snowfall | new single
Good evening, friends. It’s good to be here. It was another cold, snowy, icy midwest day; these are some of the best. I hope you’ve been able to keep warm and cozy, but also get out and embrace it a little bit. The walk from car to church yesterday was more than enough, as my beard had already started to freeze. Thanks for being here.
the idea
Over the weekend, I engaged in a little musical writing challenge for myself: see snowfall, get inspired, write and release a track in the moment. I am happy to share that I succeeded, and you can listen to this track right now. For your enjoyment, snowfall:
I love snowfalls, and I have an incredible view from my home office to watch them come down. Ever since starting to create ambient more regularly, I’ve felt drawn to this idea of doing a sort of live response and crafting a soundscape for the magic that is watching snow come down and blanket the world in beauty. It’s probably no surprise, as I’ve expressed many times just how much the natural world inspires me, but there’s something special about snowfalls. They feel rare, special, and always one of a kind, especially in central IL where they don’t happen every year. This weekend was the second in a month, so it felt like the right time to rise to the occasion.
the details
I worked on snowfall from December 11th - December 14th, when I submitted to streaming and pushed it live on Bandcamp last night. I did the majority of the work in two sessions, with some time between spent just listening to it and getting a feel for what was or wasn’t working. To be honest, the hardest part of this was being brave enough to let a track go out into the world with so little time spent on it; I keep thinking I’m gonna find a detail or something I missed in the production, but it hasn’t happened yet. The idea was simple: pick a few chords that have some movement, but not too much, use some gentle, yet textured pad layers, and give it more texture with field recordings. A few weeks ago when we had our first big snow right after thanksgiving, I tried to get a few different sounds; wind/atmospheric front porch ambiance and crunchy snow underfoot made it into this track. Along with those I layered in a basic loop of my Panasonic transcriber being turned on and played, just because it added a little something. Here’s what those sound like played on their own:
The wind noise is run through a granular engine to give it some more depth, as it really just sounded like…wind. If you don’t know what granular synthesis is, here’s my topical attempt at explaining it: imagine you took a frozen body of water (the audio file) and chopped it up into tiny pieces (snowflakes) that you could play individually and randomly. Instead of hearing what the whole sounds like, you’re hearing little bits and pieces of it. The result still kinda sounds like wind, but it has just a little something extra to it. Along with this, I let each of these loops play on reverse once they reached the end of playback, so not every iteration sounds exactly the same even though there’s familiarity.
The pads started with a preset I made on my Arturia minifreak named “cozy” with a second oscillator added using more granular that can be added or subtracted from on the fly. One of the gains of using a hardware synth like this is that I can more easily adjust parameters while playing live or recording audio in, like I did here. In this case, I was able to add or decreases number of grains and the “chaos” parameter every so often. There’s a smidge of filter adjustment too, but not much. Underneath these pads was a bass synth part and a single drone that stayed playing a G octave throughout the track.
the final presentation
Something I take very seriously is restricting myself to always using my own photography for branding and cover art. I primarily do this to challenge myself and to give me something to do with the photos I take; this has led me to digging out old pictures on occasion to re-edit, which has been enjoyable and fulfilling. For snowfall, I went out to the my driveway and got a few different angles of the snow in hopes that I could cobble something together; it worked super well, given how little planning or time went into it. The final result is two images layered together in black/white.
I also made this video for Instagram, which is the only social media I really use these days.
I finished up mixing and mastering, submitted to streaming services for an official release date of 12/16/2025, and made it live on Bandcamp and Soundcloud.
the results
I’m very proud of my work here. There’s something really special about being able to do all of this in my own home, on my own time, for the sake of enjoyment and praising Jesus. That’s cool. Whenever I’m asked about music, the first thing I always think and try to express is: I’m just happy to be here, doing this. It’s a huge blessing to have a serious hobby like this that I get to love and spend time on, and I don’t ever want to take it for granted. One of the reasons I keep writing here and sharing is because I want to keep encouraging you, dear reader, to pursue your interests. Be brave! Go for it. I have your back. God has a plan, and He loves to partner with us and do good work. I don’t know what the future holds, but I know I really love making ambient music and will keep doing it while I’m able.
final thoughts
snowfall is not on streaming services yet, as there’s a delay between submission and when it goes live, especially when you submit with two days lead time like I did here. I’m ok with that, primarily because I’m hoping to encourage listeners to find me on Bandcamp more in 2026 and beyond. I won’t harp on how streaming is doesn’t pay well, because I would rather take a more positive route: I want my art and music to be available for everyone, so I put snowfall in this post and made it downloadable. Download and enjoy it, please! And if you want to support me more tangibly, Bandcamp is the best way to do so. Even if not me, consider paying artists for their stuff if you like it - it helps them continue making more. Either way, I appreciate you. Thanks for being here.
Your picture that you created is very nice! I look forward to listening to your song a bit later. Thanks for sharing your process with us.