Earth by Norman Freund

Title:
Earth

1: "Earth", 05:02 (00:00)
2: "Parting", 06:22, (05:02)
3: "Trees", 05:28, (11:24)
4, "Insects", 1:35, (16:52)
5, "Visitor", 04:23, (18:27)
End (22.50)

Dates:
01-Nov-2025 (inception), 01-Nov-2025 (finalised), 04-Nov-2025 (released)

Artists:
Music composed, performed, produced by Norman Freund
Artwork by Norman Freund
Music Video by Norman Freund

BandCamp Purchase:
https://normanfreund.bandcamp.com/album/earth

Description:
After recording "Granie Demo3 - Lyra Dreams The Halloween Edition" (Ref. [1]), I had to have a wind down session just jamming out, or was it going more hyper -- you be the judge.

Tracks 1, 2, 3 and 4 were recorded DAWless on the Granie, feeding it the Soma Lyra 8. Granie is my granular synthesiser Ref. [2].

Track 1 used a definite tuning library, whereas for tracks 2, 3 and 4, it was all modified and improvised. The tuning is listed below, negative frequencies meant play backwards, these were the grain play-back frequencies, which may differ to the human perceived frequency.

Grain Bank 1 frequencies [Hz]:
1: -1.635
2: 0.265
3: 0.985
4: 1.465
5: 2.165
6: 2.865
7: 4.165
8: 12.465

Grain Bank 2 frequencies [Hz]:
1:14.
2: 3.
3: 13.
4: 20.
5: 25.
6: 32
7: 28.
8: -2.4

Grain Bank 3 frequencies [Hz]:
1: 3
2: 14
3: 17
4: 22
5: 23
6: 25
7: 41
8: 47

Grain Bank 4 frequencies [Hz]:
1: 117
2: 122
3: 125
4: 129
5: 131
6: 136
7: 141
8: 40

The tuning was determined one grain bank at a time, all by ear, ensuring each new bank's ith note worked well with the next bank's ith note.

For track 5, I was curious what the tuning of track 1 would sound like with a fixed discrete tuning instrument, so took the raw track 1 tuning and put it into Ableton Live, an exact replica of tuning but with no granular synthesis human perceived tuning corrections. Some selective octave reduction was also used, this tuning is shown below:

ID, Bank, Local, FreqRatio, Cents
0, 0, 0, 1.000, 0c
1, 0, 1, 0.162, -3150c
2, 0, 2, 0.602, -877c
3, 0, 3, 0.896, -190c
4, 0, 4, 1.324, 486c
5, 0, 5, 1.752, 971c
6, 0, 6, 2.547, 1619c
7, 0, 7, 7.624, 3517c
8, 1, 0, 1.070, 118c
9, 1, 1, 0.229, -2549c
10, 1, 2, 0.994, -11c
11, 1, 3, 1.529, 735c
12, 1, 4, 1.911, 1121c
13, 1, 5, 2.446, 1549c
14, 1, 6, 2.141, 1318c
15, 1, 7, 0.183, -2936c
16, 2, 0, 1.835, 1051c
17, 2, 1, 8.563, 3718c
18, 2, 2, 10.398, 4054c
19, 2, 3, 13.456, 4500c
20, 2, 4, 14.067, 4577c
21, 2, 5, 15.291, 4721c
22, 2, 6, 25.076, 5578c
23, 2, 7, 28.746, 5814c
24, 3, 0, 1.118, 193c
25, 3, 1, 1.166, 266c
26, 3, 2, 1.195, 308c
27, 3, 3, 1.233, 362c
28, 3, 4, 1.252, 389c
29, 3, 5, 1.300, 454c
30, 3, 6, 1.347, 516c
31, 3, 7, 0.382, -1665c

I used a bell instrument, ok, this is weird, the tuning, not the instrument, but it worked, 8 notes for each of the Granie banks, strung together into 32 notes and just stuck with only using those 32 notes. I realised I needed a timing track, so picked a drum set and set the Push2 midi controller into 1/16th repeat note mode and improvised some drums into a 21 bar section. Improvised on the Bells track into 18 bars. Put the percussion and bells into looped playback and improvised on the Lyra 8 -- one take, improvised tuning oh ya.

This was all done in the session view of Live, then bounced into the arrangement view ready to play back and do the mastering by putting in volume swells for interest.

You can hear the whole album on my YouTube channel at:
Watch this space -- upload in progress

References:
[1] Granie Demo3 - Lyra Dreams The Halloween Edition, Link: https://youtu.be/5HTL0VaQpvI
[2] Granie, Granular synthesiser by Norman Freund, purchase at: https://normanfreund.gumroad.com/l/granie

Tracklist

1.	Earth	5:02

2.	Parting	6:22

3.	Trees	5:28

4.	Insects	1:35

5.	Visitor	4:23

Credits

released November 4, 2025

License