"Glacier Dream"
It all started long ago, during a chat with Razfaz, himself
creator of very fine and technically brilliant songs (hey,
respect where respect is due). He uses OSS' echo function
excessively, playing it as a rhythmic echo that repeats
every quarternote.
We talked about the problem that, using echo this way, the
echo of a bassdrum is right "over" the next beat, thus
killing much of the "kick" of that bassdrum. Back then I
said that I'd like to try some sort of ambient tune
(without drums) to play with the beauty of that echo
function and see how it works out this way.
Some idle afternoon I remembered that chat and started with
some extremely wacky-sounding 5 or 6 patterns. The fragment
lay there on my HD, I didn't want to delete it (after that
shitty work of finding the correct delay value according to
the 110 bpm), and I couldn't find the motivation to continue
it, either.
What you are hearing now is, about half a year after the
first steps, the result of my constant idleness :) - the
basic patterns and ideas are still there, yet I changed many
many instruments and re-arranged the whole thing many many
times. Concerning this part, I believe that I never put more
work into a damn song than this one.
The rest is rather simple. I used this rhythmic echo to play
single notes following my "allround" scale Es-Major, and
these add up to some sort of chords by echoing into the
following notes. I found that "technique" (uuuhhhm)
extremely catchy during composing as you'll hear. :)
During composing it was indeed my intent to let some
harmonic development in the arrangement "unfinished" and
return to the start of the sequence, as so to keep the
listener waiting for more to happen. One might say that the
monster climax the song reaches doesn't fit the arrangement,
and I partially agree with that, after all it was just a try
which carried me away, but in the end I was so touched by
the simplicity and power of that part, and that led me to
keeping it the way it is now.
I hope you enjoy this song as much as I do now.
Alex aka Neurodancer/1oo%, 28-Feb-1999, 20:57.
neurodancer@gmx.de
