No change this week - once again I worked on a part of our stream with Tubular Corporation.

Lossless here: https://soundcloud.com/trent-hawkins/20210302-feat-tubular-corporation
Stream recording here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4chxnYC8vHM

Similar style with the previous weeks: acoustic 12 string, droning synth, chants, percussion, panflute. The drums are more complex and present, I actually recorded them in a separate take using custom samples triggered by a Novation Circuit. The tile comes from a need to see past constant limitation and all the perspectives that are being cut away especially in these times.

Instead of normal music time, I decided that I'd do Two Hour Track Sunday (http://compo.thasauce.net/compos/view/2HTS)

The instructions were as follows:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EBpRCsNqY0

Basically, it's to use a web-based sequencer with a partner to create samples, some beat tracks, and then load those into your own DAW after to create a song.

I'm not even sure what to say about the actual song at this point, it just literally started.

Here's what I had to work with: https://wesequence.live/gDzDTHeUV
and here's the submission. http://compo.thasauce.net/rounds/view/2HTS362

I must say that was actually super educational because I had to actually learn how to use the sampler. In the process, I learned how to snap it to zero-crossings, how to slice the parts (by transient, at least - not by beat), how to one-shot vs. pitch shift samples, and even how to load them up. I don't normally work a lot with raw samples, usually I use a sampler that's already been mostly assembled. This was a total eye-opener. I don't know if the song itself came out that well, but it was definitely a cool experience for the purpose of learning.

Creating this week's song was quite the ride. I had the bass line first but couldn't figure how to make it work in a track. But I didn't want to set it aside and just kept on grinding. By the time I had something decent around it, it was already thursday and I still had to write lyrics, record vocals, redo some synth parts and arrangements, mix, and master.

Instruments line up is bass guitar, Microfreak and LABS' drums.

Lossless on Soundcloud : https://soundcloud.com/user-493253580/week-9-the-steps-we-take

Gave up on the voice memo thing...

Lyrics:
How far do I fall until I catch ya
Doesn't even make any sense!
Wishing well to all that I meet there
and all those who will be gone

Been thinking a lot

I'm sure you've taken all this time to think
With all that rolling in the bed you haven't got
a ton of sleep!
It's past 9 o'clock
It's past 10 o'clock

Been thinking a lot, lately

The inspiration for this track was two pictures of rocks. My wife's name is Roxanne so I named the track, "Rocks Anne." The instrumentation is Cello, Viola, Violin, and Taiko drums.

Hope everyone is well. Embrace your dreams.

This week I had to write a 15sec Radio News Jingle.
Then I thought about what makes it work being so short and what it would take to turn it into a longer piece. I had to deconstruct my jingle and rebuild it with a new structure, trying to keep everything else the same, such as tempo, instruments and theme, but stretch it and make sense of it still.
It wasn't as easy as I'd thought but that's what makes it a great challenge.

Below is the 15sec version which I made first.

It's already week 9, time flies! I enjoy listening to the range of music that the community produces, from jazz to video games music to goth wave. This is inspiring and motivating!

Here is a speedtrash that ended up a bit better than my usual speedtrash or even some tracks where I did spend some time (looking at you, Week 8 track!).

It is a pretty straightforward EDM + Guzheng (Chinese string instrument) + Travis Barker drums but it works. I learnt a couple of things when doing that track so it was really worth it in the end.

What I need to try out next time: start earlier in the week instead of waiting until Sunday morning to get started. The streak name is "weekly streak", not "Sunday streak".

I had a thought to do all-in-the-box this week, partly thinking of Daft Punk retiring their collaboration, but then departing from that initial idea. There's still 808 as the drum machine (via Ableton's 808 Startup Kit), 4-bit Redux on the handclaps, and Ableton's Analog for bass and two synths. I also went for WaveTable (Juno Organ Wave, with the filter cutoffs brought way down).

Inline processing: I made use of Live 11's clip randomization with a narrow range of velocity variation in the drums here and there, as well as some in the bass. It might not be very audible. There's also a touch of Max Humanizer on the drums, which kind of defeats the purpose of using drum machine voicing...but maybe not.

Sends: Hybrid Reverb (the jury's still out on how useful I'll find this; I think I just prefer convolution reverb alone, rather than blended with an algorithm, and I'm not all that sold on the impulse I used here), Delay, Echo with LFO Auto-Filter in front, and Spectral Resonator, which is responsible for that little sparkly mechanical flourish every so many bars.

There's also the usual multi-band compression on the output.

Title comes from 61's status as the smallest proper prime