Road With No Name

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Road With No Name

Serialising the album Pretentious Incongruity by Key 13 (@keefmarshall)

Pretentious Incongruity: 2020-2024 is a retrospective compilation looking back at some key milestones in the first five years of Key 13 as a recording identity.

Track 18

This collection always had to close with this. Created barely 6 months after I bought my nanoKEY2, it was the first track I created that sounded (if you squint a bit) like it might have been made with real instruments. It’s highly self-indulgent and far too long, but I’m actually quite pleased with this new mix, and as we started the album in 7/8 time, it makes sense to end in 7/8 as well.

Why did I use a virtual acoustic double bass instead of an electric bass? I have no idea – and it’s just a Logic Pro preset rather than any sophisticated emulation. But I think it works? This track was recorded before I had discovered Ample Sound’s amazing virtual guitars, so it uses an Applied Acoustics Systems (AAS) plugin called Strum GS-2. This uses physical modelling of sound rather than samples, and it’s just not quite as convincing, falling in some not-quite-guitar uncanny valley – but it sounded great to me at the time.

The original version fades, but when I opened up the project I realised it did actually have an ending, so I kept it this time. I also slowed it down slightly and drastically reduced the mellotron flute sound which was overwhelming before.

The road in the title, and as pictured in the cover photo, genuinely appears to have no name. We used to walk down it quite a lot during Lockdown as it was quiet and a convenient route to get to more green spaces.

Influences: Caravan, Camel

– From Key13’s Pretentious Incongruity: Track Notes

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[Read in full on NHAM]