Other YaWha
Le Plus Claire De Soleil (disquiet0273)

Disquiet Junto Project 0273: Alarm Clocked
Make music for a (new! improved!) slow-waking alarm clock.

I usually wake up in the morning to talk-show radio. On some weekends, when I think of it, I dial the radio alarm clock to RTE Lyric FM - a radio station here in Ireland that mostly features classical music - but also hosts some great jazz, and some significant avante garde stuff (Bernard Clarke's Nova show in particular - rte.ie/lyricfm/nova - check him on soundcloud @bernard-clarke).

It's my weekend treat, to wake to classical music. I reserve that pleasure for the weekends.

So for this Junto, I simply took the best of both - Debussy's Claire de Lune, and an interview on Newstalk radio with Brian O'Driscoll, the celebrated Irish rugby player, recently retired - a fine talent and character...

The gradual ~3 min intro is actually two different public domain midi clips of Claire de Lune I downloaded from internet - one playing a Concert Harp in Air Structure, the other playing the Air MiniGrand piano at a faster tempo. I used the maxforlive device Random_Midi_Supression to randomly select notes from the midi stream to play back on the Harp and Piano, and on an Upright Bass patch I selected the lowest note of the midi stream with HiLoMidiFilter maxforlive device, transposing it to a sensible upright bass octave using the Midi Octave Fold maxforlive device.

Once the 3 min period was up, I simply played the Claire de Lune midi in full into that Harp sampler, and left the bass play the occasional root/lowest note for some low-end substance.

Used a few reverbs and delays here (Amazing Noises Outer Spaces, Audiority GrainSpace, Replika XT, Bloom), automated the mix levels - and some eq and stereo widening from Ozone 7. EQ and two of Ableton's Erosion devices got me lo-fi with the radio sound...

I had worked on some classical parts, and maybe I ought to have stuck with that, but between time, and in homage to the gems Lyric FM has thrown up for me over the years, I instead chose to use midi from the public web.

Hope you enjoy.