Did chips and chops.

arggh my fingers hurt so much this is what you get when you don't pick up a guitar for like one and a half years but then you get mad at sequencing guitars in MIDI so you're like "let's just try playing it" and then you end up with this also my guitar's like years old and I've never changed the strings because rarrr

I took the intro part of our last stream and got stuck with the initial moods, trying to build some calm ambient thing out of it. I am not sure if I succeeded.

Lossless on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/trent-hawkins/20210316a

A change of texture this week as I returned to the first instrument I learned, the electric guitar. Many years ago I did a song based on a harmonic minor riff which I now (kind of) revisited. Back then I was in the painstaking composing rut, and I know it took a lot to create that song, many edits and re-takes... and probably I still wasn't too happy with it.

This is why I took the beginning riff and started a new improv in my current style, just feeling free and improvising alongside a looper. The drums are coming from Rock Drum Machine on the iPad and the synth is the Arturia MicroFreak (which also provides the bass, would you believe it's not a real one?). There's also a bit of 12 string acoustic.

I faced troubled times this week and needed to keep it simple to make sure I have something to post. The sound design and sequencing for this track were both made on the Elektron Digitone. I added some reverb and octaves mod, then mixed and mastered in Ableton.

Lossless on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-493253580/overcome

Ok here is a track I believe in more than what I have done in a few weeks. I did struggle quite a bit to get it started but after putting a lot of polishing touches, piano melodies and experimenting with structures, I feel I made a track I feel good about.

This is inspired by synthwave and a cyberpunk vibe, something between blade runner and akira, cowbow bebop and gunnm.

More VCVRack fun, maybe not good to listen to, again this is me getting used to it. Getting beyond the "what does this do?" stage and onto something a bit more organised, I hope.

This was a busy weekend, so I'm getting this up late (for me). It's also just a four-tracker, and short. This started as some syncopated drum patterns in 6/4, with some alternate drum lines in 4/4, and alternating between the two. I used Ableton's 64 Pad Kit Jazz for these, and added a bit of Max Humanizer to slop it up a bit.

I did bass next--the usual Epiphone P-J with just the P pickup. I also did the usual EQ-8 rolloff. Some of these suggested different, related keys, though...I didn't really explore that thoroughly.

Guitars were done in a few passes, but had the same signal path: PureSalem Mendiola through Balls Effects KWB and Vox Wah, though one channel was neck pickup and the other bridge pickup.

Sends: two convolution reverbs, one large room, and one larger hall. There's also Echo plugin. And there's Ableton's Full-Chain multi band compression rack on the output.

Title comes from there being 63 groats in a guinea, according to the old English monetary system.