Quiet Burrow 003

This year my daughter Isla aged 6 got involved with Whitelabrecs a little, by helping to present a radio show we called the Quiet Burrow. We make these on a quarterly basis and here, we’re pleased to share our third episode!

For our previous two shows Isla selected a few Ambient tracks and then we chatted over them about all kinds of things. The shows are very much driven through Isla’s ideas, and as a creative soul she’s full of them! For this third edition we decided that Isla would create some music of her own after I bought her a new toy sound machine.

Hit play below to listen to the fully improvised music Isla made, alone in our lounge for around half an hour. And then below that, I share what equipment and instruments were used to create the music. We hope you like it. A big thanks to Bob Burnett for once again providing a photo of a bunny for the mix cover artwork!

MELORY SOUND MACHINE

So, on Instagram I seemed to be repeatedly served adverts for this Melory white noise sleep machine. I decided to order one, then waited quite some time and wondered whether perhaps it might be a scam. But, it did turn up and it works pretty well! It’s an 8 track set of faders, each with a calming sound including ocean waves, fire, thunder, rain, singing bowls, birds, running water and crickets. You can adjust the volume slider for each to get a mix that feels like a looping field recording. Isla created 6 separate tracks and for each one, she set the sliders to get the blend of sounds she wanted to accompany her instrument performances.

HANDPAN DRUM

Perhaps the main instrument that Isla performed is this handpan hang drum, which I bought when I was working on my album Infinite Light. It’s a Vevor 10” drum which gives out a nice tone - I have fond memories of Isla gently playing this when I was working on Infinite Light. In fact, Isla is featured with this very instrument in the track ‘Starlings’. One evening before bed, I placed the drum in the bag window and Isla gently hit the rubber beaters on the drum at a slow pace. I was amazed how she was able to show such a restraint and understanding of what makes for good Ambient music, at such a young age. Without much experience or teaching, young kids can sometimes experiment with music by making loud, frantic sounds. Not Isla - she did such a wonderful job that I recorded her playing in one take, live through the window that summer. She continued this approach in her recordings here.

PERCUSSION

We had laid out quite a few instruments on the rug in our lounge - but these are the additional percussive instruments that Isla used in her music.

There’s a glockenspiel that I bought for her when she was a baby. An egg-shaped shaker; again, one of many that she had when she was a baby.

Then there’s also a slightly more advanced Meinl shaker, known as a Wakah shaker. These sounds added a bit of variety to Isla’s compositions and at times, Isla played two instruments at once!

RECORDING

Our radio voiceovers are usually captured using a proper vocal mic, a Shure SM-58. But for recording instruments and outdoor sounds, we’ll use this trusty Zoom H5 which I’ve had for several years now. It’s older than Isla, and the family know it well as I often take it when we’re out and about on our travels. It gets nicknamed ‘the squirrel’ because when the shotgun mic is fitted, it resembles the bushy tail of a squirrel… it seemed a decent mic to use to capture Isla’s sounds and I showed her how to use it. She started and stopped the 6 song ideas she had and we talked about positioning from it, which she seemed to manage quite well.

POST PRODUCTION

I didn't actually listen to what Isla recorded straight away. I'd popped out to the shop with my other daughter Emily, to give Isla a little piece so she could record. A few days later I transferred the recordings from the Zoom H5 to my laptop and had a listen. Right away I was impressed by the calm atmosphere she had created and was eager to lay the pieces out in my DAW. I did not need to trim out any mistakes or unwanted sounds - everything you hear is live for each of the six tracks! Originally we were just going to introduce the show with some of Isla's own music but on hearing the pieces, it was clear that the music should occupy the whole show.

So the structure and composition of the recordings did not change, bar some fades at the beginning and the end. The recording was pretty quiet, so I applied some compression using Fabfilter Pro-C using the 'Gentle Mastering' preset. I then removed the low frequencies below Hz with Fabfilter Pro-Q. I wanted to add a little more subtle character so used a combination of Kazrog's True Iron which gives the subtlest of transformer sound, Klanghelm's SDRR2 on its 'Vintage Broadcast' setting and Klevgrand's 'Luxe 1'. I love tape effects and couldn't resist placing AudioThing's 'Reels' to the master bus. I didn't overdo it so that it seriously eroded Isla's work and I showed it to Isla who gave the approval. Essentially, this gave the melodic parts a wobbly feel through wow and flutter. However, it then made the highs feel quite noisy too - so I added in Felt Instruments' Rysy which is a 1950s filter emulation plugin and this seemed to be just the ticket.

Isla will be back in December with a winter episode of Quiet Burrow, so stay tuned! Who knows what ideas she'll have for the next one...