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Eric J Watkins

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Back Pedaling

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Welcome to Ashen Audio, founded by me, composer Eric J Watkins. AA was born of my need for custom sounds I would want when scoring a film. Having literally hundreds of commercially available sample libraries and virtual instruments, I still find myself, at the beginning of every film project, immediately trying to create my own specialized sounds. Sounds that would carry the softer, heart-felt , deep-seated emotional content of the films I have worked on.

I have long felt that when approaching a new film, it's always difficult to find sounds that were gentle or soft enough. I scored a short film in 2015 that played the festival circuit. After viewing it, many people commented that the music was what really set the emotional tone, to the point of tears, and in that score in particular, I had really struggled to find the right melodic instrument or library to carry that heart-wrenching score, but when I found and developed the sound, I knew how powerfully it would play off of people's emotions, and it did.

So that is just my style of film, music and sound that I prefer to write. Think of the stark, soft atmosphere's Thomas Newman creates, and that will at least point you down the road of my inspiration. This library contains many many, soft, blurred, ambient piano-esque, bell-like sounds for soft, gentle melodic and harmonic writing, as well as many pads which evolve organically over time, with either a soft, warm glow, elements of intimate, scraped or bowed objects, or a combination of both.

Play-ability is everything! I have painstakingly programmed all of the 200+ patches to respond very accurately to my playing style. These sounds are meant to be played, but can also be programmed in with ease. All melodic-percussion instruments respond to a wide velocity curve, with programmed filtering as well. I truly believe that these very intuitively programmed patches are of the most playable I've ever used. Nearly all of the pads and BPM patches are dynamically controlled by the modwheel. The pads or textures open as you push CC1 forward and also often bloom through the ambience after you pull it back. Again, even with the pads and BPM patches, they are very very playable.

Over 99% of these sounds were built from the ground-up with all original programming, not just a mere adjustment on established sounds. You are getting 100% original material from me, the composer, to work with in your own compositions. There are also original soundsources not available in any other commercial library, sampled in my own studio, through boutique analog preamps and high-end conversion.

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