Becoming more machine-like: Hirajōshi and Air – Chris Perry Style

This track, just released on SoundCloud, is Track 7 of 9 on the album Painting Music. It’s a new mix of one of the songs on the album. The song started with two types of sound recordings: the first was made on the “Sky” canvas of Google’s experimental “Paint with Music” platform, which is in the Heptatonic scale; the second on the “Paper” canvas of “Paint with Music”, in the Japanese Hirajōshi scale. I built a new composition around these small audio samples, and because the sound is so unusual, I wanted to try different creative approaches and asked two sound engineers to work their magic on it. The first was Luke Garfield, whom I’ve been working with for more than two years, who gave it his recognizable well-balanced, lush and velvety sound (and corrected my technical mistakes in the process.)

The version published here is by Toronto music producer and mix engineer, Chris Perry. It is hypnotic, with the machine-like and grinding-sounding elements, which are produced by the synths, dominating, and the contrasts and dramatic flows intentionally amped up. In this mix, the original audio from the A.I. platform can also be heard more clearly. It is a different animal from the first version – more synthetic, more resonant, less naturalistic. Perhaps only I can hear the differences, but to me they stand out and I immediately liked what I heard.

I have discovered that the work of mix engineers, same as artists, are influenced by their background, vision and sense of aesthetics. I wondered whether a Canadian engineer might produce a different interpretation of the song. So I found Chris, who is based in Toronto, Canada, on SoundBetter, and he did indeed do something that was different from what I expected. In the first place, I was quite surprised that he was interested in working on such a peculiar project by an unknown music maker, since he is a multi-platinum award winning producer, mixer, and songwriter. But it seems that these kinds of projects, using A.I.-generated sound, do interest him – so the project was a go.

Hirajōshi and Air on SoundCloud

Hirajōshi & Air – Lyrical Video

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