LAYERS: Breaking Down The Sentimental Sounds of Evenings' "Friend [Lover]"

Evenings makes the kind of stuff that we’ve come to expect more from the beachier areas of the West Coast, the kind of earthy, sentimental sounds pioneered by Boards of Canada and taken to extremes of ambience by reverb-effects-chaining knob twiddlers. Being from Virginia and based in New York, Evenings’s stuff has just a bit more edge to it. It still packs the tearful, hopeful melodies, but the sounds are a little sharper, and the composition a bit tighter than the average dream soundscape.

For this week’s LAYERS, this Friends of Friends artist breaks down his track “Friend [Lover]” off of his North Dorm EP. It’s a dense one, and each of its 10 parts has interesting nuances that merge perfectly in the track, but have their own individual charm that really come out when you hear them isolated. Let’s dive in.

Backbeat

The back beat here is just a simple kick and clap pattern that I laid out in Ableton. I recorded the kick from a bass drum I had laying around my house in Virginia. The clap is a sample I altered. I took out much of the high end with an EQ, and boosted the frequencies I liked. After I was happy with how these sounded, I added some light chamber reverb.

Strange percussion

I had been fiddling around with an MPD earlier when I was making this track and I came up with this simple pattern. The sounds come from all over the place. I just went through my sample library (which is mostly stuff I’ve just recorded myself with a condenser mic) and found a few samples that I thought were interesting. I stretched a couple of these out to give them a warble-y feel, then quantized them and did some panning. I had basically finished the track before I remembered that I also had this little pattern made. So I added it to the beginning of the track and placed it again during the interlude. I think this really helped make the track stand out. The subtlety of the first few clicks that lead into a sort of explosion of bass and vocals I found really striking.

Bass

This bass was created in Ableton’s Operator synth, and it’s rather simple. I think it’s just a low triangle wave mixed with a low sine wave. The two are a fifth away from the other diatonically.

Backing guitar

This doesn’t sound much like guitar anymore, but It was. I recorded a guitar track with some type of space echo on it, then I stretched the waveform out and created this sorta tremolo-sounding thing.

MK

This is a simple MK pattern from a weird no name keyboard that I bought at a yard sale. It sort of sounds like guitar or harp or some sort of bell. Anyhow, it kind of gives the track the laid-back flowing feel.

Percussion fills

This was definitely the most fun part of creating this song. I laid all the samples out that I wanted to play on the MPD, then just let the track play and improvised a percussion pattern. The cowbell is the highlight for me. I love doing this. It can give a really straight and boring sounding track a human vibe that I enjoy.

Ride cymbal

Pretty self-explanatory, really. The ride also seems to accentuate the laid-back feel here. Although it sounds really boring on its own.

Pitch shifted conga and shakers

I did some downshifting of these using celemony melodyne because I simply thought it sounded cool and contributed to the sort of chaotic yet retrained ending to the track.

Vocals

I got one of my friends (no pun intended) to sing then messed with the vocals. I used a little beat repeat, and again Celemony Melodyne. Then I added some reverb. Afterwards I ran these through my reel-to -eel tape machine, then back into Ableton, and voila.

Tape hiss

This is just amplified tape hiss from a crappy reel I have rolling on my tape machine. I side-chained it to the bass to create the pulsating sound.

Previously: LAYERS: Spirit Guide And Every Break Down The Tenets Of Their “Union”.

@ImYourKid