Category: Music

Short update

Posted adfielding7 CommentsPosted in Album 3, Geekery, General, Music, Remix

I figured it might not be a bad idea to post an actual update here as opposed to a post dedicated solely to me bitching about DPD! (though I do still hate them with a passion)

Album 3 is still coming along nicely, and I’ve now got a few songs in the bag along with a healthy selection of songs that are ready for a bit of fleshing out. Curiously enough, the end of the album is more or less mapped out at the moment – that’s subject to change, but it’s interesting to see how it’s everything’s starting to fit together. I’m hoping for an interesting blend of progressive/synthpop/atmospheric styles with the finished album. For anyone interested in hearing how things are going, I have a habit of posting clips and snippets from time to time on my SoundCloud page. It’s worth checking there regularly as all kinds of bits and pieces have been appearing there lately and… well… sometimes it seems a bit excessive to post an update here for the sake of a song clip. Sometimes.

I spent a bit of time last week re-installing everything and generally cleaning house, and while doing so ended up going through a few older projects to make sure everything was working properly. In doing so I started messing around with some older songs and re-working them into a more ambient style and ended up with a few interesting ideas – one of said ideas you can check out here. I’ve also been working on a few shorter instrumental ideas over the past month or so, sort of reminiscent of my “sketch-a-day” thingy I did a couple of years ago (for the uninitiated, this involved me writing very quick song ideas regardless of quality – surprisingly, I’m really happy with how most of them turned out) but with a bit more of a polished sound overall. I’ve also been tinkering with Reason 6 for a little while now and, I must say, the focus on rhythmic and distortion effects devices is very welcome.

Reconstructed Textures – free Refill for Reason 5 users

Posted adfielding10 CommentsPosted in Distant Activity, Geekery, Patch design, Reason

Reconstructed Textures is a free Refill available to owners of Reason created using Reason 5. Some of the patches also make use of the ElectroMechanical Refill, which is free to registered users of Reason (if you’re not a registered user, I’m afraid I can’t help you there). You can download Reconstructed Textures here and use it in any of your productions, totally free of charge.

So, what is it? Reconstructed Textures consists of 26 Combinator-based ambient drones, each built using heavily processed samples found in the Factory Sound Bank & ElectroMechanical Refills. But why make a Refill using samples found in the Factory Sound Bank? Well… a little while back I was trying to remember how I created some of the droning sounds featured in one of the tracks on Distant Activity (the track in question being Travelling Light). There are some neat piano drones and reverse effects found in the intro, and – being as I wrote the original version of the track about half a decade ago – I’d forgotten where those sounds came from. After a quick examination, it turned out I’d taken some piano samples from the Factory Sound Bank and processed them. I thought it was a neat idea, so I figured “why not go beyond using just piano samples and see what else I could find in there?”.

All the Combinator patches start with FSB/EM samples – re-mapped, re-pitched, re-looped and layered up in an NN-XT. Then they’re processed with filters, distortion, EQ, compression, reverb, delay or whatever else I fancied doing at the time before being sent to the Combinator’s output where they’re mixed with more layered up, processed NN-XTs. It was an interesting exercise in creating unrecognisable sounds from stock banks as opposed to creating ambient textures from scratch using synths and external devices.

Fancy giving it a go? Download it from here. I’d love to know what you think.




Avatar One’s “Jacinta’s Voyage” – out today

Posted adfielding3 CommentsPosted in Music, Remix

As you may or may not know, I quite like remixing tracks. For someone who is generally rubbish at fully collaborating on a joint project (through no fault of anyone else… I’m just a bit of a control freak), remixes are a unique form of collaboration. You already have a complete track ready to work with, and it’s entirely up to the remixer to decide how best to contribute to the existing work. From the point of view of a control freak, that’s a pretty good situation to be in. Of course, it also helps when you have a fantastic original track to work with.

I’ve been a fan of Avatar One‘s work for quite a few years now, and I had a great time working on this remix. The original track seemed to tick most of my usual boxes (namely in terms of atmosphere), so I decided to try something a bit different, going for a fusion of chilled and hard breaks.

The single was released today through Solarswarm. I would love to know what you think!

Current goings on and off

Posted adfielding3 CommentsPosted in Album 3, General, Music, Patch design

So, first up – the good news! My previously mentioned production album is progressing smoothly, with the bulk of the tracks completed and ready for some further tinkering. I’ve also recently started working on another patch design project and have been working on potential ideas and songs for album #3. You can listen to one of said ideas using the handy player below (or, indeed, here if the embedded player is giving you grief).

(edit: sorry, the preview is no longer representative of how the track sounds so I’ve taken it down -ad)

Unfortunately, I was ill for a few weeks which set me back a bit (glandular fever – which, for future reference, I wouldn’t recommend contracting) but I’m very much back on my feet now. Hooray!

Live webcast now uploaded and available for viewing

Posted adfielding4 CommentsPosted in Geekery, General, Music, Reason

Good news for anyone who missed my webcast for Propellerhead Software‘s Music Making Month – it was recorded, and is now available to view online at your leisure! Huge thanks to Ryan for inviting me to take part, and thanks to everyone who turned up.

For those of a more geeky disposition, I talk a bit about working with irregular time signatures, percussive sequencing techniques and some simple patch design as I build the foundation for a song from the ground up. I would have liked to have talked a bit about atmospheric effects, but I guess there’s always potential for a future webcast…

Distant Activity (DISN206) and Lightfields (DISN207) re-released through Distinctive

Posted adfielding2 CommentsPosted in Distant Activity, Distinctive, Lightfields, Music

So, I decided to have a gander at the Distinctive website to see if there was any mention of my signing and, lo and behold, here we go!


What’s even nicer is that I’m sat next to Way Out West on the artists page… very, very cool!

But, on a more practical note, both Distant Activity and Lightfields have now been re-released through Distinctive. What does this mean for you? Well, at the moment, not a lot – they’ve both got Distinctive catalogue numbers, but the albums remain unchanged from their original iterations. I’m currently in the process of removing “my” versions of the albums from iTunes et al (mainly to avoid confusion, though both versions are identical), but I will continue to sell copies through Bandcamp – which means you can still grab physical copies of both albums if you so wish. However, I certainly won’t be making more physical copies of both albums so when they’re gone, they’re gone – every copy of Lightfields gets a little signature on the inside cover, and I can sign Distant Activity if you wish.

I’ve just finished working on my demo-track for the previously mentioned Reason-based patch design project I’ve been involved in, so I’ll be sharing that with you once the refill comes out.

Technical anomalies?

Posted adfieldingLeave a commentPosted in Distinctive, General, Music, Site

Turns out I’ve been having some issues with getting this site to send me notification e-mails and e-mails sent using the contact form on the site – unfortunately it’s been like that for about a month now, so if you’ve attempted to contact me through the site in the past month then I’d like to apologise for not getting back to you. I’d hate anyone to think that I’m intentionally ignoring them as that’s absolutely not the case – in the meantime, if you’d like to get in touch then you can still do so via my Facebook page, or drop me a line via Twitter.

On a more positive note, I recently headed down to London to discuss album #3 and another project with John at Distinctive Records and I’m excited to see how things go on that front. I’m still messing around with ideas and am in a sound design/planning stage at the moment, though I have a few song ideas that I’ve been fleshing out as well. I’ve just finished up another Reason-based patch design project as well so I should have some news regarding that in the not too distant future as well.

I’ll be sure to update this post when I hear anything new about the lack of notifications issue – I’ll just make more of an effort to check the site, so don’t be afraid to leave comments if you want to… I’m sure I’ll pick them up eventually.

A general update

Posted adfieldingLeave a commentPosted in Distant Activity, Distinctive, General, Licensing, Lightfields, Music
Adam Fielding & Tom Pritchard - photo by Tom Pritchard

Apologies for the relatively slow update – I figured now would be a good time as any to answer the question of whether or not album #3 is on the cards. So…

The good news is that there will definitely be an album #3. Lightfields came out not too long ago, and I’m hoping to share some good news regarding both Distant Activity and Lightfields with you in the not-too-distant future. Right now I’m still figuring out what sort of direction I want the next album to go in, so I guess you could say I’m still in the planning stages. That’s not to say I’m not working on new material at the moment, but it does mean that it’s incredibly early days yet. I’d love to give you more information right now, but – to be honest – I don’t know which direction it’s going to go in yet.

Right now I’m splitting the vast majority of my time between my own artistic output, publishing/licensing and sound design. All I can say is that a bit of a gap between updates isn’t necessarily a bad thing… it normally means I’m busy working on something.

In the meantime, I think you should check this out. Anyone familiar with Tom (pictured right alongside yours truly)’s musical output should already know that his work is utterly fantastic, and this Nintendo DS-based project is no exception.

Signed

Posted adfielding6 CommentsPosted in Distinctive, General, Music

I am now officially signed to Distinctive Records!

I’ve been a huge fan of a fair few artists on Distinctive for many, many years now (I fondly recall being introduced to both Hybrid and Way Out West during my early years at university), so – naturally – I’m incredibly thrilled to be a part of the Distinctive family. Naturally, a huge thanks are in order both to the kind folks over at Distinctive for bringing me on board and, of course, to you the listeners. I imagine that this marks the start of bigger and brighter things, and I sincerely hope you’ll be joining me for the ride. Watch this space, and…

Cheers!

Homeward

Posted adfielding3 CommentsPosted in Geekery, General, Music

Hello. I’ve had a fairly busy past couple of weeks, and I spent a fair amount of time struggling to write something dramatic and upbeat… then decided to take an entirely different approach and spent some more time writing something more downtempo yet equally dramatic. And this is what happened.

(update: track removed – sorry! -ad)

As always, I’d love to know what you think of it!

In further music-related news, things are going very nicely – I’m still working away on various remix/collaborative projects, and… well… I’m still looking forward to sharing my previously hinted-at-but-never-properly-announced good news. But… if there’s one thing I’ve learned from writing music it’s that it’s best not to announce anything until everything’s absolutely set in stone. Hang in there, the good news is coming!

On a totally unrelated topic – I’ve been playing a little bit with the latest Ubuntu release – it’s rather good. Alas, the only things which didn’t work out-of-the-box (so to speak) were my audio interface and MIDI keyboard… which is actually pretty impressive. But, alas, those are quite key to my audio setup. Having said that, it looks like there are drivers in-the-works for my audio interface which I’m sure will be stable before too long.

I like to tinker.