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.