I created this song as a live stream on Deluge, Eurorack, and Meeblip. Here's the live stream channel: https://www.twitch.tv/emeraldarcana It's under "creating music in real time with hardware".

I got kind of tired so I didn't really sit to polish this one up, but after doing listening I probably would change a few things like adjusting levels a bit more. I was getting into gainstaging problems where the gear was overloading the VCA and the unity mixer was clipping hard. I might have to pay more attention to that later on. Other than that it's a long live jam done in real time.

Incredibly rushed job to make a "track" out of the intro part of our Tuesday jam as I have been busy moving apartments for the last 3 days.

Also I discovered some incredibly annoying Ableton Live behaviour that still sends recorded MIDI CC to hardware even if the clip that sends it is muted. Or at least I think I did.

Link to the full jam session here: https://soundcloud.com/trent-hawkins/lagoon-city-x-trent-hawkins-20210406-weekly-audiovisual-livestream-tuesday-830pm-cet

Continuing the post-rock impression I've played with integrating better switching from clean to distorted parts by changing the fading out time of the overdub on the loop.

As I said before I do my guitars in a single improvised take using looping, a sort of a challenge I took to overcome composing difficulties. In this case I set off an empty 8 bar loop and as it was going I dynamically adjusted the fade out time to better single out sections of the track.

There are still some glitches, especially towards the beginning, but still I like the result and how the technique develops.

I first came up with a bass guitar line for this week's song, then added drums (Spitfire Audio LABS) to get the groove for the song going. The first version of the busy/crazy arpeggio came from an Arturia Analog Lab preset (CZ-V, a Casio CZ series emulator) which I wanted to replicate on the Elektron Digitone. I like the result and got to dig a bit deeper in the amazing capabilities of the Digitone.
Then came lyrics / vocals together in a single session. The rest was fiddling with mixing, adding a lead (also Digitone) to fill some otherwise empty parts and general editing of effects and track volume.

Lossless on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-493253580/peace-of-mind

I started a few tracks this week, including but not limited to a disco track with bagpipes and a rock track about stupidly inebriated evenings but in the end nothing really motivated me so I was playing around with samples on Saturday morning. I enjoyed the combination of drum n bass like staccato drums and guzheng and shamisen. I have used that in quite a few tracks last year during weekly beats, but hey I think it deserves more investigations and experiences!

So this is a track mainly built around guzheng/shamisen/traditional Japanese singing and then aphex twin like drum patterns. There is some neuro bass there. I wanted some more low ends but did not find the right sound and ran out of time. It's still raw, it's a draft but i kinda like it. This is one track i'd need to go back to and plunder for bits and ideas. The structure is a bit simple and would benefit from some variation as the end is really just a repeat of a previous section.

Done in FL Studio, featuring samples from Splice. I played with risers - from inverted toms to piano chords rendered as audio and inverted.

I went for a more structured song compared to last week. Started out with a few acoustic guitar riffs, then built around that with more or less the same sound set as my previous track. I added a couple of mellotron samples (the detuned piano and another one on which I applied the strong stereo tremolo). By accident I created this rhodes-sounding sample which actually is the tail of a guitar chord sample with some envelope and filter added, which I found really cool sounding. I used that for the moving chords above the simple bass line. Still not that satisfied by how the different parts fit with each other, but otherwise I'm ok with how it all turned out. As last time, all composed on the Polyend Tracker. I tried to export stems and remix them in Harrison Mixbus but I realised that in the process I had lost some automation and effects from the Tracker, so the track I'm uploading is actually the master export from the PT with just a bit of EQ instead.

i didnt use guitars this time wow

lyrics:
you'd die in my hands
i'd take good care
if i knew to care
you'll lie in the sand
when the waves pick up
you'll be on your way back soon

Pardon my Scottish. Partially influenced by Anomalie.

This one got away from me a bit but I still like the thickness of the sound. It was a nightmare to separate out the frequencies when mixing so I just gave up. Enjoy the mess.

This week's track came at me kind of sideways--while I started with syncopated drums as I often do...the melodic and harmonic components started with keyboards, lending a different flavor, I think. On Saturday I tracked a few bits of guitar, not sure how it'd all come together, and bass on Sunday before collaging the clips. Finally, I tracked a couple guitar phrases to fill in gaps. And...here we are.

Drums: Ableton 64 Pad Kit Jazz with Max Humanizer
Drum Rack of hand claps with Max Humanizer
Piano: PureMagnetik CP-70, acoustic only
Electric Piano: PureMagnetik Rhodes Mark One, through AudioThing Motor
Bass: Epiphone P-J, low-end rolloff with EQ-8
Guitar: PureSalem Mendiola through Ableton Auto-Filter (high-pass and low-pass with drive, Ableton Utility and Cabinet

Sends: Bandpass Auto-Filter with LFO into Echo, Valhalla Supermassive, convolution reverb with high-pass Auto-Filter

Title comes from this being the 66th track since I started doing numerically-based names, and stretches of the famous Route 66 have been removed from maps.