Orpheus. A Dark Ambient Symphony (Only on Bandcamp for now)

 

 

 

"Orpheus" is a new step in my musical journey...

It's been several months in the making, and has gone through several working versions...

I think I've succeeded in expressing my vision with the tracks on this album.

I conceived "Orpheus" as a dark ambient symphony. An abstract, atmospheric meditation on Orpheus' descent into the underworld, driven by the hope of bringing his beloved Eurydice back to the world of the living through the power of his music.

"Orpheus" is a symphony of depths and darkness, a symphony of shadows and sorrows.

In my solo career, "Orpheus" reconnects with the sound universe of Lightwave, in particular "Uraniborg" from "Tycho Brahe" and "Mundus Subterraneus".

"Orpheus" continues the quest for a certain abstraction, and for structures that escape the traditional canons of "well-tempered" ambient music to venture into borderless sonic spaces.

Dark ambient symphony.

Abstraction.

Experimental dimension.

Long stretches of sound.

I know my music will find adventurous ears...

 

Orion Nebula / Review (Ambient Blog Net)

 Ambientblog.net

Music: How to use it?

 

Spotify playlists and the commercial strategies of the major record companies, particularly for classical music and jazz, are making increasing use of labels : music for relaxation, for sleep, for yoga, for reading, for work, even for napping!

What these strategies have in common is that music cannot be listened to for its own sake anymore, but must be divided into different marketing categories according to its supposed use.

Another point in common is that the coherence of musicians' artistic projects (that is an album)  is deconstructed by the systematic use of compilations or playlists, which are to listening to music what zapping is to watching films.

Does music need an instruction manual?

Is music just a colorless, odorless, impersonal backdrop, adapted to predefined uses, with no real listening experience?

Has ambient music in particular, which often veers towards the most traditional new age, become a mere prozac or sleeping pill?

Music for sleep!  What a program!

Free Download Codes for my "FRAGILE" album (Bandcamp)

 

From time to time, I'll be offering visitors to my blog free download codes on Bandcamp to discover one of my albums.

Enjoy, and don't hesitate to leave a comment if you like this album!

Today, I've chosen the album "Fragile".

 

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Several listeners and reviewers have written that there is something "fragile" about my music.

I think their comment is right.

There is something "fragile" in my music, which is about breathing, sighing, silence, hesitation.

This "fragile" side is also due to the fact that I try to reach a purified sound, minimal at times, both essential and necessary, following the inner vibrations of my sensitivity and my inspiration, even of my breathing...

I do not seek, I do not seek any more a massive sound, a "big electronic sound". I don't want to impress... I want to touch the listener...

I look for the purity, the breath, the sigh, the resonances which linger, the traces of the music when it is on the threshold of silence.

"Fragile", no doubt also, because my music reflects states of mind, moments of doubt, sadness, questioning, despair sometimes, but also, as Homer said, moments of smile mixed with tears, where the hope of a new day comes to dissipate the anguish of the deep night.

No serious or profound music, felt and thought from the depths of a soul, remains on the surface of things.

It is both questions and answers. Doubts and certainties. Sorrows and hopes.

Music is not about technique.

It has to do with the exploration and the sharing of the depths.

Its formal and existential fragility are the source of its power.  

 

 

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Download your album here

Music, experimentation and the twist of the hand...

 

I think of my DAW (Ableton Live) as a musical workbench.

It's a space where I place and move sound objects, where I sculpt and shape them, where I transform them.

Electronic music is an art of transformation, of sculpture, of painting, of putting sound objects into space.

I retouch the color, luminosity, volume, position and trajectory of each of these objects by hand.

It's not the plug-ins or the DAW interface that decide my musical creation, but my manipulation of sound objects, my trial and error, my imperfect, intuitive and therefore totally human decisions.

My synths are both paintbrushes and color palettes.

Plugins allow infinite nuances and retouching.

Listening to me and my listeners is like fine-tuning the composition in progress.

In other words, my electronic compositions are indissociable from a creative practice, which is played out in improvisation, or rather in the intuition that gradually builds the idea, the concept...

With virtual synthesizers, plug-ins and the writing, painting and sculpting space that is my DAW, I rediscover the tactile, artisanal, gestural dimension of my past work on analog modular synthesizers.

It's all about fingering.

Experimentation.

In the twist of the hand...
 

Evanescent Shades

 

Spotify

Bandcamp

About innovation...

 

What, after all, is new and innovative music?

Is it still possible, today, in the 21st century, to imagine and even create totally new and unheard-of music?

Does this break have to be in the principles of composition? Create a type of composition hitherto unthought of, with conventional sounds?


Does the break have to be in the sounds themselves? Are there still sounds today that have never been heard before?

What would be totally unheard-of sounds?

What would be a totally innovative compositional scheme?

I have the impression that most of today's ambient and electronic music reproduces pre-existing patterns and models...

This means that this music has organized itself into genres and sub-genres: Berlin School, Drone, relaxation and yoga, new age, etc...

Can the music we create, with synthesizers or virtual instruments, introduce radical innovations - and will these be accepted by their audience, as well as by mediators and prescribers?

Or do the niches and sub-niches of the ecosystem of streaming (especially) and download platforms, which today make all the noise in the music world, by focusing on the lowest common denominator, exclude anything that is a little experimental, disruptive and deviant from what is the norm today?


I don't know how to answer these questions...

But I am pursuing, at my own level and with my own means, the quest for this sonic philosopher's stone...

About Musical Creation

 

 

 

Tonight, I'm wondering about the process of musical composition...

In my case, the first step is to choose an instrument, a sound, and the processing that will spatialize that sound, fine-tuning it.

So I start by recording a track, in a pre-established key.

Then I move on to a second instrument, a new sound space, a second track.

I have several strategies for this new phase, including copying the first track, shifting it, editing it, subtracting, adding.

Sometimes, with the right sound, the right feeling, I record a new melodic or harmonic track on the fly....

It's an intuitive, improvised creation, based on immediate listening...

I listen again from a critical distance, several hours apart...

I can correct the mix from time to time if necessary.

But often, I feel that what I have recorded "on the fly", improvising as I listen to the other tracks, is profoundly right and relevant...

I think this type of musical composition mobilizes specific levels of awareness, listening and thought, more intuitive, less rationalized, multisensory, no doubt.

I don't claim to consider myself a great composer.

More like a craftsman of electronic and ambient music, who works on his sound materials every day...

I have the feeling that my practice allows me to open up the spectrum of my musical intuition, and to let my hands on the keyboard follow melodic threads imagined in the improvisation itself...

Dreams and Drones in the Top 12 Releases (August 2023) of Cyclical Dream E-Magazine

 

Read the Magazine here...

 

And a wonderful comment about  Dreams and Drones by a fellow musician, Allan Segall: 

 "Listening now to Dreams and Drones. Very beautiful! There is a translucence and fragility to your sound that I find most alluring."

About my musical creation

For me, creating a multitrack ambient soundscape is akin to the work of a painter or sculptor.

There's an intuitive, spontaneous first draft.

Then comes the time to subtract, erase, isolate, highlight - in short, to compose.

Colors and shapes emerge from this work on the basic sound material already recorded.

The listening space is gradually opened up, sculpted and organized from multiple perspectives.

For me, musical composition is linked to a sequence of gestures and decisions.

Initial intuitions are followed by a period of deep work on the sound material, leading to the emergence of an idea, a concept, a story.

In my musical compositions, what has been erased is as important as what has been preserved.

In this way, the fragile contours of a fragment of space-time take shape, weaving together sound and silence on multiple scales.

Each of my compositions creates a world, with its own shapes, orbit, geometry, climate and history.

I see musical creation, particularly electronic and ambient, as the creation and exploration of possible worlds.

A never-ending quest...

"04:00 AM" — A Preview of my forthcoming album "Nocturnes II"

 

Between dream and consciousness, deep sleep and waking, the city lights dance in the night sky...

 

Christian Wittman · "04:00 AM" Preview of my forthcoming album "Nocturnes II"