Ocean Lanterns (Forest Interlude/Aquatic Ambiance) [R&B/Chill] (Finished!)

Ocean Lanterns

Sources:

Update 4/19: Finished!

Over the past year I've spent a lot of time exploring the world of modern alternative R&B (FKA Twigs, Drake, The Weeknd, Banks, James Blake, etc.) and found myself pulling a lot of inspiration from that aesthetic. I wanted to merge that style with my more traditional chillout pallet... so, lots of bells and pads and the usual fare here I think it's got a bit of a different, darker tone than what I usually write, though!

The middle section of the track is still a little underwhelming, I have some work to do on dynamic control with the rhodes, and there's a couple sections that are not fully fleshed out, but for the most part I'm happy with where this is at. Will likely tweak this endlessly before I call it done, but I think it's at a good point to share!

As always, any impressions or thoughts are appreciated!

Y'know, in the beginning, there's a surprisingly narrow stereo field in comparison to how good the sounds are. Things don't really open up until 0:25 (though it's a touch wide at 0:16 with the grainy sound). What if you took the reversed sound and put some stereo delay on it?

Oh yeah, you have Zebra, right? Wanna use some of mah bell sounds? (PMed you some)

I did think 2:42 was an odd shift in mood. It sounded like an innocent chill track shifted to a serious, almost cyberpunk track (at least until 2:56). I think you could go into a different key than you're in at 2:42. Try shifting the key after 2:42 a whole step up instead. The key change out of it at 3:47 also sounded a bit odd to me. The chord before that sounded like a good ending chord.

At the moment though, this has great potential! Sounds big! Looking forward to more.

Ocean Lanterns *FINISHED!*

Thanks for the feedback, T! I definitely see where you are coming from with the strange shift in keys toward the end... I don't know how Dave Wise made it sound so smooth in his original track, but that's actually more or less the same progression he follows in the source. In the end, I experimented with a bunch of things but I kind of like the sudden-left-turn that that section brings to the track, even if it does interrupt the chillout mood set up by the first half of the track. Even though I didn't end up going with your suggestion, I do appreciate the time you spent sharing your thoughts here And I do have your bell sounds, while I ultimately felt like I was maxed out on bell sounds for this particular mix, I'll keep them in consideration for any future tracks... as you know, pretty much everything I write has bell sounds in it, so this should be nice

With a couple of tweaks and some modifications to the underlying chord structure to a couple of the parts, I think this is ready to submit. I'm going to leave this here for a few days to see if anyone catches any particularly egregious mixing/writing errors, but I've gotten a lot of feedback from friends off the forums and nobody's caught anything major so far. Please enjoy and feel free to share any other comments at this point, I appreciate any feedback!

I thought the Aquatic Ambience at 1:02 could be louder, but other than that this is really awesome! Great ambient soundscape, big sound design from Omnisphere here, and the reverb is just right!

The goldeneye sound! Where did you find it?