My Composing Process: "fish speckled with orange and green surround me" (2023)

Dear Readers.

During May of 2023, I lived in Nice. I had never visited the South of France before, and quickly fell in love with the beauty of the Mediterranean, the laid-back culture, the kindness of everyone I met, the flora and fauna, the blue skies and the rosé.

Using soundscape that I recorded in Nice and a old piano sketch of mine, I created a musical ode to the city and to the fish.

A Really Nice Place

One of my favorite activities was walking north of Lympia Port (where my Airbnb was) to a small local beach. I’d sit on the large pebbles and draw sketches with colored pencils. I especially loved drawing the green buoy in the distance, the rocks to the right of the beach, the shoreline and the port’s lighthouse. I drew from the visual styles of Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, Raoul Dufy and Pierre Bonnard.

I wrote poems too. One poem that I wrote became the title of this composition: “fish speckled with/orange and green/surround me”. I wrote that on the 8th of May, probably right after getting out of the water.

Speaking of the water, I was shocked at the clarity of it. You can see hundreds of fish all swimming around you and in between the crevices of the rocks below. Fish of all colors. It was mesmerizing. I bought goggles so I was able to see them with greater detail.

Crafting An Ode To Nice

I was recently playing through some piano sketches of mine and I discovered an old sketch from 2021. I easily eased back into playing it again, even though it had been quite a while. It was a pretty sketch, undulating between keys, with slight dissonances and a freeing sense to it. I wanted to finally use it for something.

While in Nice, I did a number of soundscape recordings:

Old Nice: Rue de la Providence overlooking a courtyard (see photo).
Promenade du Anglais: During the day, capturing the sounds of large crowds of tourists
Colline Du Château: At the top recording the Lympia Port side and also recording the small stream of water that runs down the hill.

As with any soundscape recording session, I simply placed the microphone down in a place a found interesting and left it there for at least five minutes. The recording in Old Nice lasted over 25 minutes and is one of my longer recordings. I loved the pigeon sounds especially, they kept singing at odd intervals.

So I played the melody from 2021 and then began layering the soundscapes from Nice underneath. I highlighted a few exciting sound moments: a plane going by, birds singing and pigeons cooing (of course). Overall though, the sounds create a subtle backdrop for the piano.

Unlike the other compositions in my “Poem Pieces” series, I decided to add a few other instruments to support the piano here. I used the Spitfire LABS Tape Orchestra virtual instrument, specifically the sul tasto strings and flautando string patches. I love the ethereal quality of the soft strings.

Some Cool Production Things

Did some fun experimentation with automation in this piece. Automation means that I can program in adjustments so that they are recorded into the piece itself. For example, I used a pitch shifter on the piano, but only for a certain moment later in the piece. So I could automate turning on the pitch shifter and then I could automate the amount of pitch shifting in the mix. The result is a bizarre untuned high pitched piano playing along with the main piano. I also used automation to gradually add tremolo to the piano. Automation allows for production choices to feel organic and live in the mix. I’ve been wanting to use this technique more in my pieces so this was a perfect opportunity to do so.

Filming Fish (Part 2)

I know I am releasing two fish pieces in a row (check out “dreaming of fish” if you haven’t already). For this fish piece, I opted to film my family’s twenty gallon fish tank which happens to reside in my studio space. The current inhabitants of the tank include a cherry barb named Plato (who is over six years old), a Buenos Aires tetra (named Gardel), two mollies, a danio and a blue gourami.

Wanted to capture the awe of having fish surround you in the water, I decided to put my phone right up against the glass and start filming. I think most of the fish in the tank were put off by the phone, but Azul the gourami went right up to the camera a number of times. One of the mollies languidly hung out in the background and Gardel and Plato made brief appearances.

I didn’t do a ton of editing to the video itself. I just added a vignette filter and darkened it a bit, while also adding some contrast to make the colors pop. For the cover of the album, I took a screenshot of when Azul was right up in front of the camera. I then did some editing in Canva so make it appear slightly trippy and bizarre.

Conclusions And Memories Of Nice

I loved the month I spent in Nice. I met incredibly wonderful people in the city and in other towns I visited. Made some terrific friends. Had great conversations. Saw beautiful art in the Matisse Museum, the Chagall Museum and the Picasso Museum in Antibes. Did some terrific networking at the Cannes Film Festival. Swam in the Mediterranean every day for a week.

My mother also visited the last week in May and it was so much fun showing her around the city, relaxing at the beach, taking her to Cannes and visiting Monaco and drinking rosé and eating delicious seafood. It was a truly wonderful month.

This composition is meant to capture the feeling of floating in the Mediterranean Sea while being surrounded by brightly colored fish. It is also just an ode to the city of Nice and a musical memory of my time there.

As always, thanks for listening.

Your’s Musically,

Nicholas

Some Postcards From Nice