Indie Fred Van Gestel
Harmony for the Quietude I (Score in song description.)

About the title:
in the evening, immediately after the kids go to bed, i often improvise some quite music on the grand piano using slow and soft chord patterns and melodies in the higher register of the instrument. Because we live in an old wooden house - the grand's sound vibrates through the whole building helping the children to calm down quickly as they listen. Mostly they sleep within 5 or 10 minutes. Those improvisations are known now as daddy's harmonies for the quietude.

About the song:
this one came out after i heard a guy in the radio telling that despite what people say about November, that month actually is a very happy and positive month. That day, i absolutely disagreed with him: the winter and tons of snow had already arrived and it came with an absolutely dark and depressed atmosphere. My harmony of the quietude that evening just reflects those feelings.

About the way this sound was created:
This track was a bit of a challenge in many different ways. I'm trying out a completely new way of working by moving from an hardware based recording setup to a computer based workflow. My wife happened to record the improvisation with a small mp3 recorder - I scored it out from scratch and then played and then recorded it on a master keyboard and PC-Based tools. By the way, the score was made using MuseScore and can be downloaded for free from my web site:

vangestel.de/scores/piano/harm...-quietude-i.pdf

First, i learned so much about my performance weaknesses while doing the transcription. To understand what i had improvised was not easy and a lot of musical corrections had to be done. Then, to play my own piece afterwards, was a pain - i guess this is the very last track i did without a click track haha. The output of the piano synth is still recorded using the old hardware recorder because the first tries with the PC were just producing garbage - i still have to work on that one.

I intend to orchestrate this piece with MuseScore or other PC tools. I am currently reading some books on scoring, orchestration and harmony and on recording techniques. Hopefully this will help to produce better scores and orchestrations from a theoretical point of view and better tracks from a technical point of view.

I must admit that i had to resist the desire to return to the "old system" - that is: just lay down a piano part and then play some instruments like accordion, flutes or hardware synths to it using that good old Roland recorder. It would be a hell of a lot easier to me - just pushing that red record (hardware) button over and over again until some performance finally satisfies...

Anyway, i hope you enjoy this rather long track - sorry about that - but 3 minutes are definitely too short to get the quietude coming through ;) If you like it or if you have some feedback on my little story - just drop me a line, always much appreciated!