Apollo Lee 52 Tracks in 52 Weeks

Iridesce

In 52 Tracks, Ambient, Music on February 27, 2008 with 2 comments

Title: Apollo Lee – Iridesce
Date: February 27, 2008
Software: Logic Pro 8 + Korg Legacy Collection (Digital Edition)
Genre: Ambient
Timing: 7:48 @ 40 bpm

What I Like About It

  1. Wine Pad on the Korg M1 (and, in this case, the M1 plugin) is beautiful and floating and very evocative.
  2. I followed a simple chord progression (Ebm/M7 Cm7b5 Fm7b9 Bb7) in Eb Melodic Minor. It’s an unusual key that was surprisingly playable.
  3. I tried to keep my fingers light on the big hammer-action piano controller in my studio.
  4. I used third party plugins for the first time, specifically the M1 and MDE-X effects processor, in conjunction with the usual band of miscreants in Logic.
  5. Using more of the keyboard allowed me some very deep lows to contrast with the higher notes floating around.

What I Don’t Like About It

  1. There are some places where I let off the sustain pedal as we were moving to another chord. In those places, all of the sound dropped away precipitously.
  2. It was fairly easy for me to clip the CPU meter, so I probably went a little overboard trying to compress the music so it wouldn’t clip the audio. It still feels too loud, though.
  3. I’m still using one instrument. Sooner or later, one of these ambient pieces will have to grow beyond the one-patch improvisation.

Note: These are rough drafts. Constructive criticism is welcomed, of course.


2 Comments

Hi Lee, i enjoyed listening to this song and i may be able to give you some constructive criticism.

What i like about this: It’s indeed a piece of music that leans itself very much to the idea of dreaming or floating. Even if it’s far fetched, if i’d hear some bells or gongs, i might think this was recorded in a temple somewhere in a far away east-asian country. That would sound peacefull.

If you like to adapt your music to this kind of atmosphere, you could add light percussion, like waterdrums or wind-chimes.

What i don’t like about this:

It’s an evolving piece.. but it doesn’t go anywhere.
That is just an impression, maybe this is what you intended for this to sound like.

If you wish to create rich textures, you could use the Korg Wavestation, and program a wavesequence or more, and have them interact or follow eachother.

😉 Just my 2 cents. Hope to hear more soon. Keep it up!

Cheers, Mark

Posted by Mark van Hoogstraten on 6 March 2008 @ 9am

This is excellent feedback, Mark. Thanks very much.

Posted by Apollo Lee on 6 March 2008 @ 12pm

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Apollo Lee blogs at The Oracle of Apollo, Osteocephalic, and here. He lives near San Francisco.

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