On this week inspiration for this song was a Volca Modular patch with its Stochastic Sequencer making constant variations on a pentatonic pattern. I added generous chorus and reverb (FAC Alteza) and Eventide Crystals delay with gentle pitch shifting. This created a less gritty sound than the Modular usually does. Over this I added a rhythmic E pedal tone on my acoustic guitar, with some occasional other notes.

The main melody was played on the GeoShred app on the iPad, using the GeoViolin sounds. After this I added a simple drum accompaniment and two short acoustic and wooden flute part.

While the violin does tend to give it a very cinematic feel, I made the rest of the sonic texture (especially by reverb modulation) intentionally oversized so it feels like there's tension between the two.

I have had low inspiration for the past weeks so I'm going for a fast food version of music. As it features koto samples, I guess Instant Ramen is the right choice for this.

I put together a bass structure, got some cool koto samples and drums samples from Splice, collaged them together and here you go. That will do for this week. I hope inspiration strikes back soon!

I am starting the year with a speedtrash! A short haunted track, maybe more appropriate for Halloween than for the new year but I did not have much time last week.

This was a really really quick track that I made to test out a generative plugin/rack I built for Ableton Live.

I put this thing on the rhodes, guitar and bass tracks, let it play for a while then recorded some drums.

Basically what I want to say is randomness is a great thing for kickstarting your insipiration if you are stuck. I hope you find this tool useful. :)

Welcome to 2021's challenge! And apologies for the date/time confusion! (Looking on the bright side, those of us who've been working toward Sunday evening submissions...now get a chance to submit first thing instead of right before the deadline.)

I started this track late in the week, having a few rhythms in mind, but not much else, I put up some MIDI loops in Ableton's 64 Pad Kit Special (with Max Humanizer), and then responded to them with two tracks of guitar (home-made Res-O-Glas, direct into the Focusrite, with some Ableton Auto-Filter for tone-shaping). The initial thought around the guitar line was related to Miles Okazaki's weekly scale-shape project for 2020 (on Instagram), though the scale I'd started with...I ended up moving away from. Ultimately, I ended up filling in some spaces with reversed clips.

I used the usual Epiphone P-J bass (with low-end EQ-8 rolloff) in response to those guitar lines, and...really, that was about enough. I just needed four tracks.

Sends: Two convolution reverbs (one large, one smaller), one Ableton Delay, and Valhalla Supermassive. Full-Chain multiband compression on the stereo mix.

I'm picking up last year's naming scheme (number of week for the year, starting at 53). The title comes from port 53 being the port for DNS services.

The first is the outline, the second is the more complete version.

I've been loving the Spitfire LABS strings so very much, I decided to try writing a semi-conventional piece, intended to be a little modern in structure ad flow but also directly referencing some of my mom's favorite Vivaldi when the second solo kicks in.

After an abortive attempt to familiarize myself with Terry Cavanagh's tracker, Bosca Ceoil, I instead retreated to the more familiarish surrounds of FL Studio Mobile - A program I bought like 8 years ago and barely ever used. I immediately fell into a lot of the bad habits I learned through years of "teaching" myself Fruity Loops, but did at least get a feel for the touchscreen interface.

Anyway, I got a bit carried away futzing with filters and resonance in an attempt to make it sound more dynamic and now I hate the drums. But, oh well, there's always next week.

A crowded weekend--I still tracked everything, but didn't get the pieces arranged until Monday evening. (The way the deadlines fall this year, that works out.) It's a short piece, a bit sloppy (trying to fiddle with latency settings here), but it has a pleasantness to it.

All Danelectro baritone guitar (the 1449 reissue from 2008) straight into the Focusrite A/D--two tracks of both pickups (lead and bass), one of just the bridge (rhythm). Drums: Ableton 64 Pad Kit Rock with Max Humanizer. Keys: Puremagnetik Mark Two Berlin.

Sends: one convolution reverb, one Echo (with LFO auto filter in front of it), Valhalla Supermassive. Multi-band full-chain on the output.

Title comes from 71 being the algebraic degree of Conway's constant, which describes a property of look-and-say sequences.

Continuing the post-rock impression I've played with integrating better switching from clean to distorted parts by changing the fading out time of the overdub on the loop.

As I said before I do my guitars in a single improvised take using looping, a sort of a challenge I took to overcome composing difficulties. In this case I set off an empty 8 bar loop and as it was going I dynamically adjusted the fade out time to better single out sections of the track.

There are still some glitches, especially towards the beginning, but still I like the result and how the technique develops.

Incredibly rushed job to make a "track" out of the intro part of our Tuesday jam as I have been busy moving apartments for the last 3 days.

Also I discovered some incredibly annoying Ableton Live behaviour that still sends recorded MIDI CC to hardware even if the clip that sends it is muted. Or at least I think I did.

Link to the full jam session here: https://soundcloud.com/trent-hawkins/lagoon-city-x-trent-hawkins-20210406-weekly-audiovisual-livestream-tuesday-830pm-cet

I really didn't know what instruments to use but I still managed to create something

I created this song as a live stream on Deluge, Eurorack, and Meeblip. Here's the live stream channel: https://www.twitch.tv/emeraldarcana It's under "creating music in real time with hardware".

I got kind of tired so I didn't really sit to polish this one up, but after doing listening I probably would change a few things like adjusting levels a bit more. I was getting into gainstaging problems where the gear was overloading the VCA and the unity mixer was clipping hard. I might have to pay more attention to that later on. Other than that it's a long live jam done in real time.

Another intuitively-structured one, this one began with a slow drum beat, and got interesting when I added long-persisting delay with filtering to it. I did a few different rhythms with Ableton's 64 Pad Kit Special drum rack, and added some handclaps, along with some Rhodes which I took out again.

Next up was Epiphone P-J bass, using the usual signal chain (EQ-8 for bass rolloff), though I'd also rolled down the tone control. I'd initially thought of rolling off highs...but changed my mind for this one, so the bass is close to typical.

Guitar was home-built Res-O-Glas through the Balls Effects KWB for a bit of overdrive, and Vox Wah for both tone shaping (rhythm track) and effect (lead track).

Sends: bandpass Auto-Filter with LFO frequency center into Ableton's Echo (analog triplet dub preset, tweaked to remove some noise), Valhalla supermassive on a large reverb preset, and high-pass Auto-Filter in front of a room-sized convolution reverb.

Inline: Bass got EQ-8, while drums got Max Humanizer. Guitars got some auto-pan to get them out of each other's way, though lead guitar also got some Glue Compressor. And I used that channel to do some reversed clips from time to time as well.

The editing/arrangement process involved a lot of cutting things out--I played more than I kept in. (This is even down to certain notes; it just sounded better with things left out.)

Title comes from *67 being the call-waiting-blocking code for a lot of telephone systems.

Similar style with the previous weeks: acoustic 12 string, droning synth, chants, percussion, panflute. The drums are more complex and present, I actually recorded them in a separate take using custom samples triggered by a Novation Circuit. The tile comes from a need to see past constant limitation and all the perspectives that are being cut away especially in these times.

I've spent this week in hospital with a sudden bout of diverticulitis (not a fan, can't recommend it), so I haven't really had a chance to work on anything musically. However, in a delirium, bottled up on painkillers, I realised that the sound of the call buttons and IV pump alarms going off slightly out of time with each other sort of sounded like something Ryoji Ikeda might have composed while sick with a head cold.

Once again relying on my phone as my primary piece of recording equipment, which unfortunately wasn't able to properly capture the binaural effect that could be heard in the room, not least because it was positioned right next to my own IV pump. I would have liked to have moved it, but moving wasn't really an option at the time.

Should be getting out tomorrow, but I think I'll try incorporating more found sound in the future.

This one started as a kind of dub rhythm, which I did in Ableton's Drum Rack (with 64 Pad Kit Special), against a couple different Echo sends. Next I added a few accents with acoustic samples from a Yamaha CP-70, and initially melodica (which I then replaced with Operator, replacing all the parts). Instead of a regular guitar part, I went with the no-name pedal steel through Moyo volume (and ultimately high-pass Auto-Filter with drive, Cabinet for air, and Utility to bring the gain down). Finally I tracked Epiphone P-J bass (with EQ-8 bass rolloff).

Sends: in addition to the two echoes, I added a couple convolution reverbs: one a spring, and one a regular room.

Inlines: there's also some auto-pan on pedal steel and keyboards, as well as Max Humanizer on the drums. There's full-chain multi band compression on the whole mix.

Title comes from the fact that the rings of Saturn, if compressed into one thing, would be about 62 miles in diameter.

This came together quickly but fell apart in the final mix, but by that point I'd decided this was not 100% but as with anything creative it's all good experience. Better to do something than nothing.

Featuring "Empress Cicada" from George Vlad's field recording @ 0:27: youtu.be/nOIRrEfnDEM?t=27

First track of the year is some click-n-cut action.

Listening to a lot of chiptune lately and wanted to try again. My last attempts were very very bad, this one is.. okay.

I was inspired by NASA's sounds captured on Mars and used some samples here. First thunder like sound is actually wind on Mars.
I was also inspired by the post rock genre, with its steady buildup, echoy notes, delayed guitars and strong release of that buildup (about half into the piece).
It was a rushed project to meet the deadline, so I'm not too sure about the mixing process which was... simply not done at all :)) Just winged it.
Enjoy!

This is quite a chill track with an electric post-rock vibe. Still some minor glitches in the setup but overall I am quite pleased with the result. The main melody is one improvised track (using the ever faithful looper) over which I added another clean layer, the distorted lead guitar, the bass, some subtle pad (Arturia MicroFreak) while the drums are still from the Rock Drum Machine app - still working on that aspect to find a midi workflow that doesn't make me draw each and every note but still feels more natural and has a better sound.

This is my first song ever, mostly made on the Digitone and finished with vocals in Ableton Live.

Kind of a lot going on this weekend, but I thought to make a trilogy of all-baritone pieces. So here's another.

Drums: Drum Rack of Ableton's Towel Kit, with Max Humanizer. Maybe the challenge here was simplifying the drums enough to work with the guitar.

Guitars: 2008 Danelectro Baritone, no effects. Some inline Auto-Filter and Glue Compressor on the left and right channels (with cabinet on one), and a bit of EQ-8 to roll off the bass.

Sends: one Echo, one Valhalla Supermassive, and one convolution reverb.

Title comes from the number of bits in the Arecibo message.