Patricia Wolf: Natural Synthesis
In recent years, Patricia Wolf has emerged as a fixture of contemporary ambient music. The Portland, Oregon-based composer cut her teeth as a member of the moody indie pop duo Soft Metals in the 2010s, before switching gears to tour the North American West Coast as a dance DJ. Meanwhile, her solo material is a study of how one can imbue ephemeral, weightless textures with mass and density. With a palette of serene synthesizers, celestial vocals, and naturalistic samples, she explores themes of ecology, grief and rebirth. Since her 2022 full-length debut for Past Inside The Present, I’ll Look For You In Others, she has become a vital connector within the Pacific Northwest electronic underground, whose sonic design prowess is inimitable.
Wolf’s second release for the stellar Balmat label, Hrafnamynd, doubles as the soundtrack to an experimental documentary of the same name. Directed by Edward Pack Davee, the film features ravens as a narrative device to unearth childhood memories and capture Iceland’s craggy landscape. Across the score, field recordings titter beneath marbled melodies, which roll like pebbles on an incline above fathomless pads.
We caught up with Wolf to discuss her methods for complimenting Davee’s footage, her switch from hardware to Ableton, and panning techniques that emulate the flapping of birds’ wings.
To my knowledge, this is your first soundtrack. What was it like composing music for film?
Hrafnamynd was my first experience working on a film soundtrack, but I have worked on two different video game soundtracks previous to this project. They were short indie games made by friends, but it was a great learning experience and prepared me for working on a feature length film, mainly for the experience of collaborating with others to help fulfill their artistic vision.
I thoroughly enjoyed composing for Hrafnamynd. It’s a poetic documentary with lots of space for interesting sound and music. I felt that I was able to express myself fully on this project and I loved composing to the action, emotion, and landscapes in the film. I found that the story, imagery, and time-based changes made my music much more compositionally dynamic than my previous work. It’s exciting to be immersed in someone’s beautiful story and reflect their narrative back in music.
For her work on Hrafnamynd, Patricia Wolf had to design the sound from scratch – the footage she was provided with was silent
How was your process as a film composer similar or different to your process as an artist?
Usually, when I work on my albums, I don’t go into it with a set idea in mind. I just play in an exploratory way and get into a flow state. It’s in that mindset that I discover what wants to come out of my psyche. I tend to go through phases with what is inspiring me or affecting me at a given time and that tends to pour out into a thematic body of music.
"One thing that I did with the sound is used Ableton’s Auto Pan devices on some of the tracks to give the music a feeling of flapping wings."
When I began working on this film I had such rich imagery and storytelling to draw upon which I found to be immediately inspiring. In some ways, my normal approach was still employed, but it took less time to have a vision for what I wanted to express. I made sure to check in with the director frequently to make sure that I got the mood right for each scene. Working on a film is a collaborative experience and I really enjoyed that process with Edward.
How did you end up connecting with Edward, and what was your process like working together?
He and I have been friends for years and have a mutual admiration for one another’s work. In 2022, after my first two solo albums — I’ll Look For You In Others and See-Through — came out, I reached out to him about creating some music videos for me. I decided that I wanted to shoot something featuring the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest, where I live, so we set off to several locations to capture their splendor. We hiked through so many magnificent spaces with his camera equipment searching for scenes for the video. We had a nice time on those shoots and I love how the videos came out. Those shoots yielded the videos for my tracks “Woodland Encounter” and “The Culmination Of.”
Shortly after we finished that project, Edward reached out about working on the score and sound design for Hrafnamynd. I immediately said yes and was so excited to work on a film for the first time.. When I began working on it, he already had a final cut finished and we met about what scenes needed music and what the mood should be for each. It was easy for me to connect with his vision so I set about my composing and shared videos clips for the scenes with my music included for him to review. The process went very smoothly with only one or two times where something needed to be reworked. I’m grateful that he trusted me with this very special film about his life and family.
You are free to use, adapt and modify these sounds as long as you credit the author of the sounds
This film seems to play into your interest in ecology and birding. How did you use sound to try and match that theme in the film?
The film’s focus on ravens definitely appeals to the birder in me. One thing that I did with the sound is used Ableton’s Auto Pan devices on some of the tracks to give the music a feeling of flapping wings. This technique occurs in a few places on the soundtrack. I wanted to give the listener the feeling of flying and this tool helped me achieve that. Also, in 2023, before I got started on the sound design aspect of the film, I went to Iceland to play at the Extreme Chill Festival. Knowing that I needed Icelandic sounds to include in the film, I brought field recording equipment with me and set out to collect as many sounds as I could that I knew we needed for Hrafnamynd. I wanted to be as authentic as possible with how sound was used in the film. I collected sounds of Iceland’s unique birdlife, the accents and languages spoken on the streets, the bells of Hallgrímskirkja and many other endemic sounds.
What gear did you use on this record? If you used any hardware or external sound sources, are there any ways in which you processed them with Ableton?
I mainly used the UDO Super 6 for the music, but also played my acoustic guitar in a couple of parts of the film. I used Harmonic Bloom by Sonora Cinematic in the beginning part of “Surfing On Wind.” On “Echoes Through Time,” which is one of my favorite tracks of the album, I used the Pan-Asia preset in the Auto-Pan device as mentioned above to quickly oscillate the sound in the stereo field to give a hypnotic feeling of flying, of flapping one’s wings. I think that effect is one of the things that makes that track so special.
Are there any Ableton tools you find yourself gravitating towards?
When it came time to work on the sound design and final mixing for Hrafnamynd, I was especially grateful with how detailed the software lets me get into zooming in and editing and mixing sounds. On some scenes, I had over 200 layered sound clips with heavy editing that I could shape and blend to sync the timing of events on screen. Being able to draw in precise and varied volume automation, EQ automation, being able to place precise fade ins and fade outs, being able to drag in the video onto the timeline of the arrangement view to get everything synced in precisely for the entire project made it so easy and fun to compose to the film all in the same program.
Patrica Wolf’s studio space
You’ve been releasing music for a good while in various projects and, and I’m curious if you’ve been using Ableton the whole time. If so, how has your process with the DAW evolved since you started?
Previously, I was strictly hardware based. Then in 2020, which was a rough year for everyone, I was having a hard time feeling inspired by the electronic instruments in my studio and my normal process. I knew that I might feel inspired if I tried a new approach or worked with some new instruments so I decided to dig deeper into Ableton.
I honestly credit this time for finally getting me to record my music and start releasing albums. Before that, I was only really playing live shows and when I did try tracking those unedited live performances, there were many times that I didn’t really feel satisfied with how they sounded as one-take recordings. Since I couldn’t play shows due to pandemic lockdowns I decided to learn more about the program. It was awesome being able to go back to rework some of the music, to refine and enhance what I had created in my hardware in jam sessions. It allowed me to try out different variations and reflect on my writing from the outside instead of being locked into one take, real time works in the moment of making and performing it. Having that perspective helped me a lot and my compositions developed into recordings that I loved.
Patricia Wolf performing live
After releasing the music that came out of those sessions, I realized that I needed to start integrating Ableton into my live sets. There was no way I could recreate what I had made only on my hardware instruments, especially since I was using plug-ins and Ableton devices as well. That’s when I got Push and started working in session mode. I have to say that solved a lot of problems for me. As a solo artist who tours alone, there is only so much that I can bring on the road. Instead of having to bring a hardware sequencer I can instead use Ableton’s flexible sequencer for both my hardware and software instruments. I can play back my long field recordings and not have to bring a separate hardware device just for that. I can label and organize everything in Ableton which makes it easier to see what each MIDI clip or sample is. While I am on the road it’s also really easy for me to sketch out and compose ideas on my laptop in the program so I can create no matter where I am. That was not possible before when I was limiting myself only to using hardware. There’s no going back for me now.
Follow Patricia Wolf on Instagram and Bandcamp
Text and Interview: Ted Davis
Photos: Max Wolf and C Croft