Tony Anderson - Skyline

Skyline is a love letter to Los Angeles. My friend Dennis Hamm is a phenomenal composer and keyboard player (Thundercat, Flying Lotus, Knower, Alice Smith). I played him my initial version of this song on the piano one night and asked him to help me break it out of its prison - my playing tends to be predictable and very “on the grid.“ Skyline, at that point, was pretty lifeless. Dennis’ playing is quote the opposite - full of color, unpredictable rhythms and spontaneous movement. Skyline is what emerged. Dennis recorded a single take at my upright piano while I moved the mics around and we kept that original recording. He came in earlier this year with his Nonlinear Labs C15 synthesizer and we embedded his synth material intricately within the piano recording. I couldn’t resist topping the track off with the Prophet 10 from Sequential. So here we are... Finally, a word on recording. I’ve been trying, for many years, to get a piano to sound as good recorded as it does when I actually sit down to play it. This is as close as I’ve come so far. AEA 440s were a big part of this. They are some of the largest ribbon microphones in production, and capture the sound pressure of the piano beautifully. I combined a stereo pair of 440s with 3 condenser microphones - a Mojave MA-200 and a stereo pair of Mojave 201 FETs. So this recording is a collaboration of 5 microphones. The ribbons picked up a large amount of low end and low midrange material, and I left it all in there simply because removing it thinned out the overall sound. I’ll continue to hone this setup in my future work, but I was happy with how this one turned out. Thanks for the support... Tony Dennis’ Instagram: Written by Tony Anderson and Dennis Hamm Piano and Synth Performed by Dennis Hamm Mixed by Tony Anderson Mastered by Brian Calhoon: Photography by Jon Chema: License Skyline for your FIlm: