Hello everyone,
I’ve just released a new album of music. Six tracks which were inspired by, and written to compliment the, Below Earth series of pixel artworks by artist Tom Bacon. tombaconartist.com
All the tracks are a bit hybrid orchestral, with a lot of ambient soundscapes, which is my attempt to musically describe the art. This was especially difficult for me since I have little past experience writing ambient type music and it felt weird to write anything without any real themes or motifs, but still trying to coalesce the music without it just meandering from section to section. The artworks gave me so many musical impressions, with electronic, orchestral, ethnic and ambient sounds and textures to create something that was all at once dark, mysterious and a bit ‘alien’
Musically, I chose the ky of C minor as the main key, but really focused around using the Abm from C harmonic minor as a pivot point to which I modulate or use related keys for each pice. So, each piece is either in Cm, Abm, Gm, or Fm , but also used the parallel major chords of each. Most of the pieces stick to 4/4 time, with some 3/4 or 2/4 here and there.
For instruments, most of the orchestral stuff is from Orchestral Tools’ Berlin Series or Metropolis Ark, with some of the percussion coming from Spitfire Cinematic Percussion and Resonance. Most of the synth sounds and textures are from Heavyocity’s Mosaic series and Impact Soundworks’ Juggernaut as well as a couple of loops from Spitfire’s Albion Iceni. All mixing and mastering is done with iZotope Ozone and I used the Waves API 550A EQ plugin to add some analog saturation.