This is the first official self-produced full-length Ambient Esoterica album. It was produced in my living room on an HP Omen desktop running Cubase.
It began with an idea to create a Trinaural Beats video for the YouTube channel. While experimenting with techniques to achieve this, I realized I was diving further into a rabbit hole that was becoming something larger in concept than a simple, few-minute YouTube video.
I decided to create this album after spending a few years solely focused on producing Ambient Esoterica content for YouTube. On occasion, I would get asked, “Do you have any music out there I could listen to or add to playlists?. It felt odd to be sending them to my YouTube channel, where over 100 unique original compositions and audio experiments were scattered everywhere in various categories, playlists, and styles.
Eventually, it made sense to create something that could be distributed to other streaming platforms used entirely for listening to music and playlists.
This album was produced entirely using Cubase Pro 14 from Steinberg and the Serum 2 VST hybrid synthesizer from Xfer Records. Nearly every effect and note selection was determined or modulated using a variety of randomization techniques. With so much of the composition being determined by randomization generators, such as S&H LFOs, each version of an exported mix would be distinct and different.
The composition itself was simple: Each track was programmed with the same note, once per measure, at 30 bpm for a total length of 10 minutes. Cubase randomization modifiers were used to send different and unpredictable notes into the synth. I wanted to compose in this way to remove any possibility that I could direct or influence the melody or note choices.
My creative energy was focused more on the modulations, oscillators, and modifiers applied to nearly every available parameter to craft the sound. If you were to hear any of these tracks with all the above disabled, it would sound like someone playing the note A, once per measure, for ten continuous minutes.
The trick to convert that monotonous repeating note into what this album became was to find the ideal parameters to set the modulators at before allowing the randomized autopilot to take control. This gave each track its own sonic identity and structure, but just enough randomness to remain unpredictable and non-repeating.
In the end, there were multiple versions of every track exported, and favorites were chosen. The two tracks titled ‘Phosphenes on Eigengrau’ were created by combining multiple exported versions into new crossfaded hybrids. The track ‘The Creaking Pendulum’ is my personal favorite and the one I find to be the most unique.
This has also been a passion project inspired by curiosity and the motto, “Just to see what it would sound like.”
Shawn
