Continuing my weekly tradition of just re-arranging and mixing parts of our weekly jams.

High quality on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/trent-hawkins/20210615-feat-lagoon-city

Full jam session: https://soundcloud.com/trent-hawkins/lagoon-city-x-trent-hawkins-14-20210615-weekly-audiovisual-livestream-tuesday-830pm-cet

I started this week's piece with an 8-bar chord progression on the synth (UVI Roland DS 50 plugin) which repeats for the whole track. No time for a B section. I recorded the bass, then added the drums, then came back to the bass to make it fit a bit better. I added a bass solo to make something happen somewhere in this otherwise pretty boring track.

Better quality on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-493253580/new-grounds

An apt title as I'll be taking a break from this for a few weeks as I'm moving to a new flat. Should really be packing up right now but couldn't resist. Hopefully the break will get me into a position where I'm gagging to get all the creativity out.

I worked on a few different ideas this week but, for some reason, they did not seem to find their place. I ended up starting from scratch and going for a speedtrash. It's a short silly track with real bass and guitar for a change, and a lot of samples from Splice. I hesitated adding a sheep sample as well and it finally did not make it into the track. I keep it for the time I'll do a scottish disco track with bagpipe and sheeps.

Alright, I'll try harder next week.

This week I continued the exploration of my current style by adding more rhythmic development in the form of a rhythm machine that constantly morphs a beat. A drone plays in the background and to this I added voice humming, bass and electric guitars plus a wooden flute and a short percussion moment at the end. At some points it sounds like some sort of electro-folk which is not a bad outcome as I'm looking to explore more traditional influences.

It's a one-take improv using two loopers (one for a microphone catching voice, flute and percussion and the other for the guitars). For the future I think it would be nice to use into how I can automate more variation in the drum (again the challenge is not to do much post-edit).

I was really hating this one for the majority of the week, but actually managed to salvage it in the last couple of hours of working on it. The lead themes are pretty weak, but the surrounding production I think turned out decent. I might try again with another rock song next week, but I probably have to make a few more covers before I get better at it :P

This is actually the same project as last week's with enough changes that it's basically not really recognizable as the same song. It's not exactly done either (the arrangement isn't really complete, and the "core loops" are not as polished as I'd really like, but what a HUGE difference a week makes.

This week I did not go for a song, but rather a live jam over some field recordings I made from the balcony of my apartment. It gets so noisy here it drives me mad. Rare quiet moments with birds chirping are quickly overtaken by car noises, honking, sirens and people. I had to document that for a time in the near future when I'll be away from all this in a better and quieter location.

As for the track itself, I basically made about ten patterns on the Polyend Tracker, adding some glitch and random effects here and there (random volumes, notes, rolls, sample triggers, swing, micro moves on notes to make them off tempo, micro slides to make them out of tune). I could not make a song out of this, so I opened a session in my DAW, added a track for my field recordings, added a track to record live, and played the Tracker live in Performance Mode, a mode in which you can sequence, mix, transform and pretty much destroy your patterns in real time (I guess almost any parameter can be modified). The Polyend Tracker is great, but sometimes I feel like it's not really an instrument you can "play", it's not made for this, but the Performance Mode actually transforms it into something you can "play", it was pretty fun and gave this 10 minutes jam, not sure it's really interesting to listen to but hey, I had fun. :)

Finishing things I started.

think this is my favorite out of the ones i've made so far : )

Lyrics:
you can't look your best
a glimpse, enough to ruin your weekend plans
just don't take it out on yourself

you can do your best
or you can sit this one out
and make yourself very cozy underground

also a lyric video: https://twitter.com/killingeva/status/1405087481985306626

Another quick-recording/long-editing piece. This one started just as some drum syncopation, with a few atmospheric keys...and then kind of came together with bass and guitar.

Drums: Ableton 64 Pad Kit Jazz, with Max Humanizer
Keys: PureMagnetik Berlin electric piano
Guitar: PureSalem Mendiola through Vox Wah; one channel with Auto-Filter drive
Bass: 80s Epiphone Embassy II with EQ-8 low-end rolloff

Sends: convolution reverb (with high-pass Auto-Filter in front), Echo, Valhalla Supermassive

Master full-chain audio effect rack on the output.

Title comes from Messier 76, the Little Dumbbell Nebula.