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The title comes from reading "The Willows in Winter" to my son Maurice, which is the sequel to "The Wind in The Willows" and thinking of Toad and the sort of idyllic natural landscape. While messing around in Logic, I ended up creating a "Drag and Drop Sample Kit" in Ultrabeat from some random samples that I've collected, and some of the sounds reminded me of croaking sounds when played. Lots of ambience in here. Most of the samples come from soundsnap.com, but they are really from all sorts of places, and I don't remember where. Then I added some more Logic software instruments. There's a Junosphere preset that reminds me of a Juno I used to play a lot back in the '80s. I had a studio that a roommate had used for some practice and his musical mate left the Juno there and I did a lot of recording with it on my little Fostex. In a drugged up delirium when I was laid up due to back pain, I scored a nature movie using that and other tape samples. Just for personal interest but I remember there were frogs in it at some point. I wonder where that tape went?
Anyway, back to the subject at hand, I was thinking of adding some acoustic guitar to this to make it more The Books-like, and I may yet do that, but this is at a good point. Good enough to bounce it down and call it mix#1. Maybe it's too long? Your input is appreciated!
Anyway, back to the subject at hand, I was thinking of adding some acoustic guitar to this to make it more The Books-like, and I may yet do that, but this is at a good point. Good enough to bounce it down and call it mix#1. Maybe it's too long? Your input is appreciated!
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Peter Greenstone
I like this. That rhythmic frog/toad like sound is really nice and captivating, gentle. The cow sounds that come in later are a bit distracting, out of place to me, too out loud and literal. All the other sounds are more suggestive or delicate and create a cohesive world, even if actually sourced from very different places.
It's really like feeling the living pulse of a place. Gives Toad an eerily real life quality to him.
I'm sure you could come up with a guitar part that would end up sounding really nice on this but I don't hear it enhancing this as much as something else might. I'd rather hear a more unusual melodic instrument used instead. I can imagine one of those strange old organs Mikkinylund has in his collection being used in a creative way, air squeezed through some old bellows and seeping out a quivering harmony.