My first new instrumental of 2025 ~ a dreamy smooth jazz piece. I kept the title as the incomplete "Dreaming Of" as the listener won't dream what I dreamed.

I began this composition early in January, but it took until the 30th to finally have it sound as I wanted. The first problem I had was that I could only find a very few solos which worked with the chord structure and even the samples that did sounded poorly structured and thus the two guitar solos had to be constructed by cutting and pasting from numerous regenerations. Only the 3rd and final solo, the fiddle, worked without editing, but even that was the umpteenth regeneration of the sample. The 1st guitar solo is a hybrid cut and pasted together from 7 snippets from 5 different regenerations of the style; and the 2nd shorter guitar solo is a hybrid of snippets from 6 different regenerations.

Next, the 2nd piano track had to be much edited to get rid of individual way too loud high notes; then the 1st occurrence of the electro flute is a 2-part hybrid from the same sample as wanted the opening phrase to repeat.

The biggest problem I had was getting the gains balanced as each time I listened to a 'finished' product I found it wasn't. I've always found that what sounds balanced when listening at my average listening level won't sound as expected when listening to the track at either low or high volume, but this instrumental in particular I 'finished' at least 8 times before it sounded right at any volume. I also regularly find that what sounds perfect in Audacity will sound different when played in another app, so my usual routine with an assumedly finished product is to add it to the centre of a playlist of at least 5 other BiaB compositions so I can compare balances.

Cast in order of appearance:
Bass: Oleo Bop w/ Acoustic Bass ~ Neil Swainson
Drums: Oleo Bop w/ Acoustic Bass ~ Craig Scott
1st Piano: Oleo Bop w/ Acoustic Bass ~ uncredited
Acoustic Guitar: 3 Guitar Country Rock ~ Tony King
Organ: Country Rock Guitar Solo, Pop Ba -- Gene Rabbai
2nd Piano: Slow Jazz Rock w Soloist ~ Jeff Lorber
1st Guitar Solo: East Dock Latin Fusion Gtr Solo ~ Brent Mason
2nd Guitar Solo: Bricks Indie Rock w Guitar Solo ~ Mike Durham
Electro Flute: ElectroFlute Pop Ballad ~ Miles Black
Synth Pads: Whales LSS Synth Pads 1&2 ~ Blair Mastters
Fiddle: Fidget Bluesy Pop with Fiddle ~ Andy Leftwich

C / 85 bpm / 112 bars/ time: 5:27

Last edited by WaoBand; 02/26/25 04:10 PM.
Some favourite Waoist Adages:
#1: Play on the Way.
#13: Ask not for whom the flower blooms, it blooms for you.
#58: Bring consciousness to it.
#63: On the road to effortlessness, effort must be made.
#92: Be Love Now, the rest will come on its own.