First track of the new streak! Welcome, everyone!

This one continues the one-guitar approach from last year: this past week and weekend have been rather busy, and a one-guitar approach helps me finish a track. For this one, I tried a faster click tempo, and on initial recordings used a pick. I used to play with a pick exclusively, but I've come to dislike the tone of them with my recordings, so much of this is fingerpicked. (Though the pick is audible on some sections.) The guitar is my very comfortable PureSalem Mendiola in standard tuning, with a track for the bridge pickup only, one for both pickups, and one the neck pickup only.

There are no inline effects on the guitar lines, but I've used a convolution reverb as a send, and multiband compression (via Ableton's audio effect racks) on the stereo mix.

The title comes from the venerable 741 op amp.

Still with the guitar-only, this one four tracks of PureSalem Mendiola (bridge, neck, both, with one going through Uni-Vibe), This one's rather pretty, and has a bit of a vibe.

The title comes from the asteroid 507 Laodica--we're back to the celestial objects for this week.

I've isolated a pattern of mine where if I create a song that is more than 2 minutes long, it is often of higher quality.

Anyway, I really enjoy this track I've come up with.. Definitely a stand-out in my own opinion..

It also is very likely no coincidence that I recently got a new tool for mastering that seems to be a like "cheating" way to make everything I make sound a LOT better. So this is cool because I find myself a lot more excited about the sounds and melodies I create when they sound more clear.

I keep trying to improve the song slightly from my first bounce, in order to get the mix better.. but then I keep adding stuff, or finding it still imperfect. So I just decided to stop and submit this right now as is, and move on for now.

But I really think this is one of my best tracks to date, so I hope anyone who listens enjoys! thanks!

Not much more than a sketch but I think it has something. Constructive feedback most welcome.

Ambient techno jam. As usual, WIP. Comments welcome

slightly fatigued I think. Like, not just from 1 thing.. but just all of it. you know?

It's fine. keep going.

Protracker mod file this week, just a simple and clicky, faintly dubby sound.

A simple track.

It could honestly be too loud. I'm trying to go more off my ears than off the meters in the DAW.

I think this track is on the simpler side as far as composition goes, but I still like some of the patterns I came up with. Mostly with the "hi-hats" (noise channel).

I didn't have a super solid direction, I just found a cool sound and let it carry me until it's conclusion.

Hope you dig it! thanks for listening!

Glitchy, groovy and a week late. Comments welcome.

I really love this one.

Definitely wanted to make it longer.

but it's pretty dope as is.. and I could always ruin it by making it longer so.

Although this track is pretty basic by my own standards, I like the balance it has. In the past I would over complicate compositions and have too much going on the mix. I had sort of an emotional week and weekend last week as well.. so I'm glad that emotion shows in the track a bit.

In the end I was mostly focused on making sure the track was loud enough because I think my previous submission was probably too low. You live and learn.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it, and thanks for listening!

120BPM ABLETON
some track to get this started.

While I gather ideas and techniques for more electro-orchestral piece I like to just chill and play some guitar. Here a software called Wotja does the background while I freely improvise on top.

bright shadow.

Dunno, kinda hit a vibe I'm into. Really love it honestly. I would have made it longer but I think I pretty much prefer tracks that are between 2 and 3 minutes.. Like "to the point". I feel like this tracks gets it's emotion across.

An exercise in bringing a piece together with edits. I'd tracked a number of compatible melodic and chordal bits against each other, but there wasn't a defining idea, other than the first theme's emergence in 3/4. (Surprisingly, that theme does appear near the middle.) There are the usual choices here: three parts, no inline effects, but a send to a convolution reverb, and the stereo bus compression/eq.

The title comes from NGC 488, the Whirligig Galaxy in Pisces.

Stepping out of the recent guitar-only restriction. This one needed some bass for focus and grounding. Guitar is the usual PureSalem Mendiola--three tracks. The neck pickup needed some high-pass filter with drive, but otherwise it's straight into the box.

Bass got the usual EQ-8, though I experimented with the preset. Instead of rolling off -12dB below 120 the way I usually do, this one uses the "vintage bass" preset.

Everything gets a bit of convolution reverb. And there's the usual Audio Effect Rack with the Wide&Warm compression/eq on the stereo.

Much of this I tracked as snippets against other snippets in Session View, but in editing, some parts clashed a bit, so I took them out and tracked into the gaps in Arrangement View. In some cases, there's a bit too much elasticity in the guitar playing...but it pays off in the middle, I think.

The title comes from the route of EuroNight 476, from Budapest to Warsaw.

Lofi-ish ambient house (techno?) jam. Laidback and groovy. Comments always welcome.

keep on keepin' on baby-

I made this one pretty quickly. Life is moving fast lately. But it came out pretty damn good considering. I know a lot of my stuff sounds a little "samey", probably because I definitely re-use instruments and drum patterns.. but that's kinda how it goes when I dig something.

I also feel like there is still a lot of room for being creative with panning, effects, EQ.. etc.. and of course composition. So.. I'm happy. I hope you enjoy! Thanks for listening!

I wanted to reel myself in a bit with this one, and just stick to more basics.. I focused a little more on the balance of things, and keeping it like.. not overwhelming. As a result this track is pretty straight forward and chill. I listened to it on repeat a bit though and it's enjoyable to me.

So here we go again :) For this first week I used VCV Rack to sequence most of an orchestral track: the percussion, choir, staccato and accented strings while freely playing the flute in the beginning, the brass in the main track and the short strings towards the end. The samples I used all come from the East West Hollywood Orchestra library.

This is just the second take on the patch (I like to keep it as improvised as possible), the only difference from the first one being that I added the cymbal "rise" because the transitions were a bit too abrupt (also because I don't have a proper midi keyboard around and I used a Launchpad Mk3 to both play the notes and fade the instruments in and out).

If you want to see the patch:
https://youtu.be/CuCVFYTOgSs

A track about taking the bicycle on sunny Sunday morning in spring, with the birds chirping, dogs and cats. And then stopping at a terrasse to have a cup of coffee which adds some funk to the day. It's a track about enjoying a beautiful day, even though it actually started as a noir detective track inspired by the Wes Anderson movie The French Dispatch. Go figure.

This one's an example of what happens when I'm not feeling as though there were ideas, and then finding at arrangement/mixdown that there are musical ideas here.

I'd started late Friday night by tracking some bass, which...didn't work. Saturday night, I tracked three different tracks of baritone guitar parts (bridge pickup, neck pickup, both pickups) and wasn't sure how they were working--the 6/4 meter seemed good, but there's a pause at the end of some phrases, and some parts played with that start/stop quality, coming in at different beats, rather than regularly.

Listening back to it all just now...it kind of works. So I'm going with it. It's kind of an unexpected gift from the process of sitting there and tracking.

The title comes from the Ōmiya district of Saitama, where Hikawa Shrine was founded in 473 BCE.