As I mentioned a few days ago, I’ve planned the Navigator and Officer’s rooms sound to work together when they bleed. The narrative for both is one of mystery and secrecy, so the mood is consistent, and I’ve balanced them sonically by using low, slow sounds with unpitched percussive metallics in the Navigator’s room and, today, by creating a texture using higher sounds and pitched percussion in the Officer’s room… here’s a mock-up:

The musical material in this space may remind you of the 2s against 3s from hmas voyager : in memoriam that I shared in July, but actually the inspiration again is from Howard Skempton, and in particular his work Surface Tension. There’s a fantastic recording of this piece on Mode Record, but I’ve also made my own MIDI recording so you can hear it:

The influence, as you’ve probably guessed, is not in the piano figure, but in the simple melodic writing in octaves – in my case, the flute and clarinet rather than flute and cello. I can remember when I first heard it thinking that the flute and cello, with the flute low in range and the cello in mid-range, made a new sound, not a summed sound, when they played such simple material in octaves. Typical Skempton, to find such beauty and originality in simplicity…

P.S. Wasted most of yesterday trying to find a good sample of rolled vibraphone. In the end purchased the full Vienna vibraphone, so appreciate how amazingly realistic it is in the above video!