Nocturnal Transmission: Writing/Production

Posted Leave a commentPosted in Geekery, Livestream, Music, Nocturnal Transmission, Reason

I fully intend to do a live-stream at some point (which I may include below if I remember!) specifically detailing some of the production decisions behind Nocturnal Transmission, but I thought in the meantime I’d take this opportunity to write a bit about how I ended up writing & producing it.I mentioned in my previous blog post that I got into a bit of a musical flow-state when writing tracks for this release, so I figured I’d expand a little on what that actually entailed.

One of the best things I find about writing music in general is that, for me, it’s primarily an autotelic process – that there is a newly created piece of music at the other end is one hell of a result but, when it’s something I truly enjoy writing, the process itself is its own reward. This was very much the case for the entirety of Nocturnal Transmission – expanding on some of the necessary restrictions enforced during my live-stream music making sessions, I ended up committing to sound choices very quickly (I’ll get to more on that in a bit). In a way, this in itself would go on to inform the direction of a track – by not spending hours and hours obsessing over individual elements I was able to get ideas down quickly and work with those initial impressions before “unravelling” them accordingly.

There was more of a reliance on established processes with this particular album than pretty much anything else I’ve worked on, which really helped to overcome any creative obstacles that might have cropped up otherwise. It also had the added benefit of totally removing any notion of worrying about how to get ideas down – the first track, Silhouette, worked as a bit of a template in this regard, and one which would form the backbone of things to come.

My Virus Snow Ti – used frequently on Nocturnal Transmission

For most of the tracks I initially focussed on getting a good 16 bar chunk of audio to use as a backbone for the entire track. This typically involved starting with either a synth or sample of some sort, which would invariably end up getting sliced up and re-purposed into something different. Around this I would add drums from a particular palette (in this instance, mostly sourced from Wave Alchemy’s excellent Drumvolution), additional synth flourishes/arps courtesy of an Access Virus Snow Ti or Spire, some synth chord stabs courtesy of Massive, and then I’d just kind of run with whatever worked from there. It was a nice system, and one which helped me get a solid 16 bar frame-work down quite quickly.

From this point I would start to unravel the track from this 16 bar block – again, this is something I tend to do a lot during my streams, so it felt very natural to arrange these tunes in a non-linear fashion here. I’d start with the barest elements from my pre-existing block to use as an intro and work toward the point I had already established, varying elements and letting things take their time just enough to give it a bit of a hypnotic groove – hopefully without getting to boring or repetitive! Along the way I’d inevitably end up adding more parts, but all of the time I was very conscious not to go overboard with the track-count – I’m happy to admit that a lot of my releases rely a lot on creating dense textures though lots of instrumentation, but that was totally not what I wanted to go for with these tracks. This gave me plenty of space to play with really long delays, reverb washes, and so on.

Another one of the key things that differentiated my approach to Nocturnal Transmission as opposed to a lot of my other releases is that I really wasn’t worried about repeating techniques and sounds across tracks. A part of that came about as a result of not really planning on releasing it initially, but also I figured it would help the tunes sit together better as a collection if there were shared elements in there. Despite starting with essentially a blank slate with every single tune, I never felt as though I was re-inventing the wheel for the sake of it.

All of these factors came together in forming what I hesitate to call an almost methodical approach to production – an approach that, given the appropriate mind-set, meant that I could focus on exercising both compositional and arrangement creative muscles sequentially, never exhausting one before moving onto the other. This is essentially what I mean when I talk about being in a musical flow-state – that perfect balance between expression and creativity where you’re not tiring yourself out, but challenged just enough to make it incredibly fun and rewarding to work on. And it was great!

I’ve mentioned that some of these techniques may seem familiar to anyone who’s watched my recent live-stream music making sessions, but what was particularly interesting to me is that I varied my approach just enough that I would consider the resulting music to sound very much distinct from the music produced during those streams. I would imagine that having a general vibe in mind and working intensely over an incredibly tight time-frame played a large part in that – my live-stream tunes tend to go a bit all over the place stylistically, whereas this was very much a more focussed look at a very particular mood.

The “continuous mix” version of the album sort of came about after I’d finished writing the second track, In Motion. I hadn’t planned it, but I was curious as to how these first two tracks would work mixed together so I fired up a separate session to simply mix the two tracks together. It worked really nicely, and as I continued writing tracks I just kept adding them to my “continuous mix” session to see if they would work. My initial plan was to re-order the tracks to help sit better in this mix, but by the time I was finished I figured it already worked as a continuous listen… I didn’t want to overcomplicate things (again, very much the order of the day with this entire album really!), and I really liked that the tracks were just ordered chronologically in the order in which they were written. Gives it a bit more of a sense of directness, if that makes any sense.

Nocturnal Transmission is available NOW through Bandcamp. You can listen to it in its entirety and download it from my Bandcamp page. Bandcamp subscribers and Patreon supporters also get access to an exclusive audiophile master. It’s also available to stream & download from a wide variety of digital distribution outlets.

Nocturnal Transmission

Posted Leave a commentPosted in Livestream, Music, Nocturnal Transmission, October Sessions

Nocturnal Transmission is an album written during October 2020. It’s a bit of a love-letter to late 90s/early 00s ambient techno/breaks with a distinctly late-night/early-morning feel, and includes a 1 hour DJ-style mix for continuous listening (which is how it was intended to be heard). You can download it from Bandcamp in the format of your choice, or alternatively it’s on most major streaming platforms right now.

I thought I’d take this as a little opportunity to talk about how the album came about and how it ended up getting the release it did. Every year-or-so I have a bit of a tradition of writing as much music as I possibly can during October – it’s always been a fun creative exercise, and sometimes acts as a much needed creative binge between other projects. This year I figured I’d give it a miss as I figured I had that particular creative outlet covered with my live-stream music-making sessions.

Nocturnal Transmission cover art

Around November last year I had gone on a bit of an ambient techno/d&b binge, listening to tons of music by the likes of The 7th Plain, Nail, and Baraka (I also listened to a lot of music by Sasha but that’s pretty much a steady constant these days!). As we approached a similar seasonal feel this year I thought it’d be fun to try writing something in that style – it’s actually something I’ve long wanted to try out, but it’s a vibe I’ve never really been able to fully nail down. I ended up writing the first of what would turn out to be many tracks, Silhouette, using a lot of techniques familiar to anyone who has watched my live-streams but with a sonic palette more appropriate to the era in which I was referencing. It felt so good to work towards a somewhat familiar sound while putting my own spin on it, and I quickly fell into a bit of what I’ll refer to as a creative flow-state.

Over the course of the month I decided to keep revisiting that feeling with no expectations or end goal in mind. Urged on by friends who seemed to “get” what I was going for, I started playing around with mixing the tracks into one continuous mix as I went along. The entire process of creation was a purely self-indulgent exercise – I was enjoying the process, and I was really looking forward to giving it a proper spin when it was “finished” in November! It’s a rare thing to hit such a readily-flowing creative vein so intensely like that, so I really wanted to make the most of it. Lots of lengthy production sessions ensued in which I just kept working on tracks with no real concern about how I was putting it together – I just wanted it to match that November mood I had already established in my head.

Once I’d completed the 12th track (Lucidity) I decided to call it a day and move on. I felt like I needed a break from this particular excursion, and I wanted to quit while I was still enjoying the process. At this point I decided to put together a master and look at sorting out some cover art – even at this point I didn’t really have any real intention to give it a “proper” release, I just thought it’d be cool to have a cover to go with it! I figured I’d leave it for a bit, then decide what exactly to do with in terms of releasing it should I decide to do so – there was no rush, it was just a fun thing that I’d worked on during October.

After a short amount of time listening back to the album I realised that I did in fact want to release it. There was something about the overall feel of it that I just really wanted to share, regardless of my initial intentions or how it would be received. I already mentioned that the entire project was purely self-indulgent, but I think there’s a kind of playfulness to that which I wanted to strike while it still felt fresh in my mind. As such, I released it immediately to my Patreon supporters and Bandcamp subscribers while working out a release through Spotify et al.

And that’s the story of how I ended up accidentally writing an album in October. In recent years I’ve very much become a fan of seizing spontaneity and making the most of prior experience, and given the swift production and release cycle the whole thing still feels incredibly new to me. It has a sort of directness that I’m not accustomed to experiencing with my releases, and the short turnaround made any sort of concerted promotional effort kind of redundant on my part. It is what it is, and it feels great to be sharing such a recent expression of myself with you in this way. I’d love to talk more about how the album was put together from a more technical perspective, but for now I just hope some of you enjoy it.

Nocturnal Transmission is available NOW through Bandcamp. You can listen to it in its entirety and download it from my Bandcamp page. Bandcamp subscribers and Patreon supporters also get access to an exclusive audiophile master. It’s also available to stream & download from a wide variety of digital distribution outlets.

Unforgotten: New album, out now

Posted Leave a commentPosted in Music, October Sessions, Pieces, Subscribers, Unforgotten

Unforgotten is a new album of works written & produced from 2016 – 2019, and it’s available to download right now in the format of your choice via Bandcamp.

“Unforgotten” is a collection of previously unreleased music by UK-based musician & producer Adam Fielding, written & recorded during 2016-2019, and released in March 2020.

Originally starting life as a series of demos written in late 2016, “Unforgotten” is an album that revels in contrast and spontaneity. Drawing on themes of introspection and change, “Unforgotten” is a vibrant blend of intricate electronics and live instrumentation drawing from a wide variety of influences and inspirations.

From the affirming, guitar-soaked opening of “We Will Find Our Way” through to the playful electronic washes of “Sunset Wonderland”, “Unforgotten” is an album that refuses to stay in one place for too long, celebrating playful expression while retaining a strong emotional undercurrent.

Unforgotten is a project I’ve been meaning to finalise and release for quite a long time now. Given the current situation with COVID-19 and several countries placing their populations under lockdown, I figured the most positive thing I could do would be to stop messing about and just release it. So I did.

Originally starting life as one of my October Sessions-of-sorts back in 2016, it was the last project I worked on before relocating my home studio. As a result, it always held a bit of a special place in my heart – I vividly remember writing and producing most of the original demos with a lot of my equipment packed up in boxes, getting ready for the big move. Those original demos were rough around the edges, but over the coming years I kept visiting and re-visiting them time and time again, chipping away at the edges to try and come up with a more well-rounded album. Mixes were tweaked, elements were re-recorded, and tracks were swapped in and out. It was only in late 2019 that I landed on what I considered to be a “complete” album, but even then I was incredibly apprehensive about releasing it – a lot changes in four years!

Due, I suspect, to its spontaneous nature, Unforgotten relies more heavily on acoustic/live instrumentation than my more recent releases. In a way I’d say it works as a sort of companion-piece to Pieces in the sense that both weren’t originally envisioned as “albums” as such, that’s just kind of the way they turned out. Both albums started life as a rough series of tracks that were rotated in-and-out with an on-going series of compositions, and both were endlessly fiddled with as they started to take form. In much the same way that the old 2016 Unforgotten demos sound quite different to the final album, the original 2012 version of Pieces sounds rather different to the released article.

(speaking of demos – if you’re a Bandcamp subscriber, I’ve included the original 2016 demos as a bonus if you fancy comparing the two!)

I must admit that it’s a nice change to just launch an album into the wild (as I write this I’m still sorting out digital distribution through Spotify/Apple Music/et al), though I wish the circumstances that precipitated it weren’t quite so awful. Perhaps at some point I’ll write a little more about the processes involved in writing and producing it. Who knows!

I hope you enjoy the album, and I really hope that one or two of you find some amount of connection or comfort in there.

Stay safe, and here’s hoping things get better sooner rather than later. Cheers.

Some info about Apparitions/Call Of The Void

Posted Leave a commentPosted in Apparitions, Subscribers

I recently received an e-mail from one of my lovely Bandcamp subscribers about a couple of subscriber exclusive albums I’ve released over the years.

“Hi, Mr. Fielding. I’m a subscriber of yours on Bandcamp, and that’s given me access to a lot more of your great music. Some of my favorite exclusives have to be the albums ‘Apparitions’ and ‘Call of the void’. I was wondering if you could give any insight into your process when creating albums like those, specifically about the composition and sound choice/design when making that kind of ambient music. If not, that’s fine. Looking forward to your next release. Thanks. “

If you haven’t heard either of these releases, then I wouldn’t blame you – they’re Bandcamp subscriber-exclusive releases. That said – you can listen to four of the eighteen tracks from Apparitions using this handy player and, if you subscribe, you’ll get access to both of these albums (along with a ton of other stuff) in the format of your choice.

As I got into writing up a proper reply, I realised that it was a really interesting topic to touch upon – these two albums represent two of my personal favourite releases, and I’ve never really talked about them a whole lot due to the nature of their release. As a result, I decided it’d be neat to share my response in a more public manner. So – here’s my response in full:

Hi, thanks for getting in touch! I’d be more than happy to talk a bit about those albums, those are a couple of my personal favourites so it’s really nice to hear that you’ve been enjoying them as well.

Apparitions

Apparitions was a bit of an experiment for me – generally speaking, January can be a bit of a creative slump for me so I figured it’d be interesting to see if I could get over that by writing a series of quick sketches that were loosely tied together. I had previously worked on a production album for licensing with a focus on moody ambient drones, and I thought it’d be interesting to work with a similar palette. For most of the synths I ended up using PolySix as it’s incredibly quick to dial in a sound, and for a lot of the atmospheric sounds I ended up delving into my own personal patch library alongside some ReFills by New Atlantis Audio. Beyond reverb and delay, there’s not a lot going on in terms of effects processing. I always find that working with a set palette makes it much, much easier to get ideas down quickly as I’m not having to think about which instrument to turn to for a particular task.

Due to the nature of the sketches, I wasn’t afraid to rely on presets outside of the PolySix and, while I felt it was important to give each idea time to develop, I didn’t want to linger on any one idea for too long. This is why most of the tracks are about 2 – 3 minutes long – I have a habit of over-thinking ideas if I linger on them for too long, and the quick turn-around on these tracks meant that I had already moved onto the next idea before I was able to start doubting myself. You might have noticed that most of the tracks follow a similar symmetrical structure – they’re all based around a single idea that builds up and fades out, really simple stuff from an arrangement perspective, but effective in this context. I think this is trickier to pull off with longer form ideas, but the short nature of these tracks made it much easier.

It also helped that I had some interesting ideas that I wanted to express with these tracks before I started working – the creative juices were flowing, and having a sonic blueprint-of-sorts to work from in the form of the old production album gave me an idea as to how it would turn out. I’m a big fan of spontaneity in music, and the creation process of this project was incredibly spontaneous – I strongly suspect this is why I’m really happy with how it turned out. There’s a tendency to burn-out when working on projects for an extended period of time, so removing that aspect entirely helps to keep it feeling fresh.

Call Of The Void used an entirely different palette entirely, but it was written very much with the same approach in mind – this time around, all of the tracks were recorded live using a very slim selection of hardware. I was using a Monotribe alongside a Volca Keys & Volca Bass, along with a MiniKP for effects. Very simple, very straight-forward set-up, and for a lot of the tracks I only tended to use 2 devices at a time. With CotV I’d end up sequencing a couple of simple patterns with these devices, then I’d just hit record and record a take. Unlike Apparitions, this meant that I couldn’t go back after I’d recorded a take – it was all audio, so what you hear is exactly how it was recorded during a single take. I ended up taking a very similar approach with Liminal, although Liminal brought in a Volca Sample which opened things up quite a bit, but even then I decided to limit myself to the sounds I had loaded on there at the start. While Apparitions was written purposefully to power through a potential creative slump, CotV came from a bit of a darker place – hence the title of the album and the track titles.

I find it really interesting that you’ve highlighted those two albums as I’ve never really thought about them as companion pieces before now, but having written this out I can absolutely see where you’re coming from, and it’s really interesting for me to see the parallels between them in terms of how they were put together.

As you can tell I could probably talk about this stuff for days, but I feel like I’ve already rambled enough! Thanks again for getting in touch, and if there’s anything in particular you wanted me to talk about or explain I’d be more than happy to do so.

Cheers,

Adam

In Waves: The Recording And Production Of “In Waves”

Posted Leave a commentPosted in Geekery, Music, Neffle, Tom Pritchard

In a similar fashion to The Third Space, In Waves began with us both attempting to figure out exactly what sort of mood and tone we wanted to go for with the album. Both myself and Tom settled on a somewhat lighter mood as a counterpoint to the more bleak sound found on The Third Space and, through a series of personal references, we both had a solid aesthetic in mind when it came to actually writing material. It certainly helped that we both share a lot of the same inspirations and influences.

I pencilled in a chunk of time at the end of March/start of April 2019 to spend some time with Tom to actually record the album. Prior to the actual recording sessions, we both started working on a series of loops and ideas to really nail the aesthetic and to get some ideas going. This essentially took the form of Tom putting together a series of reasonably fleshed-out loops using an Elektron Octatrack which he then sent over to me, whereupon I embellished them with my collection of Korg Volcas to round them out and get some sequences ready to roll. After sending several ideas back-and-forth in this fashion, we ended up with eight ideas ready to record – a pretty solid starting point, even if we would eventually drop some of these ideas from the album.

We also decided that, in a first for a Neffle release, we would track the album as a series of multi-track takes – not a revolutionary approach, all things considered, but a change to our usual flat-mix-per-take approach from previous albums. Although this previous approach had been somewhat beneficial from a creative standpoint, it was far more restrictive in terms of what we could change after a single take was recorded; while it’s somewhat freeing to know that, once a take is recorded, you can’t continue to tweak it endlessly after-the-fact, this typically resulted in us spending more time during the recording sessions getting the mix balanced correctly and recording multiple takes. Recording multi-track takes meant that we could separate the mixing process from the recording sessions, and it also meant that minor edits could be made after-the-fact.

As a result of this preparation, as well as the separation of recording & mixing processes, the main bulk of the recording took place over three days. We decided that I would take on mixing duties for the album after recording was wrapped up, though we ended up putting together a series of rough reference mixes along with extensive notes to make that process smoother.

In terms of the performance set-up, we took a similar approach to prior Neffle albums whereby each of us was responsible for a pre-determined selection of devices.

Tom was primarily using the aforementioned Octatrack, which – thanks to its focus on performance and excellent time-stretching capabilities – allowed for a plethora of performance and sample manipulation options: the crossfader functionality in particular proved to be extremely useful, as it allowed for dynamic performance changes during recording without sounding too jarring or out-of-place. The ability to time-stretch elements while preserving transients was also invaluable to the album, and imparts a particular character throughout In Waves that I’m particularly fond of. The Octatrack output consisted of two channels (main stereo output & cue stereo out) which were both fed into stereo inputs on the mixer – one of these channels would typically consist of drums, and the other would typically consist of more melodic elements.

A bit of NeffleStation ’19

I was using a series of Volcas – namely the FM/Keys/Bass, all of which had been pre-loaded with a series of sequences prepared beforehand. The FM was also pre-loaded with a custom bank of patches; rather than programming the patches from scratch on the Volca FM itself, I decided to use Dexed to export a series of patches to the Volca FM via Sysex transfer. Although patches would sometimes sound rather different on the FM, this gave me a solid starting point from which to further tweak the sounds on the synth itself. I had also brought an Alesis Nanoverb 2 with me which I had fully intended to use, but – alas – I’m an idiot and didn’t bring the correct power supply to use with it. Derp. In lieu of this, I ended up using a BOSS RE-20 as an insert on various Volca devices throughout (as an aside: I ended up using the Nanoverb 2 all over my Bandcamp subscriber album Liminal last year, and you can hear it in action here).

Everything was recorded using a Zoom LiveTrak 12. This mixer also operates as a multi-track recorder and USB audio interface, and allowed us to record individual multi-track takes and reference mixes with minimal fuss. Tom’s Octatrack was routed to the two stereo inputs on the L-12, and I was typically using between one-to-three mono channels for my parts. The L-12 also features a series of in-built effects, EQ, and compression. The multi-track recordings were recorded pre-EQ & effects processing, which meant that these would not affect the multi-track recordings – perfect for creating reference mixes without baking anything permanently into the multi-tracks. On-board compression was used sparingly as this was baked into to the multi-track recordings.

Thanks to this workflow, we would typically get a rough mix going before recording anything. All of the tracks were recorded live, with each track typically consisting of one or two takes. Once a take was recorded, we would take some time out to listen back and tweak the mix for reference purposes while taking notes. Once we had something we were happy with, we’d record a reference mix with any required tweaks and move onto the next track. For the most part, these reference mixes were pretty rough around the edges, but were more than adequate for the purposes of providing a frame of reference for the actual mixing process. Thanks to this workflow, we were able to maintain a decent sense of spontaneity in the recordings while allowing us a greater deal of flexibility further down the line.

The first day of recording took a while to really get going. The first track on In Waves, “The Shimmer”, was the first track we recorded, and it was the only one of the three or so recorded during the first day to end up on the final album. Having listened back to the other two tracks, I actually like them a lot more than I remembered… but leaving them off of the album was the right call.

The first session served as a bit of a learning experience and a means to familiarise ourselves with the recording setup, and over the course of the next couple of days things progressed smoothly. We hit our stride on the second day, and once we had finished recording our pre-existing ideas we decided to sequence and record two more tracks from scratch. These two tracks would become “Phantom Channels” and “Lands Known”.

It was around this point that we started thinking about where to take the rest of In Waves. What we had so far was eight tracks that flowed satisfyingly, and we started to think about how we were going to order the tracks and what else we could do with it. After listening to the reference mixes a whole bunch we decided that, actually, the order in which we’d recorded the tracks provided a satisfying pace to the album, and because it was recorded in a short space of time it all sat well together.

After recording two short vignettes (“Under The Red Sun” and “Sleeping Machines”), we decided that we had the makings of an album. Our intention was to record a few more ideas and swap tracks in-and-out of the album as we saw fit but, after some thought, we decided that we were happy with the feel, progression, and tone of the album we already had. In total we ended up recording fourteen tracks, four of which ended up on the cutting room floor. With a running time of just over 40 minutes, we both decided that the recording of In Waves was complete.

From out-of-the-box to in-the-box…

After a bit of a break (during which time we ended up playing an awful lot of Halo and recorded some cool unrelated stuff) I returned home to sunny Huddersfield and started cracking on with mixing the album. As mentioned previously, Tom’s Octatrack recordings were typically split across two stereo channels, with my parts occupying between one to three mono channels. Doesn’t sound like a whole lot to work with, but this allowed for considerably more breathing room than prior Neffle releases!

In contrast to the recording process, mixing was a strictly in-the-box affair and took place entirely within Reason – which should come as no big shock to anyone familiar with how I generally work! One thing I was keen to do when mixing the album was to maintain a natural, rounded feel to it – I tend to take more of a subtractive approach to mixing generally, so I was careful not to make any unnecessary boosts throughout the album unless it was absolutely necessary. The first track I mixed was “Distant Flame”, as I felt with its vast sense of space and deep bass that it would serve as a perfect blueprint for the rest of the album.

The first thing I decided to do was to set up three aux send effects to roughly correspond with what we were using on the reference mixes – these consisted of a Uhbik-A plate-type reverb, a DR-1 space-y reverb, and an instance of Valhalla Delay. I ended up using this as a bit of a template for the rest of the album. Using these three aux sends across the album and across both the Octatrack and Volca channels helped to lend a sense of coherence that was somewhat lacking on the reference mixes. Additionally, although the L-12s effects are perfectly solid, the jump in quality afforded by these effects alone helped to give the album more of a polished sound.

For the most part, I was using the LP/HP filters on Reason’s mixer to scoop out any unnecessary frequencies on individual channels – this is something I tend to do quite frequently, and the built in channel filters are something that I always miss when I’m using a mixer in another DAW. It’s a quick and easy way to sculpt a mix before getting a little more into it, whether that’s via the mixer’s further built-in effects or (my preferred approach) via additional rack effects.

A few regulars during the mixing stage

A little trick I used across the album to smooth out some of the drum tracks while giving them a little bit of punch was to use Kilohearts’s Disperser, which was super useful in this regard. On “Distant Flame” I ended up using Disperser around 60hz to round out the kick a little in the lows while also helping it to pop a little more in the mix. Due to the nature of Disperser, this did not affect the amplitude of the kick – which was pretty damn useful, it must be said!

Additionally, on a lot of the drum channels I ended up applying a very light limiter to tame some of the more errant transients. I figured this would give me a bit of extra headroom without compromising the rest of the mix, and I was careful to make sure I didn’t go in too heavy with it – the last thing I wanted to do was completely squash the drums, but some of the snappier drums on the album needed a bit of taming. For the most part I ended up using Newfangled Audio’s Elevate limiter for this purpose.

I ended up using the DR-1 reverb as an insert across certain parts of the album to help smear some of the more spacey elements, such as a few of the Volca Keys lines. Although I tend to prefer not to rely too heavily on stereo widening plug-ins, I did end up using NUGEN Audio’s Stereoizer Elements to widen a couple of channels here and there as well. All of the mixes were checked for mono compatibility and, thanks to not applying said widening to the entire mix, this was maintained.

One thing I wanted to maintain across the album was a solid low-end presence without the necessity of a sub-woofer – there’s a fair amount going on in the lows throughout the album, but in a couple of places I felt as though the deeper bass parts were getting a bit lost without the presence of a sub-woofer. In these instances I ended up creating a parallel channel for the offending bass part and processing it with some sort of saturation, just to give it a little bit of a crispy touch while rolling off the lows. What this means is that you still have the satisfying subby lows that were present initially while adding a little bit of presence higher up in the spectrum. I was careful to use this effect sparingly, but it helped to give the bass a bit more presence on certain tracks.

On top of being able to help the tracks gel a little better with one another, mixing in Reason also allowed me to add a bit more variety here and there without compromising the original performances. The most obvious example of this is toward the end of “Phantom Channels”, during which I ended up using a DC-2 chorus on the Volca Keys channel to give a bit more of a sense of depth and variety as the track progresses. Another good example is on the title track when the drums drop out, giving rise to a DR-1 focussed filtered reverb insert before everything launches back in again.

I ended up applying a very (very!) light amount of master bus compression on the tracks, just to help glue them together a tad. For this I ended up using Reason’s built-in master bus compressor, which is always a very handy thing to have. If you don’t happen to use Reason, the Waves SSL G-Master Buss Compressor is a pretty solid alternative.

By the end of this process (and much back-and-forwarding of mix revisions and feedback between Tom and myself) I ended up with a pre-mastered version of the album that we were both happy with. Due to having a pretty good idea of what I wanted from the album in general, the mastering stage was incredibly straight-forward. I ended up mastering the album in Studio One which, thanks to its marvellous project view, is perfect for mastering whole projects.

My “mastering” chain (I feel like a bit of a fraud referring to it as a mastering chain, to be fair) consisted of a bit of EQ and a limiter. And… that’s it. Both myself and Tom had decided that we were keen to master the album with a view to preserving the dynamics as much as possible, so I ended up using a pretty light touch at this point. Due to some forethought during the mix-stage, there was plenty of headroom to play around with and very little need for any heavy-handed processing – just the way I like it.

So, that’s a brief overview of the recording & production process of In Waves! We’re both incredibly happy with how it turned out and, much like The Third Space, really scratched a very particular creative musical itch for both of us. If you have any particular questions about the recording, mixing, or mastering of In Waves then please feel free to get in touch and we’d be happy to explain in a little more detail. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy the album and we’d love to know what you think of it!

In Waves is available to pre-order now – pre-orders will gain immediate access to two tracks from the album. In Waves will be available to download in the format of your choice as a pay-what-you-want release on the 17th May via the Neffle Bandcamp page, and will also be available to stream & download from a wide variety of digital distribution outlets.

In Waves: What Is Neffle? (Guest post by Tom Pritchard)

Posted Leave a commentPosted in Geekery, Music, Neffle, Tom Pritchard

What is Neffle? In a nutshell, Neffle is a collaborative project created by myself (Tom Pritchard) and my good friend Adam Fielding. We met on the now defunct Propellerhead forums, way back in 2003, and got to know each other through our shared love of electronic music. Over the years we’d collaborate sporadically on the odd track here and there, typically exchanging Reason files back and forth, working remotely.

Neffle’s humble acid-jam beginnings

One weekend in 2011, Adam happened to be visiting shortly after I’d acquired a pair of Korg Monotribes. If you’re unfamiliar with the Monotribe, it’s a small analogue groovebox that’s great for making squelchy acid techno sounds – a particularly hands-on machine that’s perfect for spontaneous jams. Working together with the Monotribes and an MFB-503 drum machine, we spent a solid afternoon banging out tunes for a laugh (one of which, Cellphone Acid, is included as a secret bonus track with the download of Brain Tub). It was great fun to work together in the studio, so we decided to do the same thing again the next year, and in 2012 recorded a mix on to cassette (MONO Side B, another secret track, this time hidden on the download for Futility Son). These recordings have a certain charm, despite their crude quality, and so we figured perhaps it was time to embark upon a more concerted effort.

The first two albums, Brain Tub & Futility Son, were recorded back to back in a week-long recording session in June 2014. We’d start with a simple idea, maybe a bass line or a drum rhythm, and build on to it bit by bit, arranging the parts on the fly as we recorded. Despite working amidst the mild warmth of the English Summer, these tracks took on a decidedly bleak tone, filled with brooding keys and cavernous reverb, in part owing to the constraints of the equipment we were using, a limited palette of small desktop synths and drum machines. Given the Wintery vibe, we released these tracks in October that year – and so Neffle was born! We returned to these ideas again in the second half of 2015, recording late into the night to produce a set of nocturnal, ambient techno tracks, released as Assistance in early 2016. The Soul Anatomy EP followed later that year, an eerie beast with a deeply sinister tone.

Unfortunately, the Soul Anatomy sessions made for challenging recording: despite our best intentions, it felt as though none of the material we worked on would sit well together. The result is an EP with a distinctly loose, improvisational sound, to put it lightly. When it came to recording The Third Space, we took a different approach, working on material separately before coming together to flesh it out – a method that allowed us to work greater structure and depth into the music without losing the spontaneity of recording in jam sessions. The Third Space felt like a significant step forward for Neffle, an evocative lofi exploration of haunting, melancholy spaces. In the space of six years, our work had grown from sporadic improvised recordings into a coherent project with vivid intention.

Building on the foundations laid for The Third Space, we approached our 2019 recording sessions with an intense focus, resulting in an album that is considerably more refined and detailed than our prior efforts. After five releases of spartan, melancholy music, it felt like the right time to change things up a little. In Waves maintains the enveloping textures that characterise our previous work, but shifts the tone to a warm, psychedelic sound, with rich instrumentation and natural recordings layered in dense soundscapes. If The Third Space sounds like abandoned places and swirling fog, In Waves is the sound of warm evenings and fading sun, that ethereal, liminal atmosphere between light and darkness.

In Waves is available to pre-order now – pre-orders will gain immediate access to two tracks from the album. In Waves will be available to download in the format of your choice as a pay-what-you-want release on the 17th May via the Neffle Bandcamp page, and will also be available to stream & download from a wide variety of digital distribution outlets.

“In Waves” – the new Neffle album, out 17th May

Posted Leave a commentPosted in Music, Neffle, Tom Pritchard, Uncategorized

In Waves is a hypnotic journey through psychedelic soundscapes. Following on from the crusty, decidedly lo-fi sounds of The Third Space, we decided to pursue a similar vibe, but with a lighter mood and a more refined sound. The result is a downtempo trip, perfect for late night listening. In Waves maintains the spontaneity typical of Neffle tunes, but brings with it a little polish, tighter focus and an expansive, enveloping atmosphere.

Neffle is a long-running collaborative project started in 2014 by myself and Tom Pritchard. In Waves is the latest album to be released under the Neffle moniker, and is an album that we’re both proud to be releasing on the 17th May via Bandcamp and most other major streaming & digital services.

In the meantime, you can pre-order In Waves from Bandcamp – although the album will be available as a pay-what-you-want release from the 17th, pre-orders will gain immediate access to two tracks from the album (“Distant Flame” and “In Waves”, both of which can be played via the player above).

In a first for a Neffle release, both myself and Tom will be talking about all things Neffle via a series of posts coming shortly. We took a rather different approach to producing this particular album when compared to prior Neffle releases, so we figured this would be an excellent opportunity to talk about what exactly Neffle is, and how the album was put together – among other things.

In Waves is available to pre-order now – pre-orders will gain immediate access to two tracks from the album. In Waves will be available to download in the format of your choice as a pay-what-you-want release on the 17th May via the Neffle Bandcamp page, and will also be available to stream & download from a wide variety of digital distribution outlets.

Mesmera: out now

Posted Leave a commentPosted in Mesmera, Music, Subscribers

Mesmera, my new ambient solo album, is out now! As always, it’s completely free, and you can download it in the format of your choice from my Bandcamp page here.

Mesmera is an album of ambient/downtempo pieces by UK-based musician & producer Adam Fielding, written and recorded between 2016 – 2018 and released in August 2018.

Since the release of his first album, Adam Fielding has experimented with a wide variety of genres ranging from ambient to IDM, post-rock to synth-pop, and everything in-between. Mesmera sees Fielding taking on a renewed exploration of downtempo ambience, mixing organic and electronic instrumentation with a heavy focus on deep atmospheres and cinematic moods.

Mesmera is a representation of a daunting-yet-deeply rewarding journey, following themes of exploration, reflection, and imagination. Launching from the energetic expanse of Standing On The Precipice, the journey travels through celebrations of the unknown in Everything Felt New, deep introspection in the title track, through to freedom from the past in You Have To Let Go.

With Mesmera, Fielding playfully mixes the familiar with the unknown, crafting a unique album that is sure to be a rewarding listening for ambient & electronic music lovers.

It’s been an interesting journey to get this album released, especially given its origins as an exploration of a more comfortable space. It’s been extremely rewarding to re-visit a more ambient style, and I hope it won’t be quite as long before I delve back into it again. Thank you so much to everyone who pre-ordered the album and my wonderful Bandcamp subscribers (seriously, you’re the best), and I hope you enjoy the journey!

Mesmera is available NOW through Bandcamp. You can listen to it in its entirety and download it from my Bandcamp page. Bandcamp subscribers also get access to an exclusive audiophile master, along with a beatless arrangement of the album. It’s also available to stream & download from a wide variety of digital distribution outlets.

Mesmera: The freedom of independence

Posted Leave a commentPosted in Album 3, And All Is As It Should Be, Distant Activity, Distinctive, General, Icarus, Lightfields, Mesmera, Music, Obscurer, Pieces, Reason

Mesmera is, much like every one of my solo releases since 2014, an independent release. For most of my solo musical career I’ve written and released music independently, and I figured I was overdue talking about why that’s been the case.

When I first started out I, as I imagine a lot of musicians do, had this idea in my mind that getting signed and releasing an album through a label was kind of the “big goal”, this nebulous idea that somehow being signed to a label would validate my musical output up until that point. I had already released a bunch of music for free on-line, and in retrospect I don’t think I fully appreciated the following I’d acquired by doing so. While this seems to be less of a big deal nowadays, releasing music independently to an international audience in the late 00s was a bit of a daunting prospect – especially to someone who had never put out a “proper” release before, and had no idea of what to expect or even what to do. It wasn’t my initial intention to release my first album independently, but that’s how things worked out.

Album #1: Distant Activity

In 2008 I released my first album, Distant Activity. This album was comprised of tunes written between 2006 – 2008, and I’m still incredibly happy with how it turned out. It was written and produced in a variety of bedrooms and student houses in totally inappropriate acoustic conditions using a laptop, Reason, a microphone, a guitar, and a Behringer audio interface. Once I had a mostly-finished version of the album to hand, I set about sending out demos and copies of the album to as many labels and individuals as I could think of. I must admit, I’m still pretty atrocious at the whole “blatant self-promotion” aspect of releasing music independently, and I can only surmise that I was probably worse at it in 2008. I received a lovely response from the good folks at Magnatune, but outside of that – nothing. Nada. Not a “thanks, but we’re not interested”, not a “good lord this is awful, go away”. Not a thing. This was initially a little dis-heartening.

A little time passed and I had a completed version of Distant Activity ready to go. The record was mastered, the artwork was ready, and I was just sitting on it. Rough around the edges, very much a product of its environment, but I was really pleased with how it turned out. One day I started thinking “you know what? I’m really happy with this, why haven’t I released it already?”. It was done, and I was sick of sending e-mail messages and CDs out to a seemingly ambivalent world… so I started taking steps to get it out there myself. I had a small run of CDs duplicated, I signed up for digital distribution through CDBaby, and because independent digital outlets weren’t much of a thing back then (to my knowledge) I decided to start selling it through my own website.

I had no idea what I was doing back then (some things never change!) – I hadn’t even figured out a proper release date for the album beforehand, it just came out when it came out. All that said, I was thrilled to see that people were buying CDs and checking out the album through Magnatune / CDBaby / iTunes / whatever. I was getting frequent feedback both directly and on forums, people were leaving messages on Myspace (yes, this was still a thing), it was an absolute blast. All of this was going on when I probably should have been paying more attention to my final year of studies at university, but I loved the experience. All of this was also going on while I was still getting my toes wet with the world of music licensing, which would prove to be a much smarter direction to go in.

This was a pattern I repeated somewhat with Lightfields, which I initially released independently in 2010… albeit this time I actually had a release date in mind before I released the damned thing!

And All Is As It Should Be

Fast forward to 2014, and I’d had a few label releases by this point (a topic I may delve further into in the future!). Distant Activity and Lightfields were re-distributed by Distinctive Records, And All Is As It Should Be was released through Lost Language, and my follow up Icarus was released through Distinctive Records. All of these are albums that I am incredibly happy with, and in retrospect I feel a large part of my experience in producing Icarus comes down to my own personal attitude towards it rather than anything on Distinctive’s end.

Icarus was a slog to complete. Distant Activity and Lightfields were two totally different albums stylistically, and rather than writing whatever felt natural I spent too much time thinking about audience and label expectations. Should I lean more towards the style I established with the former? Should it sound more polished? What if people are expecting something more like Lightfields? Why do all of my mixes sound awful? I ended up going through a multitude of album revisions, with the first rough cut being completed in 2011. I couldn’t bring myself to move on from it, and it was drove me nuts.

Following the release of Icarus I realised I needed to try a different approach, and I remembered how much fun I’d had releasing music independently – at this point, it had been over three years since I had done so. I also figured that if I was going to do that, I wanted to take the opportunity to try out new ideas. I had come to love the idea of rewarding fans for purchasing my music rather than punishing people for having the audacity to seek it out. I also loved the idea of working on a release that didn’t have an over-arching concept, that didn’t impose any kind of expectations on myself, and that felt completely natural to write. That release was Pieces, and I absolutely thoroughly loved working on and releasing it. People responded really well to the pay-what-you-want approach. As such, I decided to adopt a pay-what-you-want model for all of my independent releases, and rewarding fans while encouraging listeners became my go-to model for releases. This is a model I adopted for subsequent releases Obscurer and The Broken Divide and now Mesmera (whew, at last – bringing this back around to the album at hand!).

Mesmera continues in this tradition. In many ways I consider it a bit of a spiritual successor to And All Is As It Should Be (which I considered a spiritual successor to The Dawn EP at the time…), but it’s what I wanted to write. It came together naturally because it scratched an itch I’d had for quite a while, and that’s why I was able to bring in ideas from 2016 despite having only “properly” started working on it in 2017. It was wonderful to be so hands-on with every single aspect of the creation process, as in many ways creating the music is only one step (albeit a large one) towards completing an album. I went through several artwork revisions (with my incredibly patient buddy Tom Pritchard), track-list orders, mix approaches… but it never became obsessive or manic, and it never felt like a slog. It always felt like I was working toward something I wanted to create at the time, and that’s something I feel I lost sight of while working on Icarus. Again – can’t stress this enough – I am 100% totally and absolutely thrilled and happy with how Icarus turned out, but I’d rather not repeat that creative process again if I can help it!

Mesmera is available NOW through Bandcamp. You can listen to it in its entirety and download it from my Bandcamp page. Bandcamp subscribers also get access to an exclusive audiophile master, along with a beatless arrangement of the album. It’s also available to stream & download from a wide variety of digital distribution outlets.

Mesmera: The blank canvas

Posted Leave a commentPosted in Geekery, General, Mesmera, Music, Obscurer, Patch design, Pieces, Reason, The Broken Divide, Tom Pritchard

Starting a new personal project is frequently a rather daunting prospect, and in my case is something I tend to fall into rather than something I tend to sit down and consciously decide upon. As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I may have written Mesmera’s formative tracks in late 2017, but I certainly didn’t set out with the initial end-goal of creating an album. Sometimes it works to carefully consider everything beforehand, and that’s how I generally approach my production music – but when it comes to solo material, I like to see where it takes me.

…oh boy

So where on earth do you start with that approach? Well – as long time listeners/followers may have noticed, I have a bit of a habit of rotating which instruments and sounds I use on any given project, and how I approach the process of composing and arranging the tracks themselves.

In some instances, these decisions are carefully considered beforehand and are directly informed by the type of music I’m attempting to create. In other instances, these decisions happen quite naturally and, by contrast, directly inform the music I have yet to create. The former approach is generally the one I adopt when I’m working on a particular project to a specific set of guidelines – for example, if someone’s asking for a collection of epic cinematic production tunes then I’m probably not about to bust out my collection of time-stretched wind-chime samples (which totally isn’t a thing but I feel it should be). The latter approach is frequently the one I adopt when I’m staring at a blank canvas and need a place to start – frequently, but not always (see also: Obscurer, where the choice of instrumentation was very deliberate and directly affected the sound and style of the album). Mesmera definitely falls into the latter category.

Following the metaphor of approaching a blank canvas, this selection of instruments and sounds is something I frequently refer to as my “palette” and, while there may be shared elements between projects, they tend to shift about from project-to-project. In the case of Mesmera, I can break down the palette into a selection of very specific elements – some of which I’ll go into here.

Europa in Reason 10

Europa. Lots and lots of Europa: more specifically, Europa patches from Europa Relay. I created this sound-bank shortly after the release of Reason 10, and my heavy use of it had a very direct impact on how my ideas sounded right from the start.

Polysix. This has become a staple of my music since around 2014 or so, and I use it way more than is healthy for things like synth arps and bass drones. It’s straight-forward and always sits nicely with whatever I’m working on. I’ve been considering rotating this out of my palette for bloody years and it still hasn’t happened.

– Acoustic guitars. In this instance, I ended up re-visiting the idea of using lots of simple plucked arps in a similar manner to how I ended up sprinkling acoustic guitar parts all over And All Is As It Should Be. There are a couple of parts where I strum out a few chords, but I really liked adding an extra sense of rhythm with guitar arps, sometimes layered up with other acoustic instruments to vary things up a bit.

– Acoustic percussion. This was something I naturally gravitated towards while working on Mesmera, and is something I used in tandem with the drum sounds from DrumSpillage (below). I realised that I had a habit of relying primarily on electronic kits and traditional acoustic drums in a lot of my music, so I decided to broaden my horizons a bit for Mesmera and ended up bringing in a lot of ensemble percussive elements. This is particularly evident on tracks 1 and 3 (Standing On The Precipice and Everything Felt New, respectively), and runs throughout the album.

DrumSpillage

DrumSpillage. I’ve been using DrumSpillage to roll my own electronic drum hits since I first picked it up a few years ago. I had always struggled to find a really shit-hot drum soft-synth for solid drum hits, and while I have a few favourites that I still use for percussion (namely MicroTonic, love that drum synth!), DrumSpillage was the first where I really thought “woah, this is EXACTLY what I’m after!”. I tend to rotate this into and out of my palette purely because sometimes I just want to drop a sample into a track that I know is going to work without going through the process of rolling my own sounds – but that’s entirely on me and has nothing to do with the instrument.

This is by no means a comprehensive selection of everything I used on Mesmera, but a lot of these particular instruments and sounds find their way across a multitude of tracks. The fun thing about this is that I tend to naturally gravitate toward different instruments and rotate different elements out of my palette almost immediately upon completing a project. Right now I seem to be gravitating towards a different set of sounds, and I have no doubt that this will somehow inform the next personal project I inevitably end up working on.

One thing I like to strive toward when creating an album is a sense of cohesiveness throughout, and gravitating towards a palette in this manner is one way of accomplishing this, even if it tends to happen almost by accident in some cases. Another good example of this is how I ended up creating a lot of the tunes on Pieces – because I was so utterly reliant on the sound-banks of Tom Pritchard Sound Design at the time, the tracks sounded somewhat connected despite some of them being written years apart.

But it’s not necessarily just the sounds that reflect how an album shapes up, but how I get those initial ideas down and arrange them into something resembling a complete song. Going back to Pieces, I ended up using Reason’s Blocks functionality an awful lot to get a semi-complete 8-16 bar loop going, and then work backwards from that. This is a nice approach to take because it means you already have a destination to work toward – from there you can decide how to build towards the destination and, upon reaching it, decide where you want to progress from there. This is also an approach I tend to adopt for a lot of my production music, and it’s an approach I adopted when working on my live-stream music making sessions.

In the case of Mesmera (and The Broken Divide before it), I took a much more linear approach to arrangement – starting from the beginning and going from there. This approach tends to lend itself to a more “progressive” arrangement (in the sense of “things progressing”, not “15-minute prog epic”) in that the journey informs the direction you’re going to take. I tend to follow this approach when working on a lot of my own personal projects because it means I’m less informed by pre-conceived ideas, and it gives me a little more flexibility to go off on a tangent if I decide to explore a different direction.

Mesmera is available NOW through Bandcamp. You can listen to it in its entirety and download it from my Bandcamp page. Bandcamp subscribers also get access to an exclusive audiophile master, along with a beatless arrangement of the album. It’s also available to stream & download from a wide variety of digital distribution outlets.