Next month I'll be releasing my first Music For Isolation Tanks studio ambient album in almost 20 years. In going through my archives I found a lot of material I had squirreled away including a piece I did literally to put people to sleep. It's almost an hour of quiet ambient and drifting patterns and somnambulistic tones. Slowly changing over time the end result is a trance-like journey to drift off to.
I initially got the idea from clock radios that offer white noise or other natural sounds that mask out urban or technological environment. The initial idea of Music For Isolation Tanks was to create ambient and exploratory synthesized sounds and along the way I studied generative music - a process of setting parameters in motion so that actual sound and notes are created by a structure rather than played in a specific order. The composer sets the options and choices and then usually software or an interactive instrument generates what appear to be random and ever changing combinations of sound based around the initial criteria. Of course Brian Eno and his associates are probably the most famous artists who used generative music techniques but they are part of the art and film world as well.
I included an excerpt of my piece, Aurore, on the new album but the original was a longer extended piece; the idea being you put it on around bed time and let it play as it slowly sweeps you into sleep. The software used for this piece was created by the late Carlos Mateo who released a number of VST programs (including The Devil Inside which I used to make this little noise ditty). Adding some custom samples and tweaks I found just the right balance for deep yet non intrusive sounds which evolve slow enough to let your mind wander and body relax. Almost, well... the perfect Music For Isolation Tanks.
Sleeeep on...
