Studio Notes: Gloaming

A new track and how my composing style has changed since the release of Meditations

🎧 If you’d like to listen to this letter please hit the play button above.

A New Sound

In my 2023 Christmas Mix, I shared a track that I've been working on recently but I felt the need to write a little bit more about the process behind that piece of music, because in a lot of ways it's quite different from anything I've made before, whilst remaining very familiar.

Gloaming is the first piece of music I've worked on seriously since the release of my album Meditations. I've written other music, but I've given far more attention to this track. Meditations was a turning point in my sound solely because of the time I spent with mastering engineer Hems. Our time working together helped me to deeply understand the improvements that could be made to my music. He mentored me on many aspects of my sound, but one significant thing I came away understanding was how to clean up my lower frequencies which I had always struggled with. Because the music I make tends to be thick and cloud-like, rather than sparse and delicate, it can be easy for frequencies to accumulate around the 90-190Hz range. This tends to make everything sound a bit muddy and unclear. It's kind of like turning up the 'bass' EQ knob on your home stereo whilst leaving the 'middle' and 'treble' knobs too low.

It finally clicked that trying to solve this issue at the very last moment by throwing an EQ on the final track and reducing everything in that 90-190Hz range was a bit like putting a band-aid on an axe wound. Instead, I was a lot more mindful of this frequency range whilst composing and that massively helped clean up my sound long before I got to the mixing and mastering stages. Paying attention to when the frequencies were becoming too crowded, and what layers were guilty of contributing to this problem helped me keep my tracks sounding so much better.

Electronic vs. Organic

Whilst composing, I'm often interested in blending overly electronic instruments with those that are a bit more classical. I feel that orchestral instrumentation is very important to give my tracks more of that organic feel that I'm after. Everything should breathe and feel alive like it does with the orchestra. Plus, I'm always trying to run as far away as I can from that stale "Ableton sound" that is quite easy to fall into when writing electronic music within Ableton. Anyone who's used the software will know what I'm referring to here!

Here's an example of an electronic sound that is quite an integral part of the second half of the piece. Quite synthy, sharp and cold on its own. The reverb and the filter help to tone it down somewhat but it's still not quite good enough to be left alone.

And here's an example of one of the organic layers that work in tandem to create my sound.

In contrast with the synth track I just played, there's absolutely nothing static here. You can hear the whole sound is constantly moving and evolving and there are so many different layers. It's these layers that I rely heavily on to create the clouds of sound I'm after. Thick, heavy and with so much to discover hidden deep within the layers—if you give yourself the time to listen.

This track is still a work in progress and there's a bit more that I'd like to do to adjust some of the things that I've shared here but I thought it might be interesting for some of you to hear this as it is—in the middle of a state of change. If you'd like to hear more of these studio notes please let me know down in the comments!

Thank you for being here. Please share this with anyone you think who might enjoy it and if you'd like to support this newsletter please buy one of my albums over on Bandcamp or consider becoming a paid subscriber here on Substack.

SJF

And here's the full track so you can hear how everything came together 👇