Mysterious and atmospheric ambient designed as a background track

[Rambles on the song's theme]

Stereotypically dreams are pretty much about various (probably) impossible, but easy to grasp mentally fantasies, like maybe slaying a dragon, becoming a princess, sledding down Mount Everest, exploring space (these are just examples I randomly picked, don't overinterpret them as my wishes or anything). I have no idea if this holds true for at least some people, but I sure don't ever get that kind of dream, I don't even ever get to dream of real locations I am familiar with, like my family does. It's always a new story, in a new world, with a new me (unless I am just a passive observer), with sometimes new characters. Also, I find it strange that despite being into music for a long while, I only know one dream where I noticed any at all and it barely counts, as it was a very minimal, low-pitched droney ambient (it being unsettling is probably why I remembered it).

However, regardless of their usual oddity, I am still quite fascinated by them and the stories they generate. It's kinda like a modular synth, as you never know what you may get. It may be something neat, something unpleasant, yet always at least a bit interesting, but unless you record something from it, when it's over - it's gone forever. Though there's one crucial difference in this comparison, as with dreams you don't even get to have lasting memories of it most of the time, you can only try to preserve, make the necessary mental connections to remember them, while memories of dreams are fresh.

That makes me wonder: what might have I forgotten, will I ever get to re-experience these lost dreams? Are the sequences of connections that make them temporary, or are they just buried really deep? And even if there is some way to recover them, there are still so many of them, not even counting the ones I did not get any chance to remember, because I did not wake up during them. Well, the future will tell. I still have some hope, as there is one "being" that can help to reveal what's forgotten, they have done it at least once in history, so maybe there will come a time when this curiosity will be fulfilled.

[Context of creation]

I think that this is technically the first track that I was commissioned to make, despite that it's for an acquaintance of mine. She was planning some kind of a happening themed to the second chapter of the book of Daniel and wanted to add some character to everything with a background song, so I offered to help. We looked through a few unfinished projects that I always have laying around, picked the most fitting one and then, well, I got to work on expanding the track, pretty much completing it in the following two weeks (and just like with the second round of NGUAC that happened like a month or two later, it was quite motivating to have a deadline).

As for the ordered character of the song [this is for you, Codefreq ;) ], it was supposed to be dreamy, mysterious, with an oriental flair, but relatively subdued to not be too distracting on the street. The "client" was more than content, but I can't say the same about the rest of the crew, as even though it was kinda the point, they found it too otherworldly and unsettling (although one after a bit of thought admitted, that there really isn't a better illustration for the theme), so it ended up not being used almost at all. What a bummer... Though at least I can be proud of having made a complete 11 minute song.

[Sound design and composition]

I started out with making a piercing drone with an FM synth and experimenting with making a long-lasting delay on a melody, then made a new section with a filtered 8-bit Synth texture/sequence thing, a preset spacey pad, non-vocal vocoding, later an arp from another unreleased song, etc.

But the part that is the most interesting for me is the last third of the song. I got a suggestion to incorporate some construction sounds (as a reference to the third chapter if I remember correctly), which sparked the idea for a minimalist, calmer section with an soundscape of hammer impacts and some mechanical sounds that reminded me of the beginning of Alpha by Vangelis (of course I did not sample it though, that would be suicidal). After some digging on freesound(dot)org I got a gun spring sound of all things, a random windup sample, some metallic hammering and even a jackhammer. With these, albeit not perfectly, I actually kinda recreated what I imagined.

Oh, I also made another drone sound that with different settings and without automation legitimately sounds like a running sawblade or an angle grinder.

[Links]

SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-621585144/dreams

(no Youtube, cause that would take way too much time to make)

[Sources]

DAW: Caustic 3, mastered by Bandlab

3rd party samples (all CC-0):

https://freesound.org/s/162807/

https://freesound.org/s/182264/

https://freesound.org/s/495309/

https://freesound.org/s/434339/

Image source: https://pixabay.com/images/id-2841619/

I came up with the idea to label the sections of the description to hopefully make them easier to read, understand and skip whatever stuff unrelated to the song itself I've written. Do you like it?