Dec 31, 15:25 - 16:05. After an idea that sounded too EDM/progressive for my tastes (but honestly did have some musical merit), I decided that I'd bust out the modular instead and goof off.

This is different from what I've done before on the modular. The pitches and rhythms are generative (mostly). One thing that I'd consider doing differently is having the drums on a control - being able to better control individual parts is pretty important and this patch didn't really allow that.

It's partly generative, but not fully - I did do a lot of knob turning to change pitches, parts, rhythms, and so forth.

Last track of 2017, here's a kind of funky thing that came together gradually over the week: drum rack from various sources, couple of Analog synths, Ableton's Electric, guitar (Res-O-Glas) and Bastl Kastle synth. Three convolution reverbs, delay, and full-chain master.

Title from the use of tellurium (element 52) in phase change memory chips.

So this one is a short droney melodic march. It is so tough working on things away from home. I miss my real computer. See you guys at weeklybeats!

I actually submitted this really late - on Dec 31 (a full week after it's due). It's an aborted attempt because I wanted to actually do something that wasn't a laid-back EDM-style song like this and was going to start over.

This one's a simple in-the-box housey piece. Inspiration was reading about one insufferable wealthy blowhard or other who put out a promo video in which he pronounced "discotheque" with four syllables. This kind of gave me the idea of doing a sample-fest of it, but apparently he didn't pronounce it exactly the way I'd thought, so I instead went with a simple synth line that had the kind of cadence I'd envisioned, over a disco-y kind of house rhythm. It fell together rather quickly, which is good, because this has been a busy week.

909 drum rack, hand claps, four tracks of Ableton's Analog. Convo reverb and delay. Not a lot of fancy stuff. Title comes from PA's Route 51, which wasn't far from where I grew up.

Merry Christmas/happy holidays/happy solstice/happy Eggnog Riot anniversary, or whatever you're celebrating!

Simple song with a slightly christmasy/lullaby feel.

Mostly in-the-box, plus bass. Drum rack of 909, hand clap samples, Tension/Clav and Electric/Rhodes, Epiphone bass. Lots of roll-off on bass below 87Hz to get out of the way of the kick. Three sends--two convolution reverbs and one filter delay.

Title comes from the 50 Gates of Wisdom/Impurity of the Kabbalah.

Sunday, Dec 17. Need to start early because I have company over tonight.

10:50 - 12:40. Not too much to say, I kind of lazied myself out at the end. I should really revisit tracks and continue on them but for some reason working on details feels tiring to me, I wonder how I can get around that.

Technical notes: Kick drum from the modular, on clock (I kind of need a way to control that). Lots of Nord Lead stuff also.

The end of the year is the worst for getting anything done. Here's another half-assed loop thing.

15:50 - 17:50. I can't even begin to say how long I spent making this because I've had so many interruptions. I think I got set up, then got interrupted for 10 minutes, then I had to go downstairs to watch food and then I was back up, then I had to go back down again and it kept on happening, so I suspect that I've spent under an hour actually making the song and recording it.

Total time: Who knows

Sunday, Dec 10, 15:50.

Bill, a local musician, suggested that I run my guitar through the modular to see what comes out. I don't know if a lot will, because I don't have a ton of audio effects in my modular but who know?

Also, I decided to update software on my main computer for music thinking it would take only a few minutes. I was wrong. Almost an hour later I still haven't started my music, so I moved some of my gear and went to my laptop, so now I have a random assortment of instruments to use: a guitar, my modular, and the Meeblip Triode.

The irony is that as soon as I started typing this up, the installation ended up completing. Screw it, I'm settled in, I'm going to start.

Technical notes:

- Computer with two MIDI channels: one is going into the Meeblip, which is playing the bassline.

- The other MIDI channel is playing the drums and the drone simultaneously. The guitar triggers also a midrange synth that you can barely hear.

- Guitar playing the lead.

The weirdness of this song is more of a consequence of its construction (like it's dumb that I used a single MIDI channel to control both my drums and my pads) than anything else.

Description soon--basically drum racks of backwards 660 sounds, a drum rack of synth, Collision, and output from a Max/MSP patch.

Last couple of weeks has been rough with basically no time to work on music. Literally 30 minutes with Ableton Live for this track. Might as well be white noise for the quality of it.

At some point I thought that this was going somewhere, but then something happened and I was unable to get the feeling that I wanted, and things weren't really ever resolving, so I just kind of gave up. There were some potentially good sounds, but it never really came together melodically or harmonically and I can't really concentrate on sound design if the harmonies and melodies aren't feeling good to me.

I probably spent about two hours making this? Pretty unhappy with how this came out this week.

This week I bought an old DOD 545 Wah Filter pedal (the beige one), otherwise known as the Bill Laswell pedal, and built up a little groove in anticipation. Initially I used Korg Minipops samples (thanks, Chris!) but there was a bit-depth grit around them that didn't seem to fit with this particular track, so I ended up replacing it with a drum rack of Analog synths. To supplement the kick, I added 606 kick in one track, and then some DR-660 percussion samples (thanks again to Chris! I remember my old DR-660 fondly; traded it for an MXR EQ...). I added a track of vibes, some of Analog, some Operator...but took them all out in favor of two tracks of Live's Electric plugin. Then I tracked bass through the DOD, and it was enormously low--so much so that I decided the kick should occupy a higher frequency range, and spent time fiddling to get a kind of balance. Saturday night I tracked guitar (Epi Moderne, through Vox Wah and Reuss RF-01, but also just through Vox Wah), and put a rough arrangement together. Some further fiddling, and here we are. (Sends: two convo reverbs, one amp spring and one room, and a delay. Full-chain master on the master channel.)

Title from the Kola Superdeep Borehole, for obvious reasons.

Kinda calling it in this week. Simple call and response ambientish thing.

I k now it's been taking me a little longer to finish these things with everything going on, but I'm pretty happy with this one.
Continuing with using the sax as the only sound source- I sampled, pulled into the sampler in Logic and resampled, which allowed me to play chords and a bassline with my sax. I'd say this is probably the most complex I've gone into sampling my sax to create a song.

I'm looking at dropping an EP of these songs after the beginning of the year if anyone is interested. Thank you for your input as always.

I was a minute late on submission. Two late submits in a row!

Actual track notes:

- A lot of Nord Lead doing the saws and leads. Some of the bass was Alchemy. Arps were a Massive patch with Logic effects. Drums were a combination of MASCHINE samples and the Basimilus Iteras Alter module on my Eurorack, which was actually super amazing and really brings me some joy.

Sun Nov 26, 2017.

I have a few things on my mind. First, getting down more chord progressions and considering how I can more quickly sequence guitar chords in the sequencer (why is it a piano roll and not a guitar roll?)

Second, how do I get that cheesy Anime OP-ED chord thingy down? (ex: Crossing Field from Sword Art Online.)

Third, I got a few new modules this week, but I didn't get the one I was actually most excited for: Pamela's New Workout by ALM. I might try to do some interesting sounds as a result but they'll be not quite the "final product" so to speak.

Finally, I've been listening to a lot of EDM and stuff with really, really high production values. It would be nice to learn more about production and how to really get that EDM sound design down in like, an hour or less. I know that this takes a lot of knowledge and time that I haven't really invested. I keep complaining about both EDM-style sounds, sound design, production, and mixing, but haven't really internalized it all yet. I think I should get a book or do a regular study session on this now that I've become a million times more comfortable with theory.

16:55 - 19:01 (2h 7m).

(Key: D minor/F major (Bb))

Chords used:

Dm Am Bb C

I v VI VII

I probably spent at least half an hour on figuring out what I wanted the backing harmony to be.

So my first late submit. Today at work we came across custom ringtones on our Grandstream phones and this was a nice challenge, because I had a file limit in .wav format with a maximum of 500kB. So you only have 5 seconds on mono, this is my result.

Mostly playing with cascading reverbs, delays and pitch shifts in this generative ambient track.

Working on some guitar stuff for something else, I did this week's track all-in-the-box, inspired by a friend sharing a bunch of single-hit drum sounds, mostly from unusual and odd drum machines. This one uses some sounds from a Blofeld, along with handclap samples and a bunch of Ableton Analog and Operator synths. Sends are two convolution reverbs and one set of simple delays.

Title from it being week 47, which is the atomic number of silver.

Monday, Nov 20.

20:45 - 21:35. I'm late - yesterday was busy. I am doing some home renovation stuff so I spent most of the day doing that rather than making music.

Here's a little diddy. No guitar (it's faster to lay down synth music). Did some live noodling with a sequencer though.

Chords:

A B D7 E Dsus4 E

Time: 50m.

Another very busy week, but I found a few minutes here and there to play with more vocoded drums (tabla) and some other percussive synth, as well as a drum rack of sampled traps...but it wasn't really coming together until I realized it could work in 5/4. Bass clarified it a bit, though some of the MIDI voices (tabla, Operator organ, Operator percussion with Brushed Bell and Rubber presets) were tricky to time. I added some Electric piano at the last minute, and some automation to the sends: two convo reverbs, and one of bandpass Auto Filter (LFO set to random) into Simple Delay.

Title from the slippery feeling of the 5/4.

Tried to be as fast as I could this time, because I always waste so much time trying out sounds or getting some melodies in my head. The result is not really cool, but I finished it in 2:45h. Still a lot room for improvement.

Had to take care of family this week, so really didn't have time to make anything more than an ambient generative patch.

Going back to where I left off before my hiatus and continuing creating songs that use only my sax for the source for samples. This includes programming beats in DM-1 using key tapping samples I recorded using my sax, then running those programmed sequences through various effects in Logic Pro. Not as much melodic playing on this one, just a couple lines to break it up a bit.
Overall I'm pretty happy with how this came out. Definitely going on the planned EP of songs created in a similar manner.