I was inspired this week to write some stuff in weird time signatures and decided to finish strong with two songs (plus I had the week off, so I had the spare time :)).
I ended up really liking both of these. The main riff of The Squeaker was supposed to be 7/4 but it ended up actually sounding more like 5/4 in the guitar part, so the drums just end up sounding weirdly syncopated (which I liked). After writing most of that one, I decided I really wanted something in 7/4, and had an idea for one that I turned into Clocked. I think I'll revisit it in the future.
Posting every week by the deadline was great motivation that helped me to push through even when the song was feeling rough. I learned so much through the year, and even though I've still got a ways to go, I'm much happier with my songwriting abilities now. (Mixing is still a bit rough, but eh, I'll probably take some lessons this year to remedy that.)
It was a lot of fun seeing the stuff other folks worked on every week and I definitely picked up several tricks here. Hope y'all have a good new year full of plenty of composing :)
The pain. The fury. The sweat. Man vs the Thing.
For this one, I brought together most of the techniques and plugins I've accumulated over the last couple of months to put it together. I'm really happy with how it turned out. I didn't have any trouble writing it either, it just kinda popped out :)
Sort of a boring chord progression, but I think the production turned out nice on this one.
A more structured song than last week, but the final section isn't nearly as hype as I wanted it to be. I think the brass samples are a bit weak, and I probably should have figured out how to beef them up with synths a bit more... and probably should have dropped the bass before going into that part. Whoops.
Just strung together a couple of riffs for this week's song. I'll try to do something more structured next time.
Totally not a ripoff of bits and pieces from "Encroaching fear" from FFXV, "Tension" from Persona 5, and "Castle theme" from Mario Bros Wii... :P
Another one that I kinda rushed. With Thanksgiving coming up next week, I'm hoping to have a bit more time to dedicate to the next one.
(Edit: added a v2 to slightly improve the mixing in the verse section).
This one came out a bit weird, but bits of it are catchy so I kinda like it. I've recently been trying to program my drums to follow the melody more (since I'm a fan of music that does that). Some of the fills might feel a bit awkward, but I think I'm getting better at it. There's less of a bass focus in this song, which kinda sidesteps my recent muddiness issue. But I should really tackle something drum/bass heavy next time so I'm forced to practice mixing :P
Tried doing industrial/glitch metal. I had a lot of fun with the sound design, but I'm still struggling to get a clear, un-muddied bass a lot of the time.
Finally made a rock one that I like :))). The solos in this song are significantly less stilted than the ones in previous attempts. I also think I got the drum/bass mixing a lot better in this one (but let me know if there's any muddiness I could clean up -- I'm still learning to recognize it). Lots of little problems in the performance of this one, but I wrote the entire thing today after scrapping the rest of the material I was working on this week, so I'm not too upset about them :P
Another rock one. I don't feel like a lot of the rock stuff I've been writing is particularly interesting to listen to. The riffs just aren't catchy enough, and I think I missing something when it comes to layering the rhythm sections... Just gotta keep iterating, I guess :)
Spent most of the week working on a track that turned out totally crap (other than some of the drum sections). I didn't even bother finishing it because it just refused to come together so I bailed at the last minute and wrote something from scratch this afternoon. Not my best, but better than before.
I bought a GGD drum pack so I can have some metal sounding drums since I've just been using LABS or GarageBand drums up to this point (even though I've really grown to like the sound of the LABS drums).
another quick one -- more of an idea than anything else... I'm not a huge fan of this one, but I guess it's relatively complete at least :\
a quick one because I was focused on some other projects this week
I was playing a lot of persona 5 this week and was inspired by the sparser style of music that plays in the background for most of the game. I kinda like how this one turned out overall, but I think some of my choices for the percussion could have been better.
Went a totally different direction and wrote something entirely orchestral this week. No guitar at all :(
I liked this one a lot while I was working on it, but I'm afraid I overworked it a bit...
There are some ideas in this one that I might revisit later.
Another one that was a bit rushed. I feel like I'm starting to get the hang of serum now. Also, I'd especially welcome any feedback on mixing for this one :)
I dunno, but I kinda like this one :)
Went for something higher-energy/more EDM-ish this week. I had a lot of fun with the drum programming and synth selection. The overall composition on this one isn't great IMO, but I have some ideas I like better for next week that I've started playing with.
weekly from
Two very different tracks! Very nice!
The constraint of having to create and produce a track every week is the best way to let go of "this is not good enough" and of learning through practice, while trying out a lot of different things. The best way to progress!