my next big project is a concept album. i had the idea that each 'character' should probably have their own sonic palette, which would be effectively in conversation throughout the album. one such 'character' is... The Machine. and so this week i thought i would sketch out roughly the sorts of sounds i could imagine for it. this track will not wind up ON the album, but if i polished it up a little, these sorts of 'sketch' tracks might be a fun EP, i don't know.
like last week, i wound up just improvising all of the parts (sometimes on half speed... every note was played by hand rather than arpeggiated, i wanted total control!), then splicing together the decent bits into something more coherent. this worked out well for the machine because like a generative AI, it never does quite the same thing twice. i would probably consider a more focused composition process for the other 2 main characters.
i also added some old movie samples from various sample packs. given the genre i was working in, it just felt incomplete without them. rest in peace, the days of being able to just record your movie samples by hand from home and mostly get away with it. those sounded like fun times.
sadly i started super late (saturday!!) so had barely any time to spend on this. it's certainly not polished. i didn't have time to mix the drums except as a single drum bus (i need to make a project template that will split my battery channels for me. it's getting silly how many times i regret not doing that.). but this challenge is definitely helping me get faster. my first track took 8 hours for 2 minutes of music, vs this one taking 6 hours for 5 minutes.
Please consider listening with headphones as there is some swearing in the lyrics. As previously, I would be happy to replace with a clean version if required by the moderators or site admins.
This one is super close to the edge on the weekly deadline. I actually started making an entirely different track at the start of the week, became frustrated with the process of the sound design for that track... recorded demo vocals for this one on an impulse since I had just finished writing them. Those are still the vocals in the track because I had no time to rerecord with my proper setup. I had originally hoped to do some kind of... screamed vocals which I could not hope to sing in the middle of the night on a school night.
SO MUCH tweaking I wish I could do, if not for the terms of the challenge. But for now, I'm pretty happy with the overall vibe, even if it's rough around the edges.
Though this is a song about chronic insomnia and the general (gestures vaguely) of the world right now, this has truly been a helpful challenge in allowing me to channel my sleepless nights into better things. :)
