Instead of leaving you all with a farewell to 2021, I'm thinking ahead to 2022 because I have a project to crank out.

I have a live show to prepare for on January 29, so I started sketching out the set with Track 1. What I need? A transition to track 2 :D

Composed on a Eurorack modular synth (7u 104hp; the rack hasn't changed in a few months) and a Minibrute 2s.

Here's some more liner notes:

Key: F major
BPM: 116.7

• Minibrute 2s with drone patch (A-01) transition to A-02
• Eurorack Metropolix Cyan-5 sequence 1 with skips on 2-8, opening up over time
• Drum channels A-B-D muted, opening up over time
• What I want to do is create sequence A-03 for a variation in the acid bass section
• Also want to create more sequences for the drums and to figure out what knob I can turn to turn this from an acid bass song in F major to something in D minor that is darker and a little more foreboding.

A generative Eurorack song. I did touch this one while it was recording, but in general it'll just go do its thing for as long as you want.

Yes, I streamed it, you can see it at the usual place (https://twitch.tv/emeraldarcana)

A live improv techno song with Eurorack doing percussion (and growls, and some weird melodic stuff) and Future Retro 777 doing the bass. I was doing this while smoking ribs outside. Loop-based, but hopefully simple and fun.

I streamed this. You can check it out, https://twitch.tv/emeraldarcana/

I performed live for Modular On The Spot at a Community Center on August 28. Great audience, had a decent crowd size, and I received a number of compliments on the set afterward.

Edit: I managed to get the file uploaded. The set is about 20 minutes long, so be aware that it's rather long for a Weekly Music submission.

Original text:

I am rather busy tomorrow so I do not know if I can extract audio by tomorrow, so I'm going to post the video below as a placeholder and hopefully get back to editing it by deadline tomorrow.

The show itself starts around 8m 30s in and it runs for about 15m. (tomorrow when I'm less tired I'll try to get audio and a timestamp)

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1132691191

This one is preparation for a Eurorack Set that I'm going to play live for Modular On The Spot in the city next week Saturday. The set is about 25m long so this song is also pretty long. Sorry about that.

This one is a live performance.

I also streamed this performance (actually, streamed a couple of practice runs).

But I needed something to record. It's very... well, random. The main success point? I was able to make it sound kind of different. Also, I think I need to gate the filter with a sequencer which I'm going to do right now.

A terrible weight presses on your mind, threatening to break through as you lose yourself to illusions and dark thoughts.

This was a song done with Eurorack modular, SWAM Violin with Linnstrument, and my voice. SWAM Violin was run through a gate on the Eurorack with Metropolix, which is something that I didn't even think about until I actually started, which is SUPER COOL and gives me a venue to try to perform more harmonic content with Eurorack that isn't just bass notes and drums.

The voice was a spontaneous decision and it's run through a bunch of software effects. In an ideal world, I'll do more than Ooohs and Aaaaahs, but also mix it such that it is blended into the rest of the song better with possibly some hardware vocal processing.

Ambient music on the Eurorack modular, though in practice this might actually be more drone than ambient. Recorded live, took two takes and about 1h 30m total.

Streamed live here https://twitch.tv/emeraldarcana/ With respect to streaming, it was actually a pretty good day since I got a pretty big raid (of about 24 people).

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.

A quick jam with Modular and Meeblip Geode synth (which did the bass).

Sequenced with Deluge and Stillson Hammer MkII. Featuring odd sounds from Plaits and Cursus Iteritas.

I think I'll be trying to work on good melodic parts more this coming year. Doing house and techno beats is fun, but if I can create better melodies it's going to make all of the difference for me.

I got this note from a buddy of mine a few weeks ago:

"Hey,

Just dropping a line about Soy Un Navidad. The only rules are to poorly translate into Spanish and have text-to-speech do vocals. Oh, and send the Spanish lyrics, so I can attach them to the album. Outside of that, feel free to do just about anything that comes to mind. If you have any questions or anything, feel free to reach out."

Liner notes:

I did this track live (after many takes) on my hardware synths. (It kind of felt like hard mode)

• Vocals: Octatrack. I roughly sliced them up and “arranged” them.
• Chords: Some synth on my Deluge
• Organ (Eurorack): Mutable Instruments Braids through a delay and a Spring Reverb and a Polaris filter
• Bass (Euroack): Intellijel Plonk
• Drums (Eurorack): An analog sine wave + Basimilus Iteritas Alter

It’s in the key of F major.

Lyrics:

O Come All Ye Faithful

Oh ven, todos ustedes fieles
Alegre y triunfante
Oh, ven, o vienes a Belén
Ven y miralo
Nacido el Rey de los Ángeles!
Oh ven, adoremoslo
Oh ven, adoremoslo
Oh ven, adoremoslo
Cristo el señor

Canta, coros de ángeles
Canta en exultación
Canten, todos ustedes ciudadanos del cielo arriba!
Gloria a Dios
Toda la gloria en lo más alto
Oh ven, adoremoslo
Oh ven, adoremoslo
Oh ven, adoremoslo
Cristo el señor

A fast song! Techno! Beats! That arp sample that I always use. There's NOTHING risky in this song at all. It was still fun.

Emotional note here is groovy with a hint of mystery and apprehension.

Another live song to polish up more live skills and arrangement skills. A common problem with me is that I don't create good lead sounds, so this is something I think I need to practice a bit more.

Last week I bought a uPlaits (by Tall Dog) and am trying out a few things now. It essentially takes the place of the E352, but I think the sounds are a little more musical and melodic. Some things I'm trying:

1. More coordinated drops. I try silence in the middle, I don't think I quite succeed.
2. More fills, to keep drums driving and interesting
3. B sections in songs, even though they're in the same chord progression. In this one, I accidentally hit the octave up key midway for a track. It actually sounded good, so I left it. I actually wanted to bring up the next 16-step loop (which I also have).
4. Sounds that are a little more coherent. Plaits just sounds good overall, but things seem to gel together a bit more.
5. Ozone Elements to maximize everything. That's also a bit of a learning curve also.

Instruments used: Only the Eurorack! Main sound sources are BIA (kick/snare), Plonk (hat), Plaits (lead), Cursus Iteritas (arp), and Dixie II+ (bass).

Emotional tone, I wanted something exciting and groovy and danceable. That's usually not hard to do for me.

An all-in-the-Eurorack techno track that I made to try to exercise a new module, uPlaits by Tall Dog (which itself as a smaller version of Mutable Instruments Plaits). It's playing the repeated sequence that you hear throughout the entire song.

There are a few things I should have done after I tried a few takes - I think I should have applied a few more effects to the Plaits and maybe also set up another set of sequences to switch between. I think I'm kind of outgrowing the Stillson Hammer mk2. However I'm mostly happy with the arp sequence, the drums (BIA for the win) and the rather anxiety-inducing lead. Also, it's easy to accidentally self-resonate the Morgasmatron, so I need to remember not to do that if I don't want ear-piercing sines (like at the end of this recording).

I admit that I didn't really think of an emotional tone before starting, but overall it's an apprehensive emotional tone.

A live House-style jam with a few loops. It's about 7 minutes long. Mixing isn't perfect, there were a few loud parts that I didn't get to fix. A bit of compression post-recording to boost levels.

Done with 5 loops on the Octatrack, a bunch of drum parts on TR-8s, and some sequences on the Eurorack. I made the loops earlier this week for One Hour Compo, but that performance wasn't that good so I did it again.

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!

A Techno Jam on my Eurorack, because when people think of Eurorack, they think of techno. (Or Ambient, or sheer noise, but this isn't one of those). I also used a pedal (Elektron Analog Drive) for the first time.

I am going to the modular meetup today so I decided to work on this instead of my other more produced songs. It's still nice to be able to jam out on the hardware since you can get cool sounds so quickly.

Featured synth voices and effects:

• Dixie II+ and Polaris (Bass)
• Cursus Iteritas + Morgasmatron (Arp)
• ES352 + Springray + Analog Drive (Lead)
• Kick is from BIA and Hats from Plonk

I performed this live in front of an audience of maybe 25 at the New England Winter Synthesizer Festival on March 2. I forgot my recorder so the quality sucks, my partner recorded it on the phone instead. There was a little bit of an attention issue (room setup was non-optimal) so there's a lot of chatter and background noise so sorry about that.

Performed live on a Eurorack synthesizer - it's a 7u 104hp system with a lot of Cursus Iteritas, Dixie II+, E352 Cloud Terrarium, Plonk, Basimilus Iteritas Alter, Stillson Hammer MkII, Steppy, Morgasmatron.

Industrial improv track based roughly off of the improv live performance I did this afternoon at the local Modular Synth meetup. (Hint: The live performance, which I didn't record, was better).

Done in Eurorack modular, featuring mostly Basimilus Iteritas Alter, Cursus Iteritas, DubJr Mk2, and Cat.