Saturday, October 17, 2015

Passing the time In Flight

Since moving my music "to the cloud" in Apple Music and running short of storage space on my iPad with all my Synth software, I find that I don't have nearly as much music to listen to on long flights. When I want to zone out or relax on cross-country flights, I like to have some ambient or low-key music to keep in the background while I'm semi-conscious. Without sufficient studio time to craft lots of harmonies and voices, its software to the rescue.  I used generative music apps to create evolving melodies for each leg of the trip.

I put together a baroque repeating piece on my way to LA which came out as the following:



I used the very interesting Fugue Machine to put together a sequence of notes played on the Rucker Harpsichord app in 2-3 separate voices in differing tempos. Periodically, I'd use the software to invert, mute and/or mangle each of the voices. While the result is a bit "busy", I think it came out ok. Nice when kept on repeat.

On the way home I went to some old favorites using Noatikl, the Korg iM1 and MultiTrack DAW. For the return, I programmed a pad voice, a bass and a lead all using separate MIDI channels in the iM1. This one did have the desired zoning effect and kept the background noise (lots of that in economy seating) at bay.