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JWM - Spending Time at the Coffee Shop (Longform Ambient done in Cubasis 3)
This one took a bit longer to make. The story is, the fumigator visited my flat today (spider issue), and I had to evacuate for four hours. So I sat at a coffee shop and started a very long piece of Ambient - my longest piece yet. To pull this off, I needed to utilise seven instruments, but all spaced out judiciously so as to not crowd the mix.
I wanted to make the piece in an "exotic" key, so I chose C Phrygian at 72bpm and a 3/4 time signature.
I chose three "acoustic" instruments. I used the upright piano and cello from Cubasis' Halion pack, and I used Iconica Sketch's glockenspiel. That took care of the "acoustic" instruments.
Next, I chose three synth sounds - a bass, an arp, and a pad. I decided to use Moog Model D for the bass instead of Mariana this time. For the arp, I used Bleass Monolit, and I used ToneBoosters' Flowtones for the sparkling pads (although to be honest, I could've gotten away with using Waldorf Microwave, but had a more specific idea in mind for the pads).
Finally, I decided to toss in a Trap beat using the 808 from Classic Machines. However, instead of the drums taking front and center stage, obnoxiously interrupting the flow, I set them pretty far back in the mix, using Gemini Plate Reverb to help set them back as well as a bit of judicious EQing. I knew I'd find a use for Gemini, and before I knew it, I added it to these drums. What a reverb!
Anyways, if you listen, do listen in the manner which is most comfortable for you. If you wish to listen to this piece in one sitting, or in segments, or simply skim through it to get the gist of it, all ways of listening are valid. And you needn't actively listen to this piece either. Ambient is meant to sit in the background, and it's your choice to pay attention to it or not.
Cheers and enjoy. ❤️
Comments
Sorry, I can’t believe it’s been since January 9th (or more) that I went looking for “uncommitted” creations. I know it’s damaging to a creators soul to throw out something they labored over and get nothing for the effort.
Keep making music… it matters.
Thanks for the bump, mate. I can't believe I forgot to bump this one up myself tbqh. 😂
It’s humilating to have to bump yourself.
I agree, it is. But I often find myself having to do that on some tracks I post here. Hard to get people to actually care, lol.
@jwmmakerofmusic Can't believe I missed this one too......but this is one of the best ambient performances I've heard since a long time. Almost 50 minutes of a ambient orgasm
I said it before, Jim. But you are very talented and a inspiration for me.
That's incredible praise. 🤩 If I recall correct, this was inspired by "Waiting for Cousteau".
Damn, you're so kind, friend. ☺️
I will announce I am working on a 9-10 track album of music in FL Studio Mobile. It started on an Android, but Android version has a couple bugs. They should be fixed soon.
Meanwhile, I moved my music operations back to iPad to finish the album. Started work on a vocal HipHop track with guest star Malleous. Man, I can't wait to show you all this track. I recorded and processed my vocals in Cubasis 3 and mixed into the track project itself in FLSM.
I think once this album is complete, I will probably return back to longform Ambient in Cubasis 3. Sometime next month once I can afford Fugue Machine Rubato that is (even if that app is $20 more next month 😂).
I wiil fund $20,- to help you getting Rubato, i'm sure others here will do the same. Who is with me?
You do that for me? Aww mate, you're the best!
Good info, Jim. I was a skimmer. If the piece is almost an hour did you make it in four hours at the cafe? Hope all is well in yr wrld (except for the spiders).
Cheers mate.
All is very well in my world currently. Spiders are long gone, thankfully. Dan the Bug Man got 'em all. No more need to toss my slippers at the ceiling to knock those eight-legged bastards down. 🤣 Lol.
No worries if you only skimmed. Sometimes that's what I gotta do if I'm not in the mood for listening to a full-length track like this. It is a very, very long piece of music.
And yes, I made the entire piece start to finish in four hours at the cafe. Four pints of coffee, once per hour, so I was super-duper caffeinated. But that isn't the actual secret to how I finished nearly an hour piece of music in under four hours.
My secret is committing everything to audio in Cubasis (audio freezing). So, say for instance I drove the piano with Ioniarics, right? I would then freeze the MIDI to audio by laying down an empty MIDI clip and pressing "freeze". I did this for all the tracks and then edited things further from there with audio editing and automation and such.
If I had Fugue Machine Rubato, I'd probably put my current FLSM album on the backburner and dive back into Ambient in Cubasis 3.
Oh f--k, I just realised I used an AI image for the "album cover". 🫣 This was before I did my research into AI and realised how shite it is.
Hey at least the song sounds amazing. Great stuff.
I missed this before, so thanks for the bump y'all.
Hard to get the time to listen to such a long piece but the 15 minutes or so I managed were lovely.
The little repeating glockenspiel motif really tied it all together.
Production up to your usual standard of course 👌
Thank you so much, mate. I appreciate you.
I want to thank you for this. It was an epiphany for me. I am a bit slow on the uptake at times. This paragraph finally made me realize what the rest of the world has known about ambient.
I have always had the mindset that music MUST be actively listened to. That made ambient painfully boring. Your permission to not do that here changed everything. I did indeed skip around to get the gist. I found I enjoyed the gist. It’s peaceful.
Now I am revisiting the whole idea of active listening vs background. When I was younger I used to consciously try to “actively listen” to natural background. Just sit somewhere outside without music playing and hear the music of the background. I would pretend is was something somebody composed. It can be described as an infinitely long and complex evolving pad consisting of layers of many sounds playing at varying time intervals. My mind would look for patterns which were fleeting if there at all. After awhile my mind would wander and this “music” became background. Then I would come back to actively listening again. I now realize I was listening to ambient music. Duhhhh!
I am playing this again while writing these comments. I am outside and hearing it superimposed on the natural ambient of my back yard. Once in a while I will actively listen for a few moments then go back to writing.
What a wonderful experience.
Thank you again.
@boomer what a lovely way to describe engaging with ambient music! Imo ambient is like meditation in that it helps you recognize “moments” and then let them go.
Just had this playing while I cooked and ate. Nice work Jim! Almost dark ambient but still with a brightness to it (I think the Phrygian mode is throwing it off from that familiar major scale by just enough). Wouldn’t be out of place on a Varg Vikernes prison era Burzum album.
Been staying offline a lot, but this is nice to come back to.
@boomer That's quite a lovely and thoughtful descriptive insight regarding listening to Ambient. And that's really the point of Ambient, as I said. Can be listened to passively, actively, skimmed, from start to finish, or whichever way you wish to listen.
@Squishy Exactly! Ambient is akin to meditation in so many ways. 😊
@michael_m So glad to see you mate. Glad you gave this a listen in thr BG. A sign of Ambient well done is Ambient that sets the mood. Cheers mate. ❤️