Chill with Debussy

[Ferryman]

Very nice.  I am blown away by the fidelity of that doohickey.

I was curious about how you did the main melody so flawlessly.  When you said it was difficult, I wiped a bead of sweat from my brow as I am having great difficulty hitting exact notes with the touch pad.  The guy in the music store said he would stick a post-it note on the pad and mark specific notes and then play with the rounded cap of a Bic pen for accuracy.  Just a thought.

Thanks Blooby. Playing a structured melody on the touch pad (rather than random soloing, which is what the strings in the middle section are doing) is quite tough. The key to it (there's a pun here) is to use the right scale. Some of the scales have the notes very close together, so it's hard to pick out the individual notes with any accuracy (although I do use a plectrum which helps with thoose ones). So think of the melody you want and find the scale that is closest to it - experiment with all of them! In this case I found the minor pentatonic scale (MiP) was almost an exact match to the the melody (Debussy must have been a closet guitarist) and so it was quite easy to play the melody in that key. It still took a LOT of goes to get good enough phrasing to record, and in the end I double tracked two that were just about OK and together they sound fine. I could only risk playing that melody once so I used track copy to repeat it across the song.

The piano part was played live because that was quite easy. I still held a small plastic ruler across the touch pad at the position of the first note to ensure that I started in the same place every time. Again the choice of scale was key, because the notes are just three from the minor pentatonic scale, a simple finger move.

I also suffered from the usual recording problem - I could play both parts quite well when practising, but as soon as the record button was pressed my finger froze up and started doing stupid things without me telling it to

How's your mom BTW? Hope things are ok for you now.

Cheers,

Nigel

[Bluesberry]

Very, very cool.  I am getting the itch to get one of these for sure.  I can see using it to get some real prog vibe in some of my future songs.

[SE]

Don.t know how I missed this one excellent work,quailty of sound and production outstanding really top notch!!!!

[tafka]

great stuff Nigel.snowflakes sure are dancing here.
sounds a bit complex in the recording side of things but it popped out the other end an excellent listen.

Tony J.

[Ferryman]

Thanks guys. Indeed Tomita was the inspiration here - Snowflakes Are Dancing was big in the mid 70s (when we were young, right Tony  ). The MBR continues to delight me - it's so easy to work with once you get the hang of it and the quality is superb.

Cheers,

Nigel

[jerome11]

amaging!!!!

I cannot believe it is done with simple ki**** and BR only.

It is in-depth professional one. I envy your mastering skill.

Can I jam with this, Nigel?

B.G.

[lg]

I've not only heard of Isao Tomita, but am a fan also!
You have done a Brilliant work here!
Wow, this is Mp3 player material for sure.
I love this, could you Please do more along this line?

LG

[Greeny]

I'd like to hear more of this too. And some collaborative use of the Kas - I think it could take certain tracks up another notch or two 

[jackofall]

FANTASTIC....

[Ferryman]

Thanks for more nice feedback, this one did turn out quite well and I'm glad you like it.

BG - feel free to have a jam, always interesting to see what directions other folks take your ideas in.

LG - I'll try to do more. The Kaossilator is great fun and addictive (as Greeny identified) but you have to very disciplined with it, otherwise you can spend hours just making silly noises. Which is kind of fun but I don't have a lot of spare time!

Greeny - good idea. And you just planted a slightly mad idea in my head for the blues collaboration that's upcoming

Cheers,

Nigel