I wanted to try a different approach to things this week, and built up a track with some layers of evolving/developing/heavily processed sounds. There's a simple kit of Analog-synth drum hits (this also goes through parallel vocoder processing), Ableton's Light and Shadow Operator synth preset, Collision with the gong preset (going through the filter taps effect), Collision with the Pitch Pad preset, bass (parallel processed with different Auto-Filters: one a low pass only, and one low and high to give a band from 100Hz to 1KHz), and Kastle synth. There are three send channels: two convolution reverbs, and one Max Spectral Delay; there's a lot of send automation as well as auto-pan on almost everything.

Title from the fact that the Triangulum galaxy is M33.

(Track art: By Alexander Meleg - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31...)

This one developed along one direction and changed course a few times before veering into somewhat psychedelic space funkbot territory. I started with tablas and 909 samples, and put them through a vocoder, gate, and reverse reverb, which made them more accents than primary rhythm. I added the usual dry funk kit, but instead of auto-filtering the kick, I just punched up its level significantly--as a result, I think it conflicted less with the bass than it often does. As an x-factor, I added LFO to adjust the bit level of Redux randomly, which pumped the cymbals in a pleasingly weird way.

I tracked a bunch of soft synths and then took them out, finally returning to one soft synth. I tracked bass (through EQ8 to pull down sub-100Hz and side chain with the kick) and guitar (Reuss RF-01 fuzz, Vox Wah, and Auto-Pan with a square-wave tremolo in time), and Bastl Kastle modular synth for flavor.

I used three different convolution reverbs, one cascaded set of delays, and filter delay with LFO auto-filter in front.

Title from the use of the Kastle.

More guitar than I'd thought I'd use. Lots of convolution reverb. Completely synthesized drums.

I wanted to do something ambient this week, and it ended up a bit more dense than I planned, but there three convolution reverbs (two of which, cascading, give that breathing effect), a lot of synthetic percussion, some drum machines, Kastle modular synth, and slowed-down singing bowl (as well as slowed-down in-my-tracking-space ambience). Title from the bell-like tonality of the singing bowl, and the fact that 15 is the fifth Bell number.