Inspired by: Fibre Optic/Radiant Light - 2 by Lizz Aston
Artist Statement:
Glowing In The Dark aims to capture the feeling of depth felt when looking at Fibre Optic/Radiant Light - 2 by Lizz Aston. The dark minor chords on piano and deep bass line allows for the percussion and synthesizer to stand out, shimmering on top of the track like the dichroic film reflects lights in the gallery. GITD is a hip-hop-inspired, synth-led, melodic minor-based piece created entirely with in-the-box sounds in Logic Pro, and a midi keyboard.
The piece begins with an electric piano which is highly compressed, and widened using a stereo spread plug-in. A one handed Cminor6/9 voicing repeats for three bars, followed by Dbminor6/9 for a bar. This sequence repeats. The slightly swung hi hat eighth notes entering on the third bar of the synth melody create a contrast between a quarter based boom bap drum feel changing to a classic Dilla feel. There is an eighth note stereo delay on the percussion layer that hits every beat four. The sub bass line is bouncy and leaves space for the other parts. It is later doubled with a left-panned synth bass. The lead synth has fast modulation and stereo tremolo. The melody was created through rhythmic-ly displacing groups of whole tones (all chord tones and extensions) that change with the chord progression. The slides between whole tones were achieved with the keyboard’s pitch wheel.
A common theme is movement through the stereo spectrum. This is related to seeing the light reflecting off Aston’s artwork at different angles as the eyes glance from left to right.