This week was a real struggle. Hit major writer's block and went for what has been working which is sort of groovy 4x4. I tried composing to film for the first time which was interesting. I wrote this track to Lost River, Ryan Gosling's directorial debut. It definitely helped to create a vibe that I could try to capture with the song, but unfortunately it didn't end up being a particularly interesting one musically. I also sampled some dialogue from the film to further bridge the worlds.

Had a lot of time to reflect on my music this weekend at work and remembered what excites me about music, what I love in other peoples styles, and this week should see a return to the old riddiot :).

OH ALSO I didn't want to mix this so I just threw three compressors on the master channel and brickwalled the fuck out of it. lol

Hey guys,

This week was rather frustrating for me. I decided to reopen an old skeleton and see if I could finish it out by the deadline, figuring the pressure would help me mold my chord progression into an actual tune. Unfortunately I think it had been so long that I lost the initial vision and the additions I made felt rather robotic.

Maurice (another member) suggested I take a left turn with it so I had a grand idea of taking a huge shift for the second half of the tune, but unfortunately I didn't have time to do it justice. I'm gonna put this one away and maybe down the road it'll get finalized and mixed.

I did manage to make a second awesome chord progression for the minor break though :). Very NGHTMRE esque

Hey gang,

This week I remixed a friend's rap acapella into a club-ready heavy house track. I have been listening to a lot of G-House recently which is basically aggressive, minimal bass-heavy house music with rap vocals. The style tends to play perfectly for me between more commercial EDM and the underground styles of tech house and UK house. If you're looking for an artist Nukid is my current fav.

The sound design on the basses was fun, but I couldn't get melodies & lead sounds to fit well so that's a weak spot. What I'm more proud of is how all the sub-par parts of this song came together to create a vibe that I really love.

Enjoy!

This is my first track working with a rapper! Very exciting.

My roommate and I built the whole instrumental using only an Arturia Minibrute which was a great creative challenge, and a rapper friend liked it and wrote to it. This week specifically I just worked on some vocal chops towards the end in a way I hadn't before, sort of using them as another percussion instrument yet with some playful word selection. This was also the first time I've really had outside pressure (mix engineer) to get production done on a timeline which was both stressful and helpful.

Next week I'd like to do some more thorough work on a new jam, although I'm going to be busy getting my DJ fingers warmed up for an opening set on Saturday :).

I spent a while working up a great chord progression and vocoded vocal this week but didn't get around to finishing it so I'm officially calling an old WIP finished instead.

I went for a cinematic vibe on this track. While you listen, imagine walking down a city street late on a rainy night. Your mind starts to transform the scene around you out of the mundane into something epic. You get lost in the fantasy like a vivid dream, watching it unfold, until your awareness abruptly returns to the ordinary street with just a little bit more wonder...

I'm using more orchestral (string) samples in my tracks. The hard leads in this were created with Synplant which is a whole lot of fun for more organic synthesis. Convention would have insisted I force a second verse and drop into the track but it felt more natural for it to get in and get out quickly.

This one started out as a flume-style beat with a mysterious vibe. As I sculpted it, it took on a more progressive structure with a grand cinematic touch.