amb_04

Last sunday was the release date of the chernobyl mod January update. Included in this update was one of my chernobyl_amb tracks which I have written for the mod, so I’d like to share this one with you.

Under the Dust Memories Decay:

Since it was made for the chernobyl mod, this piece stays calm and dark, leaving much space for the ingame sounds. It consists of slowly evolving drones and bells layered with a time stretched recording of a train passing by as well as different samples of metallic noises.
The focus here was to create a distant sounding, bleak atmosphere that you mostly pick up feeling it instead of conciously listening to the track.

Since I’ll be writing more soundscapes for the mod in the future, it is likely that you will find more tracks from the Chernobyl Ambient series here from time to time.

Enjoy your stay.

First post in 2013

Feels like a while since I posted something. Let’s get things done, shall we? Over the last weeks I noticed that setting yourself deadlines is the ultimate way to finish tracks you have dozing on your hard drive for months. Today is my personal deadline and I got a new track done! So the only thing that stands between you and the audio is me trying to write something that makes sense here. Anyway, I’m now on Facebook, too. You like?

It’s time to rock, so click on that orange button below.

Decivilize:

The stems of “Decivilize” are at least three months old, yet it took me just about seven days to get it from a raw scetch to a full song – that’s what the deadline was good for. Besides that, probably the most important thing I learned was doubling audio tracks. All of the guitar riffs you can hear were copied once and then slightly offset, to achieve a wider sound. Treating the copies differently from the originals with an EQ also helped with this.

Can you guess the instrument I used in the chorus sections? It’s a Bağlama Saz, pretty nice instrument that is traditionally played turkish music. Because of the exotic tone, I chose it as a clean counterpart to the distorted guitar riffs. Concerning time signatures in “Decivilize”, the main body is written in 5/4, whereas after the eBow solo it switches to 11/8 for the rest of the song. What looks odd hopefully still sounds quite natural after all.

Now it’s your turn. Share your thoughts right here in the comment section, on Soundcloud or via Facebook. Till next time.

The zone is calling

I have recently received an offer to join mod team “chernobyl-mod” working on a custom campaign for Left 4 Dead 2. The setting is obviously chernobyl and its surroundings. I liked the idea a lot and spent the last weeks writing ambient tracks as well as creating sound effects for said mod. If you are curious about the mod’s story and what it looks like, visit the homepage or moddb site.

Today I’ll share one of those tracks that I’ve written for the chernobyl-mod.

chernobyl_amb_03:

Most of its mood comes from a heavily filtered synth pad playing all throughout the piece. At times I let it morph into distortion to give it an interesting texture and make it fit the understanding of a deserted and decaying place like chernobyl. Then there is also a manipulated kick drum which is going straight into a delay effect multiple times. I experimented with delay times not fitting into the main tempo here, to give it an edge. I intended to go easy on the samples and noises to keep it from being too distractive and to let it fit into the game.

Oh, there is another thing to mention: Soundclouder MtM0201 is also working on the chernobyl-mod as a composer and I helped him with one of his tracks. I played the eBow guitar on “Junkyard” (audible from 1:26 to the end).

That’s all for today, I think I will release a few more chernobyl_amb tracks from time to time along with my solo work. Thanks for reading/listening.