S1gns Of L1fe - "Equilibrium"

[S1gnsOfL1fe]

Back again with a brand new track I just finished!!! Tons of stuff going on here...my production tools are currently going through a major upgrade. Having just entered the realm of Komplete 8 and coming fresh off the heels of the Safara demo AND my new album coming out next week...I've got alot going on! I think this track fits my current state of mind quite perfectly. I seem to be handling this well which is why it was given the title of Equilibrium. I hope you enjoy it!!

https://soundcloud.com/s1gnsofl1fe/equilibrium


Tools used: Alchemy, Diva (with Luftrum 9), COSMIC for Padshop Pro, Light Space for Alchemy, Pro Tools 10, Numerology, etc...

Cheers!!
-S1gns

[conscientiousobjector]

Stunning piece of music.

I do indeed enjoy your sound and the percussion elements stand out nicely. Love to produce stuff like this.

[windspace]

Another great one! I really like the percussion and the way all the small tidbits of sound bounce around in front of that massive pad.

[S1gnsOfL1fe]

Another great one! I really like the percussion and the way all the small tidbits of sound bounce around in front of that massive pad.

Thank you so much Ho66it!!! I'm really trying to be progressive with the way I approach the percussion in my tracks...I've been striving for sounds like this for a long time now...it's all automaton, replicant and numerology!!! Such a powerful combination.

Thanks again for listening!!! Cheers bro!

-S1gns

[phoenstorm]

The thing with the new Soundcloud is--- the stream is really continuous and persistent. So I was doing something else, listening to the stream and then something filtered in - wait a minute, this is quite charming and calm - turns out it was Equilibrium. Very enjoyable.

[Hilyard]

A composition with perfect balance. Theres a sense of urgency and anxiety here countered by a calm focus and gracefulness. Really dig your work and look forward to hearing more.

[S1gnsOfL1fe]

A composition with perfect balance. Theres a sense of urgency and anxiety here countered by a calm focus and gracefulness. Really dig your work and look forward to hearing more.

Thank you so much Hilyard. You know Jack Kerouac once said that "good writing comes in the rhythm of urgency." I haven't forgotten that. My music, like many of us here, comes from a place where the soul desires to express. Our tools allow us to participate in this ritual and through the medium, true art is born. I am honored you picked all this up from Equilibrium. That means everything!

[seismic1]

I just checked this out again with the volume way up. It sounded even better than during yesterday's moderated listening. This is ever so smooth and comforting but contains elements that demand an active listener imho.

This raises an interesting question. If the music demands listener interaction via "immersive" and "concerted" listening instead of "drive-by" situations, is it actually ambient? When I listen to a Prog-rock album, I've always found that the records that were more difficult to "get into" and which usually demanded at least a modicum of effort on my part as a listener, always turned out to be the albums which had a more satisfying long-term effect on me. That's probably why I like King Crimson, earlier Genesis and Porcupine Tree so much.

A technicality, I'm sure, but I court controversy :fence:

So I'm not criticising this track in any way here, Chris. I love it. It's one of your top 3 so far (maybe the best, I dunno yet). I just feel that I have to listen to it (preferably at high volume) to hear it properly, and that takes it out of the classic definition of ambient. This is true (to varying degrees) of a lot of the music I hear at this site. It's not a problem, just an observation, but I feel that the definition of "ambient" has moved on from the mid '70s and is now much broader than many people realise. I hear many elements (usually sounds) that I class as "ambient" (my definition) in Techno, House, Prog etc. Hell, I try to incorporate some of these elements in my own tracks, 95% of which are certainly not anywhere near ambient in conception or execution.

Excellent work....see what you started? :biggrin:

So the essential question is "What is the definition of ambient?" - New thread anyone?

[S1gnsOfL1fe]

I just checked this out again with the volume way up. It sounded even better than during yesterday's moderated listening. This is ever so smooth and comforting but contains elements that demand an active listener imho.

This raises an interesting question. If the music demands listener interaction via "immersive" and "concerted" listening instead of "drive-by" situations, is it actually ambient? When I listen to a Prog-rock album, I've always found that the records that were more difficult to "get into" and which usually demanded at least a modicum of effort on my part as a listener, always turned out to be the albums which had a more satisfying long-term effect on me. That's probably why I like King Crimson, earlier Genesis and Porcupine Tree so much.

A technicality, I'm sure, but I court controversy :fence:

So I'm not criticising this track in any way here, Chris. I love it. It's one of your top 3 so far (maybe the best, I dunno yet). I just feel that I have to listen to it (preferably at high volume) to hear it properly, and that takes it out of the classic definition of ambient. This is true (to varying degrees) of a lot of the music I hear at this site. It's not a problem, just an observation, but I feel that the definition of "ambient" has moved on from the mid '70s and is now much broader than many people realise. I hear many elements (usually sounds) that I class as "ambient" (my definition) in Techno, House, Prog etc. Hell, I try to incorporate some of these elements in my own tracks, 95% of which are certainly not anywhere near ambient in conception or execution.

Excellent work....see what you started? :biggrin:

So the essential question is "What is the definition of ambient?" - New thread anyone?

LOL, best response EVER!!!!!

To be honest it was YOU, yes YOU seismic1/whatisname/Tim who got me started on this whole "floor vs. ceiling better watch your headroom" thing...and now I'm SUPER conscious of it. Not that it's a bad thing, actually it's quite important. However, it could be the way I mix...the style or volume in which I mix to, or perhaps even compose in that DEMANDS the listener to turn up the volume.

I've thought about this.

I think with time and honing in my production skills...this will change. I can see how transients sometimes get lost because I'm trying not to "go over the limit" into the digital distortion realm. It's sad because I'm the only one who really gets to enjoy them. Everyone else just gets a "mix" of what I created. If I could, I would fly you out to California and sit you down right in front of my monitors and crank up my tracks.

'See? It's all there!!! Right there in them Equator D5's!!!' :lol:

Until then, dude...your feedback is always appreciated. It's helped me become not only a better engineer, but a better musician and one who doesn't take no for an answer and will go the extra mile to make sure my "mix" is polished enough for general consumption.

Take that sword fighter!!! :razz: :tu:

[phoenstorm]

Not to detract from S1gnsOfL1fe's great track, Seismic1s point about ambient music and listener involvement is spot on - in my case...guilty as charged ;). A new thread on ambient definitions sounds great. We already had a short discussion on the finer distinctions between ambient, experimental, noodling & Jazz-Rock in the Ambient Philosophies thread

[seismic1]

LOL, best response EVER!!!!!

To be honest it was YOU, yes YOU seismic1/whatisname/Tim who got me started on this whole "floor vs. ceiling better watch your headroom" thing...and now I'm SUPER conscious of it. Not that it's a bad thing, actually it's quite important. However, it could be the way I mix...the style or volume in which I mix to, or perhaps even compose in that DEMANDS the listener to turn up the volume.

I've thought about this.

I think with time and honing in my production skills...this will change. I can see how transients sometimes get lost because I'm trying not to "go over the limit" into the digital distortion realm. It's sad because I'm the only one who really gets to enjoy them. Everyone else just gets a "mix" of what I created. If I could, I would fly you out to California and sit you down right in front of my monitors and crank up my tracks.

'See? It's all there!!! Right there in them Equator D5's!!!' :lol:

Until then, dude...your feedback is always appreciated. It's helped me become not only a better engineer, but a better musician and one who doesn't take no for an answer and will go the extra mile to make sure my "mix" is polished enough for general consumption.

Take that sword fighter!!! :razz: :tu:

Floor vs. Ceiling - I still have issues with that. That's why I'm going through the tracks for my album, and remixing (sometimes for the fourth time). All my tracks were recorded between Jan 2009 and Jan 2011 and then left alone. It was polyslax who persuaded me to put them online. The first track that I put up received a lot of justified criticism both for musical and mixing issues. Until this point I had just been making music for myself and hadn't realised that by exposing them to an audience I would be required to "up my game". This was in June 2011.

The musical criticisms were fair and were related mainly to arrangement issues. I had to revisit the music and start trimming, editing notes, adding drops, change-ups, breakdowns etc. It was an instructive, enjoyable and rewarding process and revitalised the so-called completed tracks. I hope with my future tracks (I haven't made a new track in 2 years - no time), that it becomes an integral part of the composition/recording process.

The mixing criticisms were more than justified, because I had not really spent any time at all looking at this aspect of music production. The original songs had some approximate levelling of individual tracks within the mix and that was it. I had to work on levelling, EQ, reverb and other effects and mastering. I could see an improvement on the first track that I remixed, and usually an improvement from one track to the next. It wasn't until I had remixed about 30 tracks that I started to get my head around the headroom issue! This learning process has, in turn, made me very conscious of preserving the dynamic range withing my tracks. I tend to use compression very sparingly on individual channels within the mix and am now very careful with my mastering compression. I put a brickwall limiter at the tail-end of my mastering chain, and watch the red indicator like a hawk. If it indicates over 0.5-1dB I will go back to the mix and adjust levels and then re-master.

My point about your tracks being "immersive" and "demanding" to be listened to was not a criticism. Your tracks are wonderfully full sounding and clear, even at relatively low volume. This style of music "deserves" to be listened to a high volume. The bass need to be felt, the music needs to be touched. That distances it from the classic definition of "ambient", as defined by Eno back in the '70s, which was effectively stating that ambient music could be classified as a sub-genre of muzak. Your tracks certainly don't fit that description.

Everyone on this forum would be able to hear an "ambient" track and say "That is ambient". So, we can all identify it. But I bet that when asked "What makes this track ambient?", you would receive many different answers. I'm not even sure I could answer it. It's a gut-feeling with me.

Here is an interesting thing. Many people at work (a scientific data processing facility) listen to music on their Walkman/iPhone/whatever. I can't do that. I can't play music that I enjoy listening to as "background" to critical activities. It becomes distracting and makes me less productive. What is the solution to this conundrum? Maybe play music that I don't enjoy listening to? What would be the point of that?

Don't listen to music because you can. Listen because you want to hear. Pretty philosophical huh?

Fripp did a series of "installations" at the WFC in NYC about 10-12 years ago. He would set up his rig in the foyer and drone on for 45 minutes to an hour as a background accompaniment to the usual foyer activities (people entering/leaving the building, having impromptu meetings, whatever). That's ok. Most of them would never have heard of him anyway. Most of them would probably have hated it. Had I been in that foyer, I would have sat down and listened. That music would have required attention imho. Thankfully, some of it was recorded, and parts of it were fantastic.

One man's ambient is another man's narcotic.

Anyway Chris, the mix on Equilibrium sounds so good to me. It may be that you can see deficiencies in there. I sure can't.

Please don't change what you do as a response to me. This whole ambient/immersive/concerted discussion was not aimed at your track. This was a general comment about "ambient" as a genre. I think the descriptor is confusing.

Having listened to this 7 or 8 times now, I think it's probably your best track yet :thumbsup: but I won't really know until I listen to all the others again

[Nemo]

Finally had a chance to listen to this. Fantastic track, Signs!!! Very well done. Keep following this path! :rockon: