Sunday 5 November 2017

The Light Deep Down

I've made a new song! It's an instrumental track that features a lot of cello, in combination with vocals and digital instruments.



There's more cello here than you might realise: the eerie scratching sound at the beginning and ending is also cello! :) Normally as a cellist you wouldn't want to make a sound like that, but here it adds to the atmosphere nicely. This sound is achieved by slowly playing on the open G or C string, too close to the bridge while applying too little pressure.

The cello solo at 1:57 has distortion applied to it, making it sound a bit closer to an electric guitar than a cello normally would.

I've made sheet music for the cello part, and a recording of the song without the cello so that it can be played along to. The result is quite different from any other cello music I know and I find it quite fun to play along to. Here it is, in case anyone wants to give it a try:

The vocals towards the end were sung by Joyce Scheeren and the faster bass in the second half was played by Thomas van Dijk.

I've been writing music for years but have always been struggling with actually finishing anything, so I'm really glad that I've managed to finish and share two new songs in just two weeks. I've got a bunch more almost finished, so I hope I can keep up the pace.

3 comments:

  1. Nice! The cello scratching at the intro makes me think of roaring base synths in dubstep. Would it be possible to achieve such a sound if the distortion effect as really heavy or would it just sound more like an electric guitar?

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    1. I'm not quite sure what kind of dubstep sound you mean exactly, but I do know that applying distortion to low cello doesn't sound like guitar and can become very heavy. :)

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