A preset for Operator called “passing clouds” somehow appeared in my Ableton setup. A minor chord, followed by Valhalla Delay and Blackhole Reverb, turned into a nice dub-style pattern. What I liked most were the reverb tails - they felt less like reverb and more like delay echoes, sitting separately in the center of the stereo field. When I realized I was stuck listening to the loop for many minutes and really enjoying it, I decided to turn it into a track.
To build the arrangement, I made several variations of the original loop and launched them in the order that felt natural to me, with recording enabled. In the middle of the track, the monotonous granular pad fades out and is replaced by another one, which I actually played live on top of the basic chord progression.
One thing I can say for sure: writing an arrangement by placing clips on a timeline is much less enjoyable for me than imperfectly launching clips and playing an improvised melody.
Oh, and the noise texture is a recording of a mountain stream, captured almost a year ago during a short trip to the Bansko resort. The photo on the track cover shows the mountain peaks where this stream flows from.
So let the track “Passing Bansko Clouds” take its place in my collection of released works.