Mist & Mushrooms

The idea

Mist & Mushrooms is my first ambient piano composition (not counting something I did years ago, which I might refresh and release). I tried to capture the feeling of walking through the woods in Oregon on a quiet, foggy morning.

How I made it

I created a Cmaj7 - Fmaj7 chord progression in iRealPro, and then set that to loop while I doodled on my piano, a Kawai Novus NV10. At this stage I wasn’t really thinking about the song structure, just playing with phrases. I recorded everything I played via MIDI.

I then took the MIDI recording into Reaper, and played around with the parts until I had something I liked. I tried to build up the song to something like a “chorus”, and then come back down to the end. The primary voice is Pianoteq, using a felted preset on the Bösendorfer model to create a soft, intimate attack. I layered that with gentle strings and ambient textures.

This was really my first time trying EQ, compressors, limiters, and so on, and it shows. Some day I’ll probably look back at this and chuckle at myself. But for now I’m happy with the results.

Status

Out January 16th on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, and other streaming platforms. Pre-save on feature.fm to add it to your playlist.

Thanks for listening, — Saurav