SEARCHING FOR A MIRAGE
(Patrick von Wiegandt)
Searching for a Mirage Sample
Patrick VWz: acoustic & electric guitars
Aimee Donahue: harmonium
Edie Murphy: mandolin, fiddles
Recorded & Mixed By: Patrick VW
One night I had tuned my acoustic guitar down a step and did an open E chord and played this riff. I became entranced and just played it over and over. I quickly recorded it and added the electric guitars with the tremelo effect. I put them on separate tracks and panned them left and right so they had this swirling kind of effect.
I felt like I was wandering around a desert.
I then called in Edie Murphy, a very good mandolin and fiddle player who I had heard. She came over and added a few tracks of mandolin and fiddles.
It wasn't until I asked Aimee Donahue to play her Harmonium, that this really became complete. It glued the whole piece together and gave it a real old time feel. I then added the wind at the beginning and end and it painted a new picture altogether.
That's when the title came to me, Searching For A Mirage.
I was very unsure of how to mix it, because there was no real structure to the song. I tried a few different ideas and thought it sounded best to bring in each track slowly (like wandering in a desert?) and then let each track sort of drift away.
The more I listen to this piece, the more I like it. I keep hearing new things. I especially like how Edie's 2 fiddle tracks converge and make this lonely sound near the end.