The story behind each song:
No cello was originally a short loop (now used as the background for the sologuitar) that I had written in order to improvise to it, taking turns with a cello player. Unfortunately, this session never took place, and I eventually ended up playing to it on my own. At that time, I had been reading All Quiet on the Western Front by Remarque, which inspired me to do a long marching music intro.
The background made up of strings, bass and drums was created in the on-board 16 channel sequencer of the YAMAHA PSR SQ16. It was completed with a heavily phased guitar. I then kept on jamming with the distorted guitar for hours. Some of this made it on CD. The keyboard lines were played as a combination of violin and clarinet with the YAMAHA through a chorus and then recorded.
In the first place, King Arthur’s mantra was about experimenting with reverberation and echo effects, especially of the drums. In addition to that, I had a song in mind brimming with guitar sounds similar to Pink Floyd’s “Set the controls for the heart of the sun” as well as the mood that went with it. That’s why I plugged my YAMAHA keyboard into my KORG AX 1000G and fiddled with the reverberation, echo and feedback controls like a madman. The result was a mantra-like drum track. Organ and bass were also created with the YAMAHA and were played via the KORG. In addition to that, a guitar with a touch of gothic and lots and lots of floydish sounds.
Hubble’s dream came into being while I was reading Hawking’s A Short history of Time. At that time, I developed the idea of a spatial plane sound, which is being accompanied by a distorted voice talking about the origin of the universe. Again, the beginning was done with the YAMAHA. The strings were played through a chorus, and the voice was distorted with the aid of the travel-effect of the KORG AX 1000G.
After the long intro, there's a chordsequence, which is being instrumented until it provides the basis for the sologuitar. All of the instruments apart from the guitar were created with the YAMAHA and the drums were programmed in the sequencer of the YAMAHA. The instrument tracks were then imported onto the PC one by one. Due to a lack of disk-space, single tracks had to be mixed time and again. Tough job!
It’s May and it has been raining incessantly since the end of March – well, at least that’s how it seems to me. I look out of the window into the grey, cloud-ridden sky and suddenly these simple lyrics come to my mind.
The beginning gives the impression of the listlessness of such a day, that’s why I chose the first take of the acoustic guitar which sounds a bit rough. Together with the organ from the YAMAHA, this conveys a feeling of cheerlessness leading to sombre thoughts and fears.
That feeling was the starting point for the middle part, which has been created in whole with the YAMAHA keyboard except for the guitars.
The last part has more drive to it, and Native Instruments’ B4 comes into operation. This time, the voice has been modified on the PC and not via the KORG as in Hubble’s dream.
This piece is the result of experimenting with the MoogModular V. The original idea was to create a sequencer line out of a thunderstorm-like sound at the beginning of the song. Gradually more and more sequencer lines of the Moog are added to the first until the song ends in total chaos. A string orchestra after the chaos has a soothing effect.
I don’t know why I eventually picked up my guitar, but the combination of a distorted wahwah guitar and a heavily phased one all of a sudden seemed much more exciting to me than the original idea.
All of the non-guitar sounds originate from virtual instruments and not from the keyboard anymore. Besides the MoogModular (which is responsible for all sounds and sequencer lines), the freeware “StringSynth” has been put to use. The melody has been created with the MiniMoog V. And for the drums, I used Groove Agent.
