Studio Notes: Wander the Night

breaking down one of the tracks from the album.

Hey, thank you for being here. In this week's letter, which I'm recording for the first time(!), I wanted to take a look at an album I released back in 2020 during the height of the pandemic — Wander the Night.

Please hit the play button above to listen to this letter. However, if you prefer to read instead simply carry on below👇

The splash page of Wander the Night.

The album was released as part of a collaboration between Cody Ellingham and I in 2020 to keep ourselves busy whilst stuck in the limbo that we all struggled through. I was in Tokyo, running Deakin St coffee stand and Cody was back home in Wellington after a tour of Asia. We needed something creative to keep us buoyed amidst the daily chaos of the news and death toll charts. The regular calls we had at the time allowed us to catch up on what was keeping us going and what creative projects we were both working on.

We wanted to create a way to allow people to travel without leaving their homes. The idea was somewhat inspired by a few other projects at the time. There was that one where you could visit a website that played the ambient sounds of sitting in a bar. Complete with the music, the sound of drinks being prepared, people making small talk around you and a whole host of other 'bar' sounds. Or there was the one where people set up webcams pointing out of their window and you could 'tune in' to the view out of *someone else's* window. Our goal however was to capture that magical feeling of that first night spent in a new city. A feeling we were both sorely missing.

We began work immediately after the first chat really. Cody built the website from scratch, provided the photos and I started work on putting the soundtracks together. 5 cities in Asia; we did Shanghai, Hong Kong, Bangkok, New Taipei and Tokyo on the first run. Eventually the project expanded to 7 cities in total. Kyoto and Yokohama were added later.

Wander the Night Tokyo

For each city I would compose a roughly 10-minute piece inspired by and in response to the photography that Cody had taken during his travels. Then I'd find localised ambient recordings from each city on YouTube and weave them into the soundtrack as a base layer. As a final touch we added the sound of rain to make it extra moody!

My goal during the composing process was to try and 'hear' the images that Cody shared with me. Trying hard to listen to what they had to say and picking up on their atmosphere. Whilst composing I had the images up on a second screen to make sure the music and the photography worked well together.

And even though lockdowns are a distant memory now, it's still a great website to load up in the background whilst you’re doing other work. I find that it works particularly well as an accompaniment to writing! Wander the Night.

Shanghai

The first track on the album is one I'm particularly proud of and is probably one of my favourite pieces, if I’m allowed to say that!

In this post I thought it might be interesting to take a bit of a dive into the process behind how I wrote that track and give a little behind the scenes listen to individual parts.

Cody’s stunning photo of Shanghai.

Everything about the atmosphere was directed by that beautiful photo of Shanghai from Cody. In the foreground, a street full of townhouses from the old China are towered over by the monolithic buildings of new China in the background. It looks and feels late at night—all of the shops are shuttered and there's not a soul to be seen.

I know from experience that Cody tends to be a late-night photographer (or is that an early morning photographer!?) so this makes me think it's probably around 3 am. The only hint of life in the foreground is from an open door on the left of the scene from what might be an all-night grocery store or something like that. The clerk inside probably wouldn't even raise their head to acknowledge you if you walked through the door.

It's the light and the colour that has always drawn me into this image. The red and blue tint is a signature of Cody's photography from around this time. It gives a powerful otherworldly feeling. Like we're not quite in the here and now, but in some kind of alternate universe.

The only other hint of life comes from the buildings in the background. High rises that ominously tower over the relatively miniscule buildings of the foreground. Lights are on but is anyone home? I imagine the streets surrounding these buildings—they must be fairly busy even at this hour. Drunken office workers stumbling out of bars, young party-seekers shouting, scooters zipping in and out of the cars, sirens wailing.

When composing I thought about all of the sound you might hear if you were standing in the spot this photo was taken in. My attention was mainly focused on the wash of city ambience that would be making its way to you, the listener. The piano lines in particular have intentional motifs that are designed to echo the fire engines and police cars rushing through the night to their destination.

For example, here's the sound of a Chinese ambulance:

And here's an example of that influence in the music:

It's not exact but you can hear the correlation. The delay and the reverb help to provide that otherworldly atmosphere from the photo.

The low and middle piano lines, as well as the chaotic piano, all work together to create the atmosphere of the washed out distant sound of the city flooding over the rooftops of the buildings in the foreground.

The melodies and rhythms I landed on were definitely influenced by the effects I was using. I played with, and responded to, the effects whilst recording. Without them it has this odd kind of awkward timing. But everything works in context of the effects.

Here's the piano lines altogether. With effects, and then without:

I wrote Shanghai when I'd just discovered Spitfire Audio's software instruments so their influence features heavily on this track and to be honest, almost everything I've created since. Viola, contrabass, clarinet. All heavily distorted though, with a healthy dose of reverb and delay. So they sound far from natural.

Here's the clarinet with effects, without and then with again. And the viola:

The final step was of course adding the rain and the ambience of Shanghai to make it sound realistic. I collated these from a few different videos of night-time walks through the city on YouTube.

Here's the ambience of Shanghai playing on its own. WIth plenty of extra reverb for luck. You can hear cicadas, scooters, people and other vehicles if you listen carefully:

I hope you enjoyed this short intro into one of my tracks. If you'd like more of these breakdowns please subscribe and let me know in the comments below.

Thank you for being here. Please share this with anyone who you think 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.

And now here's the full track, Shanghai, so you can hear how everything came together:

SJF