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// Music

Song: Lost Islands

June 18, 2008

Download song: mp3 MIDI

Mmm…hehe…a ha ha ha. This song is so bizarre. I’m not sure how to explain it.

Truth be told, a large element of track 10 (the MIDI percussion track) was generated by random mouse-clicking. At the time I wrote this piece, I was frustrated by the way my percussion tracks had all started to sound the same. So, I resolved to write a percussion track unlike anything I’d done before. Several hundred mouse clicks later, the first rendition of “Lost Islands” was born. I tweaked my favorite random-clicking percussion track, added several other percussion tracks (taiko, tom, wood block), picked sweep for the main instrument (I still don’t know what a “sweep” is), wrote a choir track and added a couple other mystery instruments (like the shakuhachi).

I’m still amazed this piece turned out as coherent as it did. The song has a sweet groove and the dissonant-ish choir adds rather than distracts. The percussion blends well and the instrument mix really is one-of-a-kind. I don’t know that I’ll ever find the patience to write a percussion track more complex than this one.