Lost Echoes

Oftentimes an evening comes along when I want to keep the lights dim, let the synthesizers rest, and play some keys. My digital piano doesn’t sound very good, so I tend to reach for an acoustic or electric piano plugin. Throw on some reverb and it’s a guaranteed good time.

On this particular summer evening, I used two Roland Space Echo emulations in series to turn a progression of arpeggiated chords I had been practicing into a cascade of ambient echoes.

The delays made it impossible for me to track the output while playing live — so after dialing in some settings I liked, I recorded the wet mix while monitoring the dry. I didn’t know what I had actually made until I was done.

I didn’t have to do it this way, of course. I could have recorded the dry mix, then resampled with the Space Echo effects after the fact, adjusting or modulating them to taste if I wished — instead of burning them in from the onset. But that seemed less fun. The way I did it invited more playing, less tweaking.

I’ll probably need to think of a better way to categorize this piece and future ones like it, but for now it shall remain with the other jams despite being of a very different nature — in process and in genre.