This was my first composition using synthesizers, which I enjoyed working on. PAT 462 - Digital Sound Synthesis is a class I've wanted to study for a while, and I finally have the availability on Monday evenings to learn about the instrument that takes up the vast majority of my listening history. Hello Meteor, FM-84, Hotel Pools, Mega Drive, and many others are great artists for synthwave/cyberpunk/electronic music. Expect more synthesizer tracks in the future 😄

The initial inspiration for the track was a generative ambient synthesizer track by the artist State Azure, named 'Fragments'. I thought it was facinating that a synth piece could capture such an atmosphere through having less structure. I've associated listening to ambient synth whenever I want to get into flow state, and so I decided to create a piece that captures the different stages of flow: Struggle, Release, Flow, and Recovery.

To capture this, I decided to draw an analogy between entering a sort of technological facility, and entering flow state. Throughout the piece, I relied mainly on pad sounds that have a texture that doesn't remain constant to create a more interesting sound to listen to. On top of the pads, I mainly aimed for delicate lead synth sounds that sound similar to a harp, with medium attack levels on their envelopes so there is a softness to their articulation.

The first half of the piece is the initial stages of creating a mental space to work within. There is a gradual development as more layers add in, eventually resulting in a lot of activity going on at once.  I started with the warm pad sound that initiates a low, constantly evolving and changing tone, to set the atmosphere of initially sitting down at a desk, or entering a large industrial complex.  The electronic dial pad sound represents unlocking the doors to cognitive experience (the facility). The repeated rhythm was taken from a track that plays in the movie "The Beach" from 2000, while the cast is navigating exotic-sounding logistics on their way to a mysterious remote island. "... 500 miles in 24 hours, at less than 400 baht. Trust me, that's a very good deal". 

Then, we rise up in tone, and suddenly the dense textures give way to a pure, heavenly sound. There is movement in the texture, but we transition from note to note with ease.  We inhabit the same mind as before, evidenced by the same general melody of the descending line, but clarity has been created. The change in the pad texture was done by manually changing the amount of detune applied to different partials, which were made up of a sawtooth and three sine waves. The fundamental tone of E remains mostly constant, but the timbre changes to create a sense of speeding up and slowing down.