This is an edited-songified version of the intro part of our stream this week (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrELyNmfyjo).

You can find it losslessly here https://soundcloud.com/trent-hawkins/20210202a

I feel it came out nicely as a really laid back ambient lounge something something tune, a nice end to this really busy week I have had.

I've had several options for this week in my usual style with lots of synths and acoustic instruments on top. However, after I recorded one it then occurred to me to use just a single instrument for the task whilst keeping the big reverb, expansive delays and looper I usually use (Eventide Blackhole, FAC Alteza, Eventide UltraTap and Gauss Looper).

I chose the panflute I have since I really love its tone but I didn't do much with it lately, having focused on acoustic guitar. Since I'm mostly a beginner with it, I can't do any complicated phrasing so the accent was more on the texture the looper and delay create together, alternating octaves and mostly using the Eminor key (the panflute is tuned to G major). I also tapped on the wood of the instrument from time to time to create a sort of a ritualistic feel to the whole track, I like how the delays also catch that up and compliment nicely.

The adventurers scale the dreadful Elisius Mons while still under pursuit from the Captain of Templar Orionus.

Yes, the title is entirely made-up.

A cinematic piece that I composed as a throwaway mostly to try out Damage 2 by Heavyocity (which is a very expensive and very high quality cinematic drum library).

I wrote this, didn't really like the direction or the compositional choices, and decided to just kind of slap an end on it and not really worry about the transitions, the sudden mood shifts, or anything else. I'd rather just finish it up and let the idea go and start on something different for now.

Kinda a half finished song was making with my friend today trying to find a sound for our new project. I'm mostly responsible for the synths,

Really dig the sound he got out of the guitar part - sounding like a rambling sitar. We tracked it out the parts in Ableton.

I have a feeling we will be making more beatsy world music so stay tuned ;D

Busy week but enjoyed making this.

Thought of letting go of expectations and mindlessly play with arps and synths for a while.
My goal for this year is to get better at building piece structure, mastering build-ups and encoding strong emotions. This piece is not part of that search. Hopefully from now on I'll better manage my time in order to follow through with my plan.

I started with a two-part (verse / chorus) piece on the Digitone, which I recorded on Ableton to make it fit it into a very traditional pop song structure, then added the drums (Spitfire Audio LABS).

As I was writing lyrics and experimenting with a melody for vocals, I decided to replace the Digitone bass track with a bass guitar track (which I recorded almost identical to the original synth bass line) and ended up going for a combination of both.

I recorded and added the vocals (in one take for the bigger part, because I've had a sore throat for a few days - from overuse and a light cold) and ultimately kept on experimenting with mixing and mastering.

Soundcloud for better audio : https://soundcloud.com/user-493253580/doomsday-creator

Note: I recorded this to submit as a late submission, wrote the post and uploaded it, before re-reading the rules and realised that I shouldn't be submitting something I made this week as a late submission for last week. I've since deleted that submission. Anyway, knowing what I'm like I'm going to submit this for this week because it's eminently possible that I will procrastinate away the rest of my time despite this being literally the only deadline I have in my life right now.

Original Post: During lockdown last year I picked up a Korg Volca Keys and Volca Sample to keep myself occupied and, hopefully, finally learn to use a synth live and not rely on sequencing everything through a DAW.

I used them on an off for a couple of weeks but found the Keys in particular a difficult interface to get a handle on. Anyway, now that we're back in lockdown again (although that's nearly over already) I decided to dust them off and have another crack at it.

(Also, I needed to whip something up quick as a late submission and figured I could get at least a usable minute out of jamming on them.)

I ended up using an AKAI MPD24 to interface with the Keys, the benefit of which is that it has 16 big square pads for my clumsy fingers to inelegantly mash instead of the tiny and overly responsive interface on the Korg.

Give it a listen if you want to hear me subtly adjust some parameters as I try to teach myself something - in real time!

Recorded by sticking my phone in front of the speaker because a) I couldn't get the audio input on the laptop to work, and b) I think more electronic music should include room tone.

Probably not going to finish this but I thought I'd post it anyways. I took the melody from this (https://soundcloud.com/seventh-beast/hidden-groves-and-treasure-troves), adapted it into 5/4, and changed it to a minor key.

I'd had no ideas for this week's track until late Saturday evening, when I thought of a couple rhythms, and the idea of having bitcrushed and natural drum samples together. I put down some patterns in Ableton's 64 Pad Kit Jazz, and bitcrushed some complementary patterns from Ableton's 808 Core Kit with Redux (4 bits), avoiding the long tails with Gate.

Bass is just low notes on Ableton's default settings for Electric, though I also rolled off a bit of low end with EQ-8. Other keys: another channel of Electric, Operator's Organ2 Clicky preset (reverb send only), and Spitfire Labs Soft Piano.

Sends: Ableton Echo, a convolution reverb, and Valhalla Supermassive. Max Humanizer on the drums, and full-chain multiband compression on the stereo mix.

Title comes from the Ring Nebula, M57.

This track is more the seed of what might become an interesting track. I lacked the time or to be honest the motivation to work properly on the track this week but I kinda like the main melody. There is this on-the-edge-of-cheesy synthwave melody that could be reused in something epic - this will be kept in the fridge until a better idea comes! Until that time, this is a speedtrash but a track is a track!

I used FLEX and Sytrus on this one, along with quite a few different Splice samples for the flute and the drums.