Original recording for WSDOT
Listen to this! I was asked recently by my company, the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT), to create an original recording for use with their phone on-hold system. It was a lot of fun, and when you listen to this first preview see if you can pick out the following themes. In thinking about the project and the types of work that goes on at WSDOT, I created three distinct sections of the song:
Winter — the snow is falling lightly in the Cascade Mountains, the snow-laden firs stand tall and the massive, majestic peaks rise up above you as you pass through them
Summer — it’s workin’ time! Let’s get out there and build some roads. Hammers clang, machinery belches, and we’re driving forward!
Ferries — it’s another beautiful day as you cross Rosario Strait on your way to the San Juan Islands. The sun sparkles off the wave-tops and the brisk wind comes straight at you. The waves lap up against the ferry as it’s underway and creates a natural rhythmic pattern. Seagulls overhead match pace with the boat, and in the distance you see a harbor seal pop its head out of the water to keep an eye on you.
Great job, Chuck! I might not have guessed the themes had you not said something, but your descriptions come through clearly. Good job on the recording. Did you do any post-record work?
Hi there Steve! Thanks! I did this project in Logic Studio, so pretty much everything in the way of comp/eq/fx is done on-board. Just a little editing afterwards to get it to loop seamlessly and applying compression one last time.
This is definitely the better version to listen to, as compared to what ended up on the phone system. I learned that most on-hold music requires a special, low-fi wave file called CCIT u-Law that’s only 8-bit, 8kHz, mono. Ugh. 🙂 But still, it turned out pretty good.
Pretty darn good music IMNSHO. Sounds great Chuck. But what? No semi horns celebrating CVISN?
Well hi there Doug! Thanks very much! The song Take it Easy by The Eagles comes to mind — at least the line that says “don’t the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy”.