Ripples - trying to copy Mike Oldfield and failing...

Hi,

I love the music of Mike Oldfield and he wrote a wonderful track called The Lake that starts off and ends with echoing rippling synths that evoke the image of ripples on a lake intermingling and mixing. I decided that I wanted to see if I could emulate him... and completely failed!

Nevertheless, here is a link to what evolved from my effort at emulating a true composing genius - the only remaining part is the echoing piano... everything else has been added or removed since.

http://snd.sc/gVcW8Y

Cheers,
Terry.
PS: This track is going to be included on a compilation created by the Mike Oldfield fans on Tubular.Net (http://tubular.net). The compilation is meant as a tribute but not a 'fawning' copy... the tracks will be downloadable for free when it's finished (aiming for 15th May) :)

morenoise


Hi Terry ,the only thing you failed at, if you could call it that, is that  you didn't use a real nylon string guitar and that you didn't use any fast finger vibrato on the electric guitar solo, a Mike Oldfield trademark. Excellent composition, you obviously put a lot of effort in this one, now go and learn how to play guitar like Mike .


Greetings, Rik

Hi Rik,


Thanks for the compliments. You can probably tell that I'm not a very good guitarist, hence the reason I fall back on samples. I really do try and play the keyboard notes in the same way that the strings on a guitar would be plucked but there's no replacement for true talent on the real instrument. I'll go back and re-record the electric guitar though - I can actually manage the side-to-side vibrator that Mike Oldfield uses whereas I completely suck at the up-and-down vibrato that most guitarists use.


Cheers,
Terry.

 
Pleasant captured the idea. nice.

rockinrobby


"the only remaining part is the echoing piano..."

are you going to add the echoing piano?

echoing piano?

I'm not familiar with the piece you were trying for, but I really like what you've done here.  Where it slows down, then comes back in at 2:06 is great!  Yeah, everything seems to sit so well.  I think you're very close with the guitar synth.  I really like what you've done (of course, I'm not a guitar player either :-)  ), and it seems to me that just a little more tweaking and you'd have it.  Of course, I wouldn't know how to do that either.  :-)  If you're serious about using a guitar in your pieces, though, Luke (dreambliss) recently got Electri6ity guitar synth and I think it's pretty convincing. 

Anyway, this is great.  I've thought of trying to emulate ripples, and snow sparkling and similar things.  It's always a challenge.  :-)