Welcome to Ambience for April! This is an ambience focused sequel to my 2019 album, November, where I made a song a day for November. Here, however, I'm focusing on Ambience. November was influenced by Japanese Breakfast's project, June. Same concept applies.
Here, we have a piece I made with my Akai MPK mini play and my G1X Four Zoom multi-effects looper pedal. Admittedly, I was off time with the drumming loops, but I think it sounds cool. I was banking for a different ending, but I got this instead. I think this is still a good piece.
This piece was made with my Akai synth, Zoom multi effects looper pedal, and my field recording recording the rain storm outside today. First, I set the recorder inside a cabinet outside, then I recorded the synth track. I kept the field recorder going as I went to the store. I think this turned out really well.
This is a piece I made with my Glarry Telecaster, Korg Delay Monotron, MPK mini play (for Synth Drums), and my multi-effect looper. Its focus is on the slowly growing guitar loops, with a repeating motif throughout its entirety, eventually adding more instrumentation near the end, what with the synth and drums. It brings to mind Flood I by Boris. It took me two fucking minutes to start this piece because I kept fucking up the first loop, which, y'know, is the most important aspect of this song.
A piece made with the Akai MPK mini play, that utilizes drum synths and looping. I love how you can hear birds in the background of this piece. I am so happy about that. I actually recorded a piece before this that is way too energetic to be on this project. It was delegated for RonZak's Contingent Music, and it's like a blueprint piece for if I want to make an album in that way.
A piece revolving around simple bass guitar loops, with periodic string scratchings and drum synths. I had to record this twice because I accidentally hit the keys on my synth and it immediately sounded tacky.
A slow growing piece made with my Akai synth, that involves slowly growing synth loops, including drum loops and sound effect loops. Whilst much of this project does remind me of the works of Equip (Kevin Hein) as his K Hein moniker, this one especially makes me think of his Hypoxia album.
A slowly moving piece only implementing an electric guitar and the effects looper.
A slowly evolving synth piece made with made Akai synth. This one is interesting because I made it with an arguably non-atmospheric effect. Despite this, I think this piece sounds pretty cool. I wasn't expecting it to be this long, but that's how it ended up coming out.
This is the first piece I would say is fully a horror soundscape. This was made with my Korg Delay Monotron. This piece slowly spirals out of control until it's a wall of pulsating sound. Whilst I was recording this piece, I thought about Callers of the Veil. I've done stuff like this for CotV. After I finished recording this I then followed it up with a twenty-five minute piece for Callers of the Veil titled "When Will It Overcome You?" This piece has made me want to work on another Callers of the Veil piece. Granted, I was going to eventually, anyway. I love drone music, like Bull of Heaven, Boris, 天気予報 (Asutenki), and SUNN O))). I still need to listen to the new SUNN O))) album. It released this month. I think it was on the fourth. (I was wrong; it was a day earlier.)
I've been thinking about doing a Monotron piece I think for a couple of days now. Kayne was over last night, and I talked to him about it. I told him how I just wanted it to be the Monotron. Well, hey, I stuck to that word. When I made the "follow-up piece", I was tempted to whip out the Akai MPK Mini Play for its drum pads, but I decided against it. Now that I think about it, I could do a drum-based drone piece for Callers of the Veil, or even for this project. The latter is definitely a "maybe", but doing something like it for CotV, which already has drone metal influences, has some legs.
Wow, two long paragraphs for an entry. How insane.
Something unfortunate was bound to happen.
This piece was made with my Akai synth and it involves various synth loops and a couple of drum loops. It's a slow grower, like many on here. The issue that happened here is around 8:30. The recording starts to skip. No, you're not losing it, the recording kept on hiccuping. You can also hear my computer clicking. Was it overclocking the hard drive? That's not a good sign. It's really a shame, too, because those last couple minutes, barring the skipping, really do sound like a K Hein song. I want to pursue this style for another RonZak album.
I might have to use my field recorder for this project from now on. We'll see. I'll keep using Reaper, but I've noticed in the past that Reaper likes to skip more than Audacity. A main cause for that is Reaper uses up more resources on a computer than, Audacity, especially in that old All-in-One.
This is a unique one here currently. All this is is an acoustic guitar piece, with a reverb effect added in post. You can split this piece in two movements if you wanted.
This one is kind of a mess, but there's a good reason for it. Yesterday, I obtained my new loop pedal; an Electro-Harmonix Nano Looper 360. It's a loop pedal that has up to six minutes of recording capability, and eleven loop memory slots that save even after being turned off. It's definitely a learning curve over my effects looper. Funny enough, the Zoom pedal has more versatility because the effects can be active during it, but I'm pretty sure I can daisy chain the Nano Looper into the Zoom G1X pedal. I have to get another 9Volt chord for it, though. This pedal came with one at least. The main downside to the Zoom pedal is if you unplug the input cord, it turns off, and for some cords/instruments, if you unplug the instrument, the pedal turns off. And the Zoom pedal doesn't save loops. Not to mention, compared to the time the Nano Looper gives me, the time limit is dwarved. With the Nano Looper, I'm able to undo a part and redo a part. However, to control the Nano Looper pedal has been breaking my brain. It involves pressing the footswitch in various ways, and as someone who has always found iPhone UI unintuitive and convoluted, (like everything by Apple, fuck Apple,) it's been difficult to adapt to. I'll get used to it, eventually. The Zoom Looper is way easier to use. Both pedals have infinite overdubs. Each pedal has their upsides and downsides.
Now, about the song proper. It involves a main electric guitar loop, being overdubbed by synth loops and drum loops. Sometimes the loops are undone and overdubbed over or brought back. This has ended up as the shortest Ambience For April song. I didn't intend for that. I recorded two takes on one recording. The first take lasted roughly five minutes before I decided it was a flop, so I started from the top. (Read, the second version of the loop, so the two guitar loops.) I'm thinking of saving the first attempt as a demo. After recording was done, I did some post production, turning up the decibels, and adding reverb and delay.
This was a test to see if I could daisy chain my pedals, and yes, I can. This song uses my Akai synth, my Zoom G1X multi-effects pedal, and my Electro-Harmonix Nano Loop 360 loop pedal. Because of how the Zoom pedal works, I don't know yet if I'll be able to unplug an instrument and plug a different one in. I don't know if that will end up cutting the feed. More experimenting will have to follow.
This song consists of a simple piano loop slowly being built on by synth loops and drum pads. I had to do three takes because the first take was ruined by my damn alarm, and I had a coughing fit that I tried really hard to hold back but couldn't for the second take. Because the first take lasted ~4 minutes, I might be able to make a demo track out of it. For the nightmare it was to record, I think this piece turned out really good.
This was a test piece to see if unplugging an instrument from my Zoom Pedal turns off the daisy chain of pedals I set up with the Nano Looper. Long story short, it doesn't, which is good. I took a twenty-four minute recording where I talked about the process, and a few other things. I did this piece in the middle of the recording. It felt longer than it actually was.
This piece involves a piano loop that slowly gets added upon. This song uses the Akai Synth, my Glarry Telecaster, drum pads, and my Precision 1 Bass. For how slow this piece is, and I mean slow, it's still pretty enjoyable, and it was a fun experience. I wouldn't put it near the top of my favorite pieces here, though.
A slowly growing synth piece made with my Akai Synth and my Nano Looper. I believe it's set in D tuning. I made a few errors here in there. Regardless, I think it's a nice piece.
Here is the new record holder for the longest AFA song currently. This is a piece that implements both my synths, but it mainly focuses on my Korg Delay Monotron, and uses the drum pads on my Akai synth coming about eight minutes in this fourteen minute song. At one point, there's a fake out ending. This was perfect practice for Callers of the Veil.
I had/have issues with this one. This piece uses my Korg Delay Monotron and Glarry Telecaster. I wish I didn't use the Telecaster at end, because it doesn't sound that good; it sounds like a mess. If I had done this the other way around, where the guitar is the focus, and the synth loops were the embellishments, I think the guitar would have turned out better. I genuinely was contemplating taking out the guitar part. It would have been relatively easy because it joins at the last leg of the song, but I decided to keep it in for archival sake. I mean, this whole thing is dissonant through and through, so I guess it fits.
Also, you'll hear a clip in the audio at one point. This was not the recording's fault; that was mine. As I was trying to retrieve my electric guitar, I ended up unplugging my Nano Looper on accident, which, of course, completely fucked up the song's flow. I tried my best to take out the bit of silence, and to my credit, I almost got there.
Not everything can be winners.
My thought process was correct. It does feel better switching the importance of the instruments.
This piece involves my Glarry Telecaster and my Korg Delay Monotron. When setting it up, there were some technical difficulties that led me to believe my guitar broke for the second time, but after some troubleshooting, everything worked fine. I decided to take some interesting twist upon recording this one. Usually, I'll make a loop, let it play for some time, and then make another loop; rinse and repeat until I think the song has overstayed its welcome. I decided here to play over the loops for some time before starting a new loop. I did this for both my guitar parts and my synth parts. I think this piece turned out quite nicely.
Today is my brother, Brandon's birthday. So, in a way, this is like a birthday gift to him. I don't think he would really care about this song, though. Alas.
My older nephews are over so I had to record this piece outside. All I used was my Akai synth and my field recorder, which explains why the recording skips at points, but I don't mind it too much with this piece. How I did this piece is I would play my synth for a minute or so, step away so that I would capture sounds of the world around me, then resume playing. It was cold outside; 6C. I think it was the wind chill that was the blame for this. I really like this piece.
Once again, my shitass alarm ruined another fucking recording. For that, thy punishment is death. (I erased the alarm. Not like I need it, anyway.) At least it happened in an oppurtune time to where I can just fade the song out and it would still be satisfying. I almost caught it in time, too. This piece involves synth loops being played over improvised drum synths.
New record for longest AFA piece, and it's a weird one. It was made with my Korg Delay Monotron. You can hear me constantly messing with the Nano Looper, using a previously made loop as a strange beat at some point, and they going crazy with the synth in the last leg of the track. This piece is schizophrenic.
This piece is a slowly moving acoustic guitar number that focuses on a simple chorus. I'm surprised it went on for twelve minutes. I decided to leave this piece as its raw recording, so there's no post-production, unlike 11 April 2026. Also, we have officially broke through the four hour mark. As of today, Ambience For April is 4:08:42.
This beats 21 April 2026's timelength by a few seconds. This is an electric guitar focused piece with a long intro and outro. In the majority of the song are slow growing guitar loops and an improvised drum synth section inside it. This piece probably should have been shorter, but it was fun to record. Also, today marks the new longest album I've made. Flotsam Soundtrack First Version was 4:25:07. AFA at this point is 4:25:32. And we have one more week to go.
If Ambience For April wasn't already my longest album since yesterday, this song just solidifies it further. At this point, AFA is 4:36:58. Genuinely, I think my prediction of a six hour runtime will end up being correct.
Anyway, about the song proper. This is a slow electric guitar piece being played over a field recording I take on the Fourth of July last year, four days before our dog, Zeus, died. I have used the recording before to create the noise wall behemoth, Your Commune, off of Where Everything Fades. You'll here many times my recorder falling off my strings because I was trying to keep it propped up on the strings, above the second pickups. It's a rough piece, but it sounds cool, despite all the issues I had when making it.
A new AFA record has been reached. This piece is 18:37 long. This is quite the unique Ambience For April piece as well, for it involves my cassette radio player (Panasonic RQ-V203) and my Korg Delay Monotron. There's a back and forth with each device. One make a loop, then the other makes a loop.
This is a later time than usual because stayed the night at Kayne's house. We recorded this piece with our synthesizers; his Korg Monologue, and my Korg Delay Monotron and Akai MPK Mini Play. This piece is an insane noise wall of chaotic synths backed behind a simple synth drone. Chaotic drum pads come in near the end. Kayne has also helped me make two new Toxins of Solitude tracks. Look forward for those.