I tried to apply the tricks from this article to mixing https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/mixing-pink-noise-reference

Not sure about how the arrangement and the track structure holds up, but I liked the sounds.

Lossless on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/trent-hawkins/20210223a
Hear the original jam session as streamed earlier this week: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1K39P03Mt3A (or just audio here https://soundcloud.com/trent-hawkins/tcorporation-x-thawkins-20210223-weekly-livestream-tuesday-830pm-cet)

This week past in such a speed I barely believed today's Sunday. I haven't manage to prepare any material so this one is right in the same style as the previous: acoustic guitar, eerie chants, weird percussion some flute passages and an overall floating feel. It was a one take improv.

Listening to it now again before uploading I realised it gave me some memories of bands I used to listen quite a number of years ago: Arcana, Elend, Deine Lekein, Dargaard, Samsas Traum, Die Verbannten Kinder Evas and several more of the genre they used to call dark wave. Not saying it's a direct tribute since I only now figured this influence, especially since I haven't been listening to those in quite a while. Perhaps a subconscious hint? :)

All the growling and howling (including the flute-like sounds) in this week's song comes from a Lyra-8 synth. The rest is a bass guitar, SY77 plugin, Spitfire Audio LABS strings and drums, and vocals. The Lyra-8 is an untamable beast and doesn't sit nicely in a mix but I assumed it was part of the deal when I went for it. The end result speaks to that and the song isn't what I wanted it to be.

But here it is, and the streak goes on.

Soundcloud for better audio: https://soundcloud.com/user-493253580/train-to-nowhere

I did five themes last time and there's three left to go.

Zelfie asked for a theme that followed a reference track that resembled 70s funk/disco.

Pixie asked for a "whimsical" theme and linked me some songs from World of Final Fantasy that were composed by Masashi Hamauzu. Pixie's theme took a while. I broke out my piano book for SaGa Frontier 2 (I don't play piano) and studied one of the songs and learned like a metric ton of stuff about whimsical and bright piano music from just two sections.

I still have one more theme to do: my own (T'mi's theme). The running idea is a combination of the Terminator theme and some random rock riffs to give it a super heavy wall of sound. It's not done, hopefully I'll finish it this week and you'll see the third track.

Edit: T'mi's Story. "An adventurer pulled from time and lost in worlds discovers through the gift of a bird what true friends are." (When you are the composer of your own theme, you can write as many gratuitous program notes as you want. AND you can make it twice as long.)

Been messing about with VCVRack, I'm no expert on it at all and this is really me just learning the ropes and having a bit of fun. Might be getting the hang of it but it's early days.

it's been a tough month or two of loss and challenges, but as part of pushing past that feeling, I made myself sit down and actually finish a track the other day.

I stuck to my easiest comfort zone, which is generic industrialish rock with some random lyrics forced out using whatever was on my mind or in my eyeline at the time (in this case; politics, crypto markets, and the horrifying realization after shaving for the first time in a decade that I look a bit like a certain politician)

Running maybe a bit late on this one--hey, it was Thundersnow weekend--but I've been uploading at the start of deadlines, not the finish. So...going to say it's all good.

This one started with some syncopated drums (64 pad kit rock) and a couple (Ableton Grand) piano chords...and I thought to add Epiphone bass (usual P-J, EQ-8 low-end rolloff and reverb send) and...instead of regular guitar, just pedal steel (no effects other than passive volume pedal). I fleshed it out with a few more piano bits, added and removed hand claps, and added some sends: Delay, Valhalla Supermassive, Echo (Dub Syndicate preset), and convolution reverb with high-pass auto-filter in front to avoid low-end buildup. I went back and added some Max Humanizer on drums to reduce the mechanical feeling, and did alternating sends to delay and echo.

The title comes from the ziggurats of the Sumerians, who gave us the 60-minute hour, among other 60-based things.

I am not really happy with this track but at least I learnt a couple of things doing it. I actually wanted to do something inspired by Nintendo soundtracks for mario kart or mario brothers. I was inspired when I heard my son playing minecraft on the nintendo switch and they had a cover of mario theme, but with breakbeats in the background.

I failed at making a track like that unfortunately. There is some samba, some trumpet ideas, some bass that was live bass then became FLEX hardcore bass then became chiptune bass. And I learnt how to use Directwave to make a guzheng, though I replaced it with chiptune as well.

A track is a track, I hope next week will be better.