There's apparently still some life in the three-track/one-guitar approach. I did all the tracking on Saturday in a couple sessions, afternoon and night. The first melodic motif came out in waltz time, so I went with that. There's the usual convolution reverb send and audio effect rack with multi band compression/eq on the stereo out, but otherwise no funny stuff.

The title comes from the historical fact of Shaolin Monastery being founded on Mount Song in 477 CE.

This week's track came at me kind of sideways--while I started with syncopated drums as I often do...the melodic and harmonic components started with keyboards, lending a different flavor, I think. On Saturday I tracked a few bits of guitar, not sure how it'd all come together, and bass on Sunday before collaging the clips. Finally, I tracked a couple guitar phrases to fill in gaps. And...here we are.

Drums: Ableton 64 Pad Kit Jazz with Max Humanizer
Drum Rack of hand claps with Max Humanizer
Piano: PureMagnetik CP-70, acoustic only
Electric Piano: PureMagnetik Rhodes Mark One, through AudioThing Motor
Bass: Epiphone P-J, low-end rolloff with EQ-8
Guitar: PureSalem Mendiola through Ableton Auto-Filter (high-pass and low-pass with drive, Ableton Utility and Cabinet

Sends: Bandpass Auto-Filter with LFO into Echo, Valhalla Supermassive, convolution reverb with high-pass Auto-Filter

Title comes from this being the 66th track since I started doing numerically-based names, and stretches of the famous Route 66 have been removed from maps.

This week started with some rhythms in Ableton's 64 Pad Kit Jazz (ultimately with Max Humanizer)...and then I didn't touch them for several days. Friday evening, I had a chord progression in mind that was a lot slower than the rhythms, so...ended up rejecting that, restoring it to just-faster than what I'd originally written.

I did several passes with the PureSalem Mendiola through the Balls Effects KWB, some with the bridge pickup (left channel, with Glue compressor), and some with the neck (right channel, which also gets some auto-filter bass rolloff). Next a pass with the Epi P-J bass, getting some EQ-8 bass rolloff.

Sends: Ableton Echo, room-sized convolution reverb, and Valhalla Supermassive. Full-chain multiband compression on the stereo mix.

The title comes from NGC 55, a galaxy in the constellation Sculptor.

This week was an exercise in cutting to make something kind of ordinary potentially interesting. I had a chord progression in mind that was fun and satisfying to play, but which sounded...pedestrian. Rather than throw it out, I went for cuts. While I tracked it in a straightforward way, in this rendering, the first half of this piece disrupts the progression by emphasizing off-beats, and the second half restores the cut sections, but removes the parts that are audible in the first part. Two other guitar lines get a similar cutting treatment, without the restoration, and parts of the bassline are cut as well.

Drums: one track of 64-pad rock kit (every seventh beat dropped), and one track of 808 samples. Guitar: three tracks of Res-O-Glas recorded through the Vox Wah, with different sets of low-cut and high-cut Auto-Filter to simulate amp drive. Bass is the usual Epi P-J with EQ-8 low-cut, and a bit of air with a convolution reverb send. Guitars get that send, too...as do drums. There's also a delay send that the drums go to. There's flat full-chain master on the 2-bus.

Title from the use of this week's element (californium) to start nuclear reactors.

A busy week of wrapping up a job search...and submitting a couple versions of a track to a cover tune project. As a result, I approached this week's track a bit more intuitively. I came up with a few drum loops (64-pad rock kit drum rack, and 64-pad fingers-on-snare), and did some intuitive guitar with Res-O-Glas through an effect rack of auto-filter with drive and buffer-shuffler for some randomness. Then I put some more Res-O down (Auto-Filter with drive and cabinet plugin)...and finally some Epiphone P-J bass (direct...maybe I should have rolled off lows here, but I didn't).

Sends: Convolution reverb, two different Echo plugins. Full-chain master on the 2-buss.

Title from the meaning of the root of lanthanum (element 57).

First track of the year! A fairly simple dub jam--606 samples (with automated auto-filter on kick and snare), bass (Epi P-J with EQ-8 rolloff), Ableton's Electric (Crunchy piano with auto-filter drive), and tabla samples. Sends: two convolution reverbs (one large, one smaller) and Echo (Dub Syndicate). Auto-pan on keys and tablas, Full-Chain Master on the stereo buss. I tried adding some other instruments here and there, but they didn't fit, so I'm keeping it simple.

Title comes from sources of iodine, element 53 (because I'm picking up where I left off).

All in the box--drum racks, Impulse, Electric, Tension...and a lot of Auto-Filter wah on a lot--including a delay send channel with auto-filter on the front. (I'd recorded bass for this, but ended up replacing it with Tension Clavinet when the key changed.) It started as a dub thing, but got funkier, and I ended up applying wah to a lot of it. Busy week, so not a lot of time to devote to tracking, but I did spend some time in the evenings making variations to the drum line.