Ether DiverMar 22, 2023

Time for a #PsychedelicGhostStories #ProductionDiary only about five days later than I had hoped to get it done LOL. We're on the 7th song of the album, "Dream Vessels on the River of Time," a particularly weird one even for the weird "side" of the album. It started off nearly all modular plus a few samples and kind of kept shifting and mutating until it ended up where it is.

https://etherdiver.bandcamp.com/track/dream-vessels-on-the-river-of-time

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Dream Vessels On the River of Time, by Ether Diver

from the album Psychedelic Ghost Stories

Ether Diver
Show threadEther Diver

It started with yet another #Benjolin session, where I got some nice little short rhythmic loops that tended to break up. I had the idea to add something kind of #acid to it, and while I didn't take any patch notes, the sample is called Dirty Sin Acid so I know I used one of my favorite techniques, of using a distorted sine wave as the basis for a patch.

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Mar 22, 2023 at 4:35amWeb
Show threadEther DiverMar 22, 2023

Typically I'll modulate the phase of the sine along with shoving it through one or more distortions/waveshapers. I probably used the Terci Ruina, but I honestly don't remember. As for the filter, I think (but again, don't actually remember; I need to take better notes) it was the #WMDevices #C4RBN but it could have been the Wasp -- those are where'd I'd reach for acid, generally speaking.

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Show threadEther DiverMar 22, 2023

Honestly, the "acid" elements ended up pretty low in the mix, relatively speaking, and too murky/weird to be actual "acid" so it's not terribly important. In any case, by the time I was this far into the song I had a pretty good idea what it was going to be/what image I'd pair it with. The title is a phrase I've been working on/with for a while, and it generated such a great image I knew it would be on the album.

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Show threadEther DiverMar 22, 2023

This was one of the initial batch I generated once I had the idea to use the #AI images as musical prompts/ways to "test" my song titles/ as a digital oracle to guide #songwriting. The title and the image gave me a strong vibe to apply to the song, and FWIW I think I nailed it.

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Show threadEther DiverMar 22, 2023

I intended the song to be like a journey down a river, toward a mysterious destination. And a meandering journey at that, following the vibe of the river itself -- sometimes moving forward with purpose, sometimes eddying about in near circles... I used to tube down the river in the town I lived in, and I was aiming for that vibe, of going where the river goes, at the speed it takes you -- nearly frantic at moments, placid and meandering at others.

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Show threadEther DiverMar 22, 2023

Back to the construction! The next element I added in were some really old samples, like wax cylinder old. (Okay, I think they were actually 78 RPM records, but still -- old.) I searched one of the many public domain archives of old recordings for mentions of dreaming, and got a nice hit with some really old timey singing about "just a dream/a memory" that I was able to cut up and use for both texture (surface noise!) and a bit of humanity.

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Show threadEther DiverMar 22, 2023

I think I also added just a touch of Hydrasynth, doing a few chord stabs, at this point, and then it was done! Kind of. It felt like it needed a fair bit more ... something, but I felt it was time to move on. When I returned in my #ProductionPhase, the first thing I added was a more defined pulse. The #Benjolin was awesome, and in some spots it was all the song needed but in others... it more than meandered, it melted.

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Show threadEther DiverMar 22, 2023

This was while I was away during the #Thanksgiving holidays with my family, so I just used an internal #MPC #PluginSynth (the #TubeSynth in this case) #preset. If I recall, I just played it in live and was pretty happy with my first or second take. After some futzing, I decided to double it up, and so I panned the plugin nearly hard right and doubled it with a sampled #Keygroup program.

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Show threadEther DiverMar 22, 2023

The #Keygroup was one I had on the #MPC from some time ago, made from a modular patch built off of distorted sines, so it felt very appropriate. (Also, this really goes to show the value of "screwing around" and making cool little synth programs and drum kits when you're not feeling up to writing music/actually making a song -- later, you have all this cool unused stuff sitting around).

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Show threadEther DiverMar 22, 2023

Anyway, that got panned nearly hard left and I felt like I was close. (I'd also added a touch more Hydrasynth, just some window dressing really, during my #InstrumentDays). But it *still* didn't feel done. I let it simmer a while longer, and feeling like it still lacked a bit of definition, I decided to try something I hadn't done before: sing on an album.

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Show threadEther DiverMar 22, 2023

I am completely untrained as a singer, but I figured I could manage a couple nearly monotone lines in a low register. I wrote a couple lines of "lyrics" and sung them into a handheld cassette recorder (a mid-level Sony stereo handheld from the early '80s), recorded that into the MPC, did a bunch of doubling by layering samples and even more with effects, and once those were in, the track finally felt done.

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Show threadEther DiverMar 22, 2023

Of course, that was on December 3, with my "everything must be done" date being Dec. 15. One of the last few to come together, honestly.

and that's it for this track. Please feel free to ask any questions (and if you already did while I was typing this out, I'll get to them shortly.) Just two more tracks to go!

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