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.

Something something flying in the sky watching the world from above while kittens are in the rocket

Yes, it's this melody again. I created it during One Hour Compo, then I tried to redo the song during WeeklyBeats 1 2.

THE SONG'S BACK! WeeklyMusic gets a turn at this because I want to use the melody in something but the song hasn't really come together, ever. That said, I think it's much more successful this time around because I basically shortened it a ton.

BONUS: I mashed it up with this other One Hour Compo song so really, nothing in this song's original, other than me slicing things up from old music.

And you know what, the result is possibly better than the original songs.

It does need some work. The beginning need some more texture and timbre - and mostly in some double-checking the arrangements and lots of production work, levels, mixing, etc.

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!

May 28, 15:30-17:20. Not in a good mood today. Nonetheless, songwriting time means songwriting time. Also, I borrowed a Korg Electribe EMX-1 to see if I want to buy it so I have to try it out and see if it's something that'll inspire me to do interesting things.

A few things I learned:

- Analog synthesizer tuning sucks

- Korg has some pretty cool SFX in it, but I'm still not clear if I really need a groovebox like it.

- I really really lazied out on this track, it needed a few more parts.

Total time: 1h 50m

Sun, Apr. 23: 13:00 - 15:10. An attempt at a jam.

I'm trying to make more interesting jams. I heard a few things from some other synth guys recently, like:

- They like to use multiple short phrases (8 or even 4 steps)

- Different time steps

- Cut off steps every once in a while

- Use reset a lot

I figure that I can try out some of these techniques in a live jam and see how it goes. A lot of the techniques they mentioned apply to a Eurorack format but I should be able to do a lot even without it.

Total time: 2h 10m