I set out today to create an "epic orchestral electronic" track that might invoke images of a final boss battle in a video game.
I don't know if I quite got the "epic" down but it has a bunch of tension and stuff. The song is in A minor, it's 136 bpm, etc. etc. I don't really know what else to say about this yet.
if you do want to see the making of video, you can check it out at https://twitch.tv/emeraldarcana and look out for the May 2 video.
For a week or two I am away from my iPad setup and thus my faithful looper and FX. However this meant I have a chance to rediscover the powerful effect modulation of VCV Rack and this is exactly what I did here. It's a simple electric guitar improv over an ambient texture plus very lo-fi drums, but I used two delays to create rhytmic interest (Chronoblob), the "pad" is actually an arpeggio sequence fed through Clouds and a tap delay while the drums are played with the XOR sequencer making them more varied and "unstable". For the looping I used a free vst that can be found around called GLoop - its controls can be mapped to any VCV utility.
So I decided to experiment with some reverb as a sound design method, and I am quite happy with the results. I mean, of course I should be a lot more tasteful and not drown everything in it but hey this is just the first experiment, please give me a break. :) (Also I think it sounds gooood)
High definition on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/trent-hawkins/20210429a
This is the plugin I used: https://www.kvraudio.com/product/orilriver-by-denis-tihanov
Once again, this song is not what I wanted it to be and I was very close to ditch the whole thing and come up with a short jam for this week's submission. I mustered the last bits of will I had left to salvage the vocals and go on with it. So there it is, half-baked but not unloved, because the lyrics and odd rythm (wouldn't know if it's the meter or something else) eventually grew on me in the process of fighting with this piece.
I created all synth sounds and sequences on the Elektron Digitone, drums are Wavparty samples. The rest is the usual Ableton editing / processing / mixing and mastering (Izotope Elements Neutron / Ozone).
Lossless on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-493253580/the-original-dream
For some reason I had been thinking about aborigines and the dreamtime. Dreamtime is a mythological time at the creation of the universe - a time for gods and where the reality was not the same as it is now today.
This inspired this didgeridoo and jaw harp filled track. Add some Native American flutes and Tibetan tuvan singing, some Japanese percussions and you got an international mix of trance music.
Done in FL studio, using a wide range of samples from Splice.
Here's one that grew kind of organically out of some syncopated drums. I'd started with Ableton's 64 Pad Kit Rock, and something in the high-hat suggested a funky approach. For some extra flavor, there's 64 Pad Finger Snare LBB, and a track of handclaps.
I initially tracked a few Rhodes lines with PureMagnetik Mark Two Berlin, but ended up removing them, along with PureMagnetik Mellotron. Instead, I tracked a lot of Epiphone bass (though initial loops weren't quite funky enough, so out they went), and then two passes with PureSalem Mendiola through Vox Wah (one bridge pickup and one neck pickup.)
Inlines: Max Humanizer on the drums and percussion, Bass got the usual EQ-8 rolloff.
Sends: Ableton Delay, Valhalla Supermassive, and room-sized convolution reverb. Full-Chain multi band compression on the stereo out.
The title comes from the root of the Rhône river, which runs through the 69th department of France.
