Synth texture track from “The Wind of Distant Planets”, the seventh song on Points of Departure.

As far as tracks and mixing go, this is by far my most complicated work. It’s about the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft, the first explorers of the outer worlds.

Finding a way to represent the ‘voice’ of the probe (without having it sound like a cheesy robot or a dialup modem) was challenging. Then, one day, I stumbled upon a preset for the Nord Lead 2X that worked perfectly … I knew it was right the moment I heard it.

However, that leads me now to a departure. If you’ve checked out the other original track releases in this series, you know I generally upload a 30 second .mp3 preview, then the full track in .ogg format. Further, the tracks are loaded fully synchronized — if you drop them directly into a mixing program, the beats automatically line up. This is the procedure I’ve followed for the Type I tracks below.

The Type II tracks, on the other hand, are the special effects. I can’t even begin to describe all the mixing and shaping that went into these. In the final track, they are contoured, equalized, shifted, overlapped, split … it was an Audacity workout. I’ve uploaded them raw, as-is, without even an attempt at synchronization. (Also, they are all in .mp3 format.)

Here is the complete track listing in this series:

Type I

1. atmodrone
2. bass
3. cybernet
4. guitar (melody)
5. percussion (made with Renoise and all-synth drums)
6. piano

Type II

7. fx_atmo
8. fx_gchords
9. fx_randfocus
10. fx_skreezinng
11. fx_swirly
12. fx_wind