Something something flying in the sky watching the world from above while kittens are in the rocket

Yes, it's this melody again. I created it during One Hour Compo, then I tried to redo the song during WeeklyBeats 1 2.

THE SONG'S BACK! WeeklyMusic gets a turn at this because I want to use the melody in something but the song hasn't really come together, ever. That said, I think it's much more successful this time around because I basically shortened it a ton.

BONUS: I mashed it up with this other One Hour Compo song so really, nothing in this song's original, other than me slicing things up from old music.

And you know what, the result is possibly better than the original songs.

It does need some work. The beginning need some more texture and timbre - and mostly in some double-checking the arrangements and lots of production work, levels, mixing, etc.

Another generative experiment, although I spent a lot more time on "finishing" this track.

I like how it sounds, let's see how I feel tomorrow.

Lossless on Soundcloud here https://soundcloud.com/trent-hawkins/20210222a

not happy about this one but i did make the vocals clearer

Soooo was all set to upload and then went ah ffs I gotta do another take it's too half arsed, and I'm super glad I did. The percussion, and synths are recorded in my usual dawless fashion, but then added two guitar layers over the top. They were seperate long improv takes, but then I just decided to layer them up, panned left and right. There's some super basic prodution on there, using Audacity. And actually had heaps of fun so yay for software.

It was the percussion and synth layers I went back and recorded again (not individually, just another take) , because it was sounding super shitty and tin canny, and the original was just kind of a boring take really. So after doing a bit of a wilder take, and adding the guitars back in, the composition (by luck) landed way better. I think i might do some more software stuff, just with Audacity .. and subtle stuff .. I really don't want to go crazy listening to things a million times making tiny adjustments etc ... like I used to with Ableton back in the day. I just want to listen through and go oh yeah that track up a bit roughly. If i get more time next week i might track out a few more of the instruments, maybe. ;D

Everyone's tunes sounding sick btw, y'all killin' it this year!

This week I tried to create a song with as few parts as possible in an attempt to work on my sequencing and song structure. Rather than layering new synth lines over each other whenever I ran out of ideas, I tried to build a song around just a bass line and a handful of drum loops.

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, and definitely think I'll be working on this track further.

The growling bass from the chorus came up during experimentations on the Digitone and first served as a background for the pluck arpeggio and the alien-flute-like sound (LFO flipping through FM carrier ratio). I love this machine.
I had pretty much stalled at that point and, as I fiddled around trying out Spitfire Audio LABS' drums, I found it drove the track into something different, more energetic and aggressive, which I completed with vocals.

Soundcloud for better audio: https://soundcloud.com/user-493253580/not-going-down

It's been a busy and stressful week so I tried to sqeeze in at least a minute of music today. Hopefully next week will be more creative. I tried playing with Kontakt's Session Strings, not trying to make something in particular, just test how it sounds. This is what came out. I started with a few chords and I added a piano melody and some funky synths and a flute to back it up.
It's a poorly executed piece but that's the best I could do today.

This week I was improvising acoustic over a static pattern, initially an arpeggio pattern on the MicroFreak synth which I then spiced up with a delay and high-resonance filter sweeps. As I was building atmospheric textures with Magellan 2, Korg Volca Modular and Keys I had a reminiscence of those moments you sit on a window, rain is outside and thoughts just emerge and disappear at once, each pulling into their own direction then just as quick releasing tension, like the dance of the drops of rain in water puddles.

With that in mind I went to add a recording of rain I once did from my window and then to wrap up the song I added a meditating drum rhythm, a short solo on the Volca Keys and let the acoustic looper run on its own for a couple of seconds.

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.

Here's two things I made.

What does a jazz club sound like in the 24th century? A double bass and synthwave?

This track is a bit more inspired than the tracks from the previous couple of weeks but we are not there yet. It's one of these tracks that started very differently, with a main melody that generated a few other lines. In the end I binned the main melody and ended up with that. It still kinda feels like it's two different tracks, which is not totally bad in itself but some polishing could help. Also the synthwave version would benefit from some lead on top. I was experimenting with saxophone solos but my libraries just sound too bad. I'll need to invest!

This week started with some rhythms in Ableton's 64 Pad Kit Jazz (ultimately with Max Humanizer)...and then I didn't touch them for several days. Friday evening, I had a chord progression in mind that was a lot slower than the rhythms, so...ended up rejecting that, restoring it to just-faster than what I'd originally written.

I did several passes with the PureSalem Mendiola through the Balls Effects KWB, some with the bridge pickup (left channel, with Glue compressor), and some with the neck (right channel, which also gets some auto-filter bass rolloff). Next a pass with the Epi P-J bass, getting some EQ-8 bass rolloff.

Sends: Ableton Echo, room-sized convolution reverb, and Valhalla Supermassive. Full-chain multiband compression on the stereo mix.

The title comes from NGC 55, a galaxy in the constellation Sculptor.