I was inspired this week to write some stuff in weird time signatures and decided to finish strong with two songs (plus I had the week off, so I had the spare time :)).

I ended up really liking both of these. The main riff of The Squeaker was supposed to be 7/4 but it ended up actually sounding more like 5/4 in the guitar part, so the drums just end up sounding weirdly syncopated (which I liked). After writing most of that one, I decided I really wanted something in 7/4, and had an idea for one that I turned into Clocked. I think I'll revisit it in the future.

Posting every week by the deadline was great motivation that helped me to push through even when the song was feeling rough. I learned so much through the year, and even though I've still got a ways to go, I'm much happier with my songwriting abilities now. (Mixing is still a bit rough, but eh, I'll probably take some lessons this year to remedy that.)

It was a lot of fun seeing the stuff other folks worked on every week and I definitely picked up several tricks here. Hope y'all have a good new year full of plenty of composing :)

The pain. The fury. The sweat. Man vs the Thing.

For this one, I brought together most of the techniques and plugins I've accumulated over the last couple of months to put it together. I'm really happy with how it turned out. I didn't have any trouble writing it either, it just kinda popped out :)

Sort of a boring chord progression, but I think the production turned out nice on this one.

Just strung together a couple of riffs for this week's song. I'll try to do something more structured next time.

Another one that I kinda rushed. With Thanksgiving coming up next week, I'm hoping to have a bit more time to dedicate to the next one.

(Edit: added a v2 to slightly improve the mixing in the verse section).

This one came out a bit weird, but bits of it are catchy so I kinda like it. I've recently been trying to program my drums to follow the melody more (since I'm a fan of music that does that). Some of the fills might feel a bit awkward, but I think I'm getting better at it. There's less of a bass focus in this song, which kinda sidesteps my recent muddiness issue. But I should really tackle something drum/bass heavy next time so I'm forced to practice mixing :P

Tried doing industrial/glitch metal. I had a lot of fun with the sound design, but I'm still struggling to get a clear, un-muddied bass a lot of the time.

Finally made a rock one that I like :))). The solos in this song are significantly less stilted than the ones in previous attempts. I also think I got the drum/bass mixing a lot better in this one (but let me know if there's any muddiness I could clean up -- I'm still learning to recognize it). Lots of little problems in the performance of this one, but I wrote the entire thing today after scrapping the rest of the material I was working on this week, so I'm not too upset about them :P

Another rock one. I don't feel like a lot of the rock stuff I've been writing is particularly interesting to listen to. The riffs just aren't catchy enough, and I think I missing something when it comes to layering the rhythm sections... Just gotta keep iterating, I guess :)

another quick one -- more of an idea than anything else... I'm not a huge fan of this one, but I guess it's relatively complete at least :\

a quick one because I was focused on some other projects this week

I liked this one a lot while I was working on it, but I'm afraid I overworked it a bit...

There are some ideas in this one that I might revisit later.

Tried for something heavier this week. This was one of my more solid attempts, but it wasn't quite as heavy as I wanted. NEEDS MOAR BASS

I think the mixing turned out pretty well on this one, but let me know if y'all have any feedback on it. I'm really trying to step up my mixing game.

Went for something a bit beyond what I can reasonably manage to record in a week with good quality. My sweeps especially were a bit off, and most of the guitar parts could do with rerecordings. I tried to add some extra pads to the verse right at the end of making it, and my daw kept screeching to a halt so I canned them. I also ended up spending way more time trying to mix than I anticipated (and still didn't get time to properly mix the synths) and ran past the deadline. Ehhhh I'm just calling this one done for now.

Heh -- I don't know what I'm doing with drums or mixing :P

Another rock one -- I kinda rushed it because I was apartment hunting for most of the week, so I only really worked on it for 3 evenings rather than the 4 or 5 I would normally do.

I was really hating this one for the majority of the week, but actually managed to salvage it in the last couple of hours of working on it. The lead themes are pretty weak, but the surrounding production I think turned out decent. I might try again with another rock song next week, but I probably have to make a few more covers before I get better at it :P