A really upbeat dance song made with my latest gear thingy, the Synthstrom Deluge.

All of the sounds and arrangement is done with that single box.

I haven't fully figured it out, so the sound design is not exactly ear-popping, but I was able to compose and arrange the entire thing using that box (with some EQ and Limiting post-processing in software after recording).

Considering that I got the Deluge a week ago, being able to compose something using only that piece of gear is actually pretty amazing for me.

BTW, as I mentioned last week, I released an improvisational album at http://irwink.bandcamp.com. If you like listening to the Eurorack jams that I post here check it out.

I did my first live set in front of an audience. I prepared this for about two weeks and performed it last night (July 20, 2019) in front of an audience of about 10-15 attendees. Overall I got a lot of compliments afterward and even though I know I had mistakes during the set, no one seemed to notice.

I took the recording from a combination of an iPhone recording and a recording that was connected to the mixer because the recording on the mixer missed the introduction. I amplified and compressed the clean recording a little bit to increase the levels a little bit, but it's still a bit on the quiet side.

The total set is about 22 minutes long, so it's a bit on the long side for a WeeklyMusic submission. I hope that some of you check this out. Enjoy!

Sunday, April 16, 9:10 - 10:00.

I'm going to the museum today so this might be a short affair.

This has a really 90s vibe. Also ignore that transition. That's what happens when you try to make a song in under an hour. The lead also sounds loud. I didn't really spend a lot of time mixing. Maybe I'll fix it when I get home.

Total time: 50m

I worked with a theme: Space Pirates. On earth, there was ice. In space… there is still ice.

Production notes: I worked pretty quickly. The song's not too long and I reused a number of melodies and kept them pretty simple. I wanted to get some amount of chippiness in the tune but not too much.

The song is made with predominantly hardware and some software effects. I am really happy with the sounds the Phenol can make - it forms the background drone and really helped to fill out the track. The rest of the track was made with a Nord Lead 2x and MASCHINE druns. Effects are mostly Valhalla Shimmer and some amount of Neutron, but there's also a few others here and there.

Sunday, April 2, 12:00 - 12:15. Again, I am thinking of Zelda: Breath of the Wild so I'm here to make a quick and interesting song in a minimal amount of time!

It's actually interesting to see how much "quality" I can crank out in a tiny span of time.

I've received a theme from someone: Space Pirates. So let's make it so.

Setup and making patches - didn't get enough time to really get started.

13:15 - 15:25. Compose, sound design, mix. Boom.

Total time: 2h 10m

In the open world, there's gold at the end of the rainbow.

Track notes: I kind of didn't try hard enough. I ran a bunch of errands earlier in the day and kind of came home late-ish. I did aim for two things in this track:

1. A new key. Arpeggios. Stuff like that. The composition isn't anything amazing but new keys take a bit to learn.

2. Compose more chiptune and make sure that it sounds like passable pleasant chiptune music that doesn't have anything fundamentally wrong with the timbre.

A few habits I'm picking up: Changing drum timbres. Thanks onezero!

Things I didn't spend a lot of time on: Mixing. I think it's reasonably balanced but I applied very little EQ and compression.

Also, as cool as analog synths are, they fall out of tune and rar I keep on having to fix things. Maybe that's not a bad thing because my ear's starting to get trained finally.

Hope I achieved those goals and that you enjoy this!

Sun, March 19. 11:30 - 11:50. I'd like to work on making arpeggios and other backing elements, chiptune style this week.

I also plan to work on the key of F major/D minor to get more used to different keys. I currently do a lot of C, G, and E and adding another key will help diversify my sound.

It also reminds me that I should work on playing scales as a regular exercise.

13:00 - 13:20.

16:25 - 17:45. Not really my best work - I kind of half-assed the mixing. It was fun though.

Total time: 2h

Maybe it's bright disco lights and dance party rave.

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Sunday, Feb 5, 11:45 - 12:15. I may use a similar progression as last week's to (1) study it and remind myself what it's about and (2) to see if I can concentrate on stuff like smoothing out transitions.

Last week's notes:

Verse:

Em Bm C/E G

Bassline melodics:

Em Dm Am B

I didn't really get a lot done in the first 30 minutes - did some browsing of music to get some ideas and poked around at the track a bit, but didn't really lay down anything concrete.

13:25 - 15:00. I don't think I have a lot of time this week (or next week) since I have errands to run, so I'll probably lazy-out this song a bit.

Chord progression:

V1: Em7 Bm7 C G

V2: Em7 Bm7 F#m Dm G Dm7

The chorus is more simple of course, as you can hear.

I didn't really develop this into a complete song… this is more of an idea sketch than a complete piece of music.

One thing I wanted to do was more "weird" noises. But in the end it does get more expansive and consonant.

Total time: 2h 05m (though 30m wasn't really spent composing).

Gravity Well

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Into the wormhole. Hold on tight.

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I had some nice sounds that reminded me of space. I have also been watching a lot of Star Trek from the 90s. A few things though that I didn't spend enough time on was getting the melody sound right (too much echoing bleeding into the call-response tracks) and trying to fix a few conflicting sections where there's too much going on and muddiness. Maybe I can work on this next week.

The track is mostly hardware but has a lot of software effects.

Leads are from Nord Rack 2x, pads Alesis A6 Andromeda, the arp from Oberheim Xpander. Drums are MASCHINE, the ominous pad is Massive, the noises are from Stutter Edit. Lots of other SFX and mixing in software.

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Technique log:

Sun, Jan 29. 15:05 - 18:05. What's the composition technique this week? More secondary dominant chords and varying basslines.

I thought the song last week had some interesting tonal qualities to it, but it took a long time to create so I'd like to practice my speed this week.

Verse:

Em Bm C D

Em Gm Dm Am Em Gm Bm B/D (tension section)

Bassline melodics:

Em Dm Am B

The secondary dominant chords are in the counter section, though the whole track overall is pretty simple.

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Total time: 3h

Visting new worlds and finding new joy.

A song about cheer and adventure and fun. Made with mostly software synths, but has some flavors of Nord Lead and Future Retro 777.

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Sun, Jan 22. 13:00 - 15:00. Today, I'm exploring different harmonic constructions. I am not going to specifically label what I plan to use today, but things that I discovered were a thing this week include:

* Secondary dominant chords. So you might have a ii chord in your song, you can use the relative 5th of the ii chord as a V/ii chord. So a V/V chord in C maj is D major as D major is 5 scale degrees above G major (which is 5 above C major).

I got this from a book on composition I got a long while back but now I'm exploring how it's actually used in music.

Here's a stackexchange article:

http://music.stackexchange.com/questions/22057/what-is-a-secondary-dominant-chord

The other thing for me to work on is transitions, as that was some feedback I got from the previous song I posted last week.

In this short theme, two of the secondary dominants are D major to G major and C major to F major.

Verse has a bunch of weird stuff going on in it but it has a neat effect.

The chorus is a standard iv-IV-V-I but there's some bass movement.

I didn't work very hard on the sound effects or mixing though today.

Total time: 2h