Started 103 days ago (December 30th 2024, 5 am).
Ends 260 days from now (December 29th 2025, 5 am).
Compose and produce a new piece of music each week. Your submission is due every Monday at 04:59 UTC (Sunday 11:59EST). You should aim for at least one minute of music, and should be created that week.
Late submissions: Late submissions are open. If you miss a deadline you can still submit by clicking the week on the calendar to the right. If you submit late, your post will get a big Late tag, but it will still count for your streak.
(Description lifted from Leafo's 2017 description--thanks, Leafo!)
Have a question for this streak?Ask a question...i have been having some ear problems which is literally the worst thing for a weekly music challenge!! so, this week i just wanted to write/arrange some stuff and not worry too much about sound design or mixing since i couldn't wear headphones for long. here is an extremely midi arrangement of a little melody i have had in my head for a while. now i can set it free. lol
Picking back up after being sick last week, I kept things pretty simple. I started witha simple melody and added some drums to accompany it. I then filled out the rest. Finally I added the ZOIA to the mix and really liked the way that Loop Forest helped give the whole thing some texture. I saved it for the second half of the song to help it feel like it evolves a little bit.
Major props to the Rhodes preset that came out for the OP-XY last week, too.
Each week I think I'm going to do something very minimal and spacious, and each week I end up filling the rests with notes. This one's no exception, but given the busy tax-preparation weekend, I'll take what music shows up in the ether.
For this one, I impulsively did something I haven't done in five years: changed strings on the PureSalem Mendiola. Admittedly, I like the sound and feel of old strings, though this old set had a layer of oxidation and a ding in one of the plain steel strings, so it was time. While I did that, the neck wasn't under tension for a while, and it bowed back just a little...so there's some additional fret buzz in there. (I've loosened the truss rod a little; getting closer to ideal.)
The vibe here is contemplative, with some resolve. I'll take it.
The usual no-effects inline, though there's convolution reverb send from each track, and compression/eq on the stereo out.
The title comes from the Irish town of Clonakitty, which is at the end of R588.
walking alone, its cold outside - sunny windy
I am quite happy with this week. Not necessarily about the final product but more about the process. I usually am the person who uses only the default presets in plugins but I spent some time working on the bass sound using different effects in Guitar Rig 6, aiming for a heavy bass sound a la Muse. This was inspired by getting to see Iggy Pop in concert this week. The bass tone was nasty! in a good way.
And also inspired by Iggy Pop were the horns and keys, hence I added some there.
Another thing that was a good exercise was working on programming drums that sound realistic instead of relying solely on loops. I think the result is not bad and should get better as I continue to practice.
Overall, a good exercise for a good aggressive punk rock track.
More modular this week, VCVrack as always as I'm not made of money.
w broken voice
I was sick this week, so I wasn't making music, but will be uploading a song as soon as I have one ready
i had the uncharacteristic urge to make a 12-bar blues this week... and so this is it, plus some extra bits. i wanted something with a sort of late 90s/early 2000s game soundtrack vibe, racing hovercars in the trash future.
A return to fingerpicking on the just-intonation microtonal Tele Deluxe. This one took two quick sessions, late Friday and late Saturday, with an editing pass on Sunday, I was lazy once again, doing guitar straight into the UA Volt.
This one started with the fast pattern you hear at the beginning, which shouldn't have been as difficult to play as it turned out--I was ahead of the bar lines, behind the bar lines, all over the place. Was this in some odd meter? Not that I could tell from counting it out. So I left the notes in place rather than trying to fix them.
Variations were a bit of a challenge, and I ended up varying the density and implicit tempo for different sections. Ultimately it feels natural.
There's the usual convolution reverb send for each of three channels and compression and EQ on the stereo out.
The title comes from Michigan's Port Crescent State Park, 587 feet above sea level.
Speedtrash!
Inspired by the sort of hazy sunshine you get at this time of year ere in the UK at least, warm and pleasant, with the trees still bare.
Never sure how much to compress these sorts of melodic drones, the one part sticks out a bit too much but it's always an experiment.
my next big project is a concept album. i had the idea that each 'character' should probably have their own sonic palette, which would be effectively in conversation throughout the album. one such 'character' is... The Machine. and so this week i thought i would sketch out roughly the sorts of sounds i could imagine for it. this track will not wind up ON the album, but if i polished it up a little, these sorts of 'sketch' tracks might be a fun EP, i don't know.
like last week, i wound up just improvising all of the parts (sometimes on half speed... every note was played by hand rather than arpeggiated, i wanted total control!), then splicing together the decent bits into something more coherent. this worked out well for the machine because like a generative AI, it never does quite the same thing twice. i would probably consider a more focused composition process for the other 2 main characters.
i also added some old movie samples from various sample packs. given the genre i was working in, it just felt incomplete without them. rest in peace, the days of being able to just record your movie samples by hand from home and mostly get away with it. those sounded like fun times.
sadly i started super late (saturday!!) so had barely any time to spend on this. it's certainly not polished. i didn't have time to mix the drums except as a single drum bus (i need to make a project template that will split my battery channels for me. it's getting silly how many times i regret not doing that.). but this challenge is definitely helping me get faster. my first track took 8 hours for 2 minutes of music, vs this one taking 6 hours for 5 minutes.
I started this beat last week, but decided to let it cook another week, and am glad I gave myself more time with it. I was able to expand the melody a bit, and add some more depth to the drums. I'm really pleased with the result, and feel like I'm finding my groove with the OP-XY again, despite the bugs that have crept into the firmware.
Like last week, a slow three-guitar piece on PureSalem Mendiola. This guitar in particular invites barre chords, and I have a fondness for playing over a major/minor progression. Wistful, but finding some strength somewhere. This one came together quickly--rather more so than some recent weeks, so it's getting uploaded a bit earlier.
No inline effects, but the usual sonic profile: each channel is a different pickup combo. Each channel gets some send to a convolution reverb (theater sized), and the stereo mix gets some compression/eq.
The title comes from the river in Ireland, which at some points flows alongside the R586. Apparently its water is notably clean and clear.
I have been playing some Ghost of Tsushima lately and youtube took me then to some reviews of the new Assasins Creed game, which takes place in Japan. The prologue ends on a scene that is very reminiscent of Sergio Leone movies. As a group of grim samurai appear slowly from the mist, one is directly taken back to the intro of Frank and his gang in Once Upon a Time in the West. So I decided to do a Japanese inspired version of an Ennio Morricone track. After all, we are just closing the loop since a Fistful of Dollar is a remake of Yojimbo by Kurosawa.
I was happy with this track! It's the most time I have spent on a track in ages and I enjoyed the process. I need to go back in the habit to start a track earlier in the week than the weekend.
No tunes the last couple of weeks as I've been away learning Welsh.
Back to this, honestly got very bored of this quickly, didn't intend to finish it, was merely messing about with a 303 VST and went from there. Not the sort of music I want to be making right now.
Three tracks of PureSalem Mendiola, some of it through the Reuss Effects Understate clean boost pedal. This one's gentle and slower, after an intense week.
As usual, there's a send to convolution reverb on each channel, and compression/eq on the stereo mix. Also as usual, the panning is static--one track in each position.
The title comes from the meaning of the place name Cousane in Ireland, along regional road 585.
some good old fashioned printercore. a low effort entry comprised of some improv on a sliced up breakbeat and some keys. the vast majority of the parts are actually sliced up parts of a single improv (per part) in new orders and rhythms. i didnt even have access to headphones for most of it... but that's all good! it's nice to just sketch with what i have available and let it be imperfect.
This is actually one of the first beats I made on my OP-XY when I first received it. I liked it but never made it into a song. I decided to pick it back up this week and mess around with it some, and ended up really liking the result. Most of the sound is the OP-XY itself, but the bass is running through a reverb on the ZOIA that gives it a bit of extra grunt and gristle.
I am on a trip so I installed GarageBand on my phone and spent some time in the bullet train to figure out how to use it to make a track. It’s hard to change DAW and I miss a mouse but managed to do something. A track is a track.
I received my new OP-XY on Monday, and laid down this beat almost immediately. I then spent the rest of the week trying to write something over the top of it, and failed. I had some decent bass lines but ended up pulling them from this submission, because it made the piece feel incomplete.
Hopefully I can revisit this down the road, because I really like the beat.
Another one-guitar fingerpicking piece, on the microtonal Tele Deluxe in microtonal just intonation. There's a nice sparkle to some of these intervals. No inline effects--just straight into the UA Volt, with one channel for bridge, one neck, one both pickups. There is an additional couple of chords from the bridge in two places when the original line was a bit sparse.
There is the usual convolution reverb, and some compression/eq on the stereo mix.
The title comes from the Lough Allua, near Ireland regional road 584.
