Resonance Etude

 Experimental electronic track, generated all in the box on soft synths, nothing but the note 'C' in this one, but making use of a lot of upper partials generated by the waveforms in the synth patches.
 
Thx to UHE Zebra2 for the many useful patches, and to Sonar X2a for the three or four dozen automation lanes
 
All comments pro or con welcome.
Resonance Etude

Thanks for hanging in there to try out the whole track. It really is an experiment, manipulating pan, reverb depth, and lots of frequency bands changing throughout, while pitch stays constant. My impression having gone through the exercise is that while these recording-engineering tools can produce a sense of direction, nothing short of true melody/harmony can produce emotion.

Thanks for the feedback, John. It's definitely minimalist in approach at both beginning and end--small changes spun out over time. I'm experimenting with trying to get the very most out of manipulating aspects that recording engineers usually deal with more than composers and songwriters--reverb, pan, frequency balances. Some of these are much more noticeable when listening through headphones, especially pan, but even over headphones I realize it's nothing like the standard music forms. I give up a LOT when there's no melody or harmony.

Interesting concept - and it interests me intellectually but doesn't "float my boat". It would be great to use it as the basis for a track with more pitch variety.

Cheers,
Terry.

The steady morphing of that initial note, changing shape and texture over time, had a strong emotional effect similar to what Alan Parsons was doing in the Seventies. My suspicion is that Snob was using this technique to try to open up the listener subconsciously, to make the eventual techno slam more effective.

@LetItRock: The Ambients and some dance tracks have a method of stasis or near-stasis, while this one is specifically intended, as you note, to gradually build up tension, to make the eventual breakout into the full-on drums and bass come in as a huge contrast, a release of all that pent-up energy.

Stevie Ray Vaughan had an interview once where he talked about a song that goes to the dominant chord and then hangs there what feels like forever, in order to heighten the turnaround when it finally comes home to the tonic. It's the contrast that makes it work.

Dance music has a similar, common feature, "the drop", where the bass and drums come in heavy after a build-up. This is just a ***really*** long, very unusual build-up, using tools that are probably more suited to the subliminal, than as main themes.

dear snob, I really would like to hear the outcome once you add the voice to the track...please let us know!

Thanks for the ideas, speedtom and Starise.

I think I'm going to "fork" the result. One fork towards additional material in the form of vocals, one towards more experimentation, this time without falling back on familiar 4-on-the-floor (and much shorter, probably, under 2 minutes).

It's just a matter of circumstances that I was learning how to do big synthesized drum sounds in dance style while I was building this piece, and the hybridization is more confusing than rewarding.