An exercise in bringing a piece together with edits. I'd tracked a number of compatible melodic and chordal bits against each other, but there wasn't a defining idea, other than the first theme's emergence in 3/4. (Surprisingly, that theme does appear near the middle.) There are the usual choices here: three parts, no inline effects, but a send to a convolution reverb, and the stereo bus compression/eq.

The title comes from NGC 488, the Whirligig Galaxy in Pisces.

Travel had me starting very late on this one, only doing some initial beats in 6/8 (Ableton 64-pad rock kit) and bass on Friday night, adding a bit of Operator (1st and 3rd partial) late Saturday. Initially I'd thought of adding guitar, but...I found myself enjoying the sparse dub-like quality of this, even though it's not that heavy on the dub delay. It needed something else at the end, so I added three tracks of Simpler with different field recording samples.

Sends: Convolution reverb (with Auto-Filter bass rolloff), Echo (Dem Ducks, with tweaks). Full-chain master on the 2.

Title from a quality of berkelium, this week's element--it emits low-energy electrons, so it's safe to handle...but on the other hand, it decays into the very-radioactive californium, so...if you have the opportunity to handle any, just don't.

This week's track started with the two drum patterns (Electro Dub kit and 64-pad rock kit) that together had a slow, off-kilter groove with each other. I didn't get around to tracking until Friday evening (one whole set of Fahey-tuned guitar that I didn't use, fake Mellotron that I didn't use, either). Saturday I did bass and Epiphone Moderne (Reuss RF-01 and Vox Wah, and also a track of non-distorted Moderne with wah). I extracted a track of unintentional sounds from the fuzz channel, and arranged them throughout for some texture; I'd toyed with the thought of building the piece around them, but opted to go for something less outside this time.

Sends: two convolution reverbs (room ambience, weirder room ambience on the fuzz guitar) and one echo (automated send on the one drum). There's a lot of EQ-8 to roll off low frequencies on the bass and on the electro-dub kit. And some M4L Humanizer on the drums. Full-chain master on everything.

Title from one of the earliest uses (fishing sinkers) for this week's element, lead.

Kind of a chill-out vibe this week. I was hearing some syncopated drumming, so put up a 64-pad jazz drum rack, then some Puremagnetik Rhodes as chords and leads. Saturday night I tracked Epi P-J bass (through the Balls Effects KWB, and with EQ-8 and Cabinet for tone shaping) and Epiphone Moderne (through Vox Wah, both with and without Reuss Effects Repeater Fuzz. Without involved high-pass and low-pass Auto-Filter with drive.). A last pass involved adding some percussion and balancing some chords that weren't quite compatible...and here we are.

Sends: two different Echo plugins (based on vintage presets) and a convolution reverb. Full-Chain Master on the master channel.

Title from the meaning of the name of the village of Ytterby, site of the mine where this week's element (ytterbium) was discovered.

Kind of like last week's, this week's tempo was all over the place before I tracked guitar and bass. Finally it seemed like uptempo dub, so here we are. Percussion is the 64-pad Jazz Drum Rack, 64-pad Dub Techno kit, Impulse of some hand drums I have, and hand claps. Keys are Puremagnetik Mark I Rhodes, Drawbar, and CP-70. Guitars: baglama-tuned Heit Deluxe for clean-ish rhythm, and Epiphone Moderne (Reuss RF-01 Fuzz and Vox Wah). Bass is the usual Epiphone P-J (with EQ8 to roll off lows).

Sends: auto-filter to roll off lows before a convolution reverb (marble foyer), and two Echo channels, one Dub Syndicate with high-pass, and one Analog Triplet with an LFO-bandpass filter in front. Full-chain master on everything, and auto-pan on the keys and percussion.

I submitted this, and then listening back...didn't like the lower mids. Here's a corrected mix (still on Sunday!)

Title from the use of erbium in lasers..