I wanted to finally try to cover something, so I chose a simple song from back in the day that I used to love as a kid. "Mabe Village" from Link's Awakening, the game boy game. 

It always got stuck in my head and I thought it was a great little tune. Thankfully, it's also only two parts, so I was able to figure it out and transcribe it without being completely overwhelmed (and also instead of just finding the midi file like I probably could/should have). 

It's pretty faithful, but slower, and orchestrated with some liberties here or there of tiny extra melody flourishes. Otherwise, it's definitely the song, haha. Hope you enjoy!

Mabe Baby

Another mellow track to kind of chill in the background. Tried using my Classical acoustic for this one, which is pretty tough for me with the wide strings so it's easy to flub some notes, and I'm recording it in a boxy ass room with a low grade condenser mic, but I'm happy enough with it. Could have spent a lot more time trying to get cleaner takes but eh, I'll say it has character, a little rough around the edges. 

wasn't sure how this one was going to come out but I'm satisfied enough, and hit my goal of having it mostly be guitar based. Will probably use my electric in the future, but doing this one did make me want to get a real acoustic again sometime in the future.

Thanks for listening!

Journal 07 - Attakai

Where do I begin with this cannoli? 
Writing this one dragged on far too long and it deviated pretty heavily from my initial goals. I was trying to do a guitar based song that was on the happier side, but over the course of working on it sporadically it evolved into what it is now.

There's part of it that I like for sure, but I don't think it quite works together as a whole for what I was looking to do. It feels like at least two songs, but it flows decently enough from start to finish. Initially I was planning on re-recording parts after I found what I liked, but it didn't become the case and so a lot of it is fairly sloppy. It was difficult for me to remember how to even play a lot of the parts without spending time re-learning them (since parts were recorded often days of more than a week apart), but that's alright. If I was fonder of the result I probably would have taken the time, as it is it was an exercise that I'm glad I didn't abandon, as I came close to just leaving it be several times. 

Another issue was that it ballooned to four total guitar tracks, when I should probably just keep it to 1-2 until I was done with it, then added extra for whatever flavor I'd want. It became harder to manage because of this. It also made me want to get a bass guitar to use to accompany the guitar instead of always relying on synthesis. I'd really like to make a 'traditional' band piece song with drum/guitar(s)/bass/vocal. Some day.

I used Ableton Live 10 for DAW and drums, my SG, and Repro-1 for the bass. Tossed a quick Ozone 9 on top to help with light mixing at the end.

as usual, thanks for listening!

Outlooker

One of my friends was having a time experimenting with some 7/8 and 7/4 tracks and I thought it might be fun to explore some polyrhythms so I grabbed my iPad and made this in a couple of hours in NanoStudio 2. I forgot how much I liked using NanoStudio! I'm sure he'll add audio tracks, any day now... haha!

Joking aside, for how quickly this one came together I'm quite happy with the result, it was only intended to be a 30-40 second experiment but I was able to coax something a little more whole from it.

Thank you for listening!

Polytown

OP-1's firmware was updated to allow USB streaming of audio so I wanted to try it out. I think ultimately for me it's probably just easier to plug into my focusrite interface going forward but it was definitely a good excuse to take out my op-1 and make a simple track with it. I gotta use it as a sound source more often, it's really fun and straightforward to use!

thanks for listening!

Blossom Valley

This was originally meant to be another lighter song, as the intro indicates, but after I brought in the guitar I just kept kind of following what came out naturally and it became this whole other thing. First time for me using a bass guitar directly recorded into my interface as well. 

It's very different from my others and I'm not sure how to categorize it, that being said I'm satisfied enough with what it became. Thanks for listening!

Trailgazer

Been a while since I've done much music in my spare time. Ableton 12 dropped and I was playing with the 'Lost and Found' pack and was having fun just messing with the Sparkle Kit drum preset. Got something going and decided to use other sounds from the Lost and Found pack, I like many of them! This is what came out. Thanks for listening!

Sparkle Kit

Another attempt at making music, had some energy after the last one and wanted to keep the ball rolling so I tried playing with some arps and a small chord progression to start with and it developed into this. I enjoyed taking some time before it really unwrapped itself but I start to worry the slow intros might lose the listeners interest. Will probably try getting a song quicker up to speed in the future but for now I will let myself have this one. Pretty happy with it over all think it has a neat sci fi feel, I can certainly feel some specific inspirations in there from old games like Metroid. Thanks for stopping by!

Note: This is a reupload, I did my best to improve the mix

Strange Waves

Wanted to just have some fun with this one, tried learning about how to use the vocoder in ableton and then just built a song off the sample I made. No specific aim for this one outside of just learning, I enjoyed making the main line and then working outwards. Had some trouble with the overall composition but I think I'll focus more on that particular element in some future ideas. Have a great day!

Ponder

Re-Upload since I accidentally exported the first one in Mono! 
A friend suggested I try doing a version of this song so I gave a shot at doing a calmer paced version! Kind of lofi inspired but also kind of not. It was a great suggestion and exercise!

The Moon Theme (DuckTales cover)

trying to learn how this music stuff works

bounch

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