. 

Anyway,  I was really surprised by the emotional depth of this particular loop, so I decided to create a composition out of it....  

Download Virtual CD Track Twelve: Bleak



I tried to create a supporting track that would match the mood of the original loop.  The rhythm track also consists mainly of leftovers.  The main drum sound is an unused drum kit loop I recorded for another (unfinished) song, slowed down and overprocessed to the point of sounding not-quite-right.  On top of this I placed a secondary rhythm created from samples of an old tea kettle.  The cool thing is that I created a "soundfont" (sound bank) out of banging on our tea kettle a long time ago, I think at least six or seven years ago.  The kettle has long since gone to the garbage dump, somewhere back in Arizona.  I happened to stumble upon the soundfont file, though, so I was able to use those sounds as if I were playing any other keyboard sound.  Which for me means programming the notes on the staff.   Another percussion sound is my trusty thumb piano. 

I don't know why I wanted to use choir for this, but I combined two different (possibly slightly cheesy) choir sounds that I had to achieve a richer sound.   These were also soundfonts.   It does fit the mood, somehow.  I originally programmed in a longer chord progression, but I liked just the two chords repeated better. 

Christina suggested that I replace a melody that I originally did with some kind of ethnic percussion sound with a piano.  She was right!

Surprisingly, I'm really happy with how this all came out.    I think that it definitely takes a journey somewhere, but I'm not too sure where!  If you get there, let me know!