Mood Machine | Sonicware Liven Evoke | 14 Songs

Track list and lots of notes below:

0:00 - 1. Mood Machine - With the Sonicware Liven Evoke, I’ve often been playing songs live, without using the sequencer, which I used for almost all of my songs with the Liven Ambient Ø (the two sequencers are very similar). With this song, I use the hold feature to hold some notes of textural sound in a couple of layers, while playing the piano layer live. The piano sound morphs between an acoustic and electronic sound a little bit after I play each note. Around the halfway point, with the chromatic pitch shifting, everything starts to turn into a granular storm (there are no granular effects prior to this), which is helped by the fact that you can cut the dry signal of each track and have a 100% wet mix of the reverb and/or granular sound. Oh, also, I want to give a thank you/shoutout to this video by ‪@BenLevin‬ because I started messing around with the chords that led to this song after watching it:    • The secret to EMOTIONAL chords  . His channel is one of my favorite music education channels on YouTube, so do check it out!

5:43 - 2. Off-Kilter - Another non-sequencer song, this time featuring another way I’ve been playing things live on the Evoke: switching between tracks and focusing on one at a time. Thanks to the granular delay effect, the sound carries on when I stop playing one of the tracks, which creates a sense of continuity and overlap, even though I’m only ever playing one track a time (putting aside the fourth track that is held down and drones the entire song).

8:33 - 3. Dreaming - For this one, I held textural notes on layers 3 and 4 and then played the main melody live on track 1 against a sequenced bass line on track 2. Without a drum to play with, it was difficult for me to get the timing right, so I listened to an external metronome while playing.

10:26 - 4. 2 AM Walk - The rejected one... This was one of four presets I submitted to Sonciware for the Evoke. The other three were accepted; this one wasn’t. But I still like it. This one is entirely sequenced, and it makes heavy use of the randomization and probability features to create generative melodies with the piano and have the other parts swell in and out at unpredictable times. I used the same method/logic I described in this video for the Texture Lab:    • How to Make Generative Music on the Sonicw...  

13:00 - 5. Deep in the Night - There are no nature noise samples on the Evoke, unlike the Ambient, but as with many synths, you can create an artificial wind sound by filtering white noise, which is what I do at the beginning here. This is also another song where I make use of the way you can make notes morph between very different sounds on the Evoke.

15:34 - 6. Snowed In - This is one of the three presets I contributed to the Evoke.

16:45 - 7. Faded, Not Gone - You can use the sequencer on the Evoke and other Livens sort of like a live looper, and this is how I often make my sequenced songs. Here, I’m trying to take it a step further by incorporating that method of recording into a live performance.

19:54 - 8. Something in the Static - Very granulated, very filtered (there are separate filters on each track and on the granular effects of the Evoke). I feel like my default lately (especially with the Ambient) has been to try to make songs sound as big and lush and powerful and multicolored as I can—but what about the opposite things? Small, bare, sparse, brittle, delicate, faded, washed out, etc. I’d like to make more songs like that. This song and the previous ones are attempts at doing that.

23:20 - 9. Something in the Wind (Granular Remix) - This is a "granular reinterpretation" of another of the presets I contributed to the Evoke—which is a fancy way of saying I used different granular effects on it. The original version of this song basically used the granular effects as a dotted 8th note delay, whereas this version explores some of the wider possibilities of the effects.

25:11 - 10. Going Home (Granular Remix) - And another reinterpretations of my third and final preset. You can hear the original version of this preset and the previous one on ‪@SONICWARE‬'s channel:    • LIVEN Evoke - Preset Patterns Demo by Dani...  . Both of these songs were very acoustic sounding originally, so my objective was to lean more heavily on the granular, experimental side of the Evoke.

26:34 - 11. Still Breathing - An attempt to incorporate some more rhythmic sounds into a song on the Evoke. Although the synth is more geared toward acoustic sounds, you can still get some weird, sci-fi sounding mechanical noises out of it, like I did on the Ambient.

29:43 - 12. Underwater - Another song with “live looping” on the sequencer. I then start randomizing the sequence I recorded and mess around with it with the granular effects.

32:15 - 13. Ready - More mechanical noises…

34:14 - 14. Setting Sail - The most “vanilla” sounds of the set—but hey, nothing wrong with vanilla sometimes...