A chill cover of "Breathe Again" from Carole and Tuesday, released as part of the Voices from Mars fanzine.

Featuring M.M. on vocals.

Carole and Tuesday Fanzine

Breathe Again - Chill Remake feat. M.M. (Carole and Tuesday)

Over The Rooftops

Clouds around the skyscrapers, your battles are invisible to those below. Your mind is tough, but it is not free.
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A song for WeeklyBeats.

Track notes: A live recording again after many takes (but all in one session).

A DnB urban (I guess) style track, fast-paced and exciting (I hope). I wanted something that reminded you of a futuristic cyber setting, and I also wanted to incorporate some gritty, dirty sounds. I also wanted to not do a straight up four on the floor track.

I spent a lot of time with throwaway ideas this week, including trying to make Andromeda patches that didn’t suck, and in the end I ended up not using any of them.

I also spent a bit of time learning how to get nice sounds out of the Future Retro 777 and figuring out the best knob-turning to get good stuff.

The new setup doesn’t involve software sequencers, so I have to now start keeping song parts in my head. I haven’t yet figured out how to do good chord changes in this setup yet so these styles of songs work well thus far until I can figure it out.

One thing I’ve also realized is that doing stuff live is really time consuming. It’s not really principled for me and I discover a lot of things by accident, like how song pacing should go and when I should introduce new instruments. One thing about doing live takes is that I’m starting to get more of a sense of how song structures should go to maintain interest. While synth jams are cool, as a listener I often find myself getting bored with the 16-bar repeated sequence so I try to add enough elements to keep people hooked.

I do mix in software in the end and add software effects, mostly compression, EQ, and reverb.

Here’s a short rundown of the setup I have going:

Kilpatrick Carbon. This is a 6-track sequencer. The tracks are mapped as:

1. Nord Lead voice 1
2. Nord Lead voice 2
3. Nord Lead voice 3
4. Nord Lead voice 4, which is routed to the EXT in of the Roland TR-8.
5. Dave Smith Mono Evolver
6. Alesis A6 Andromeda

The Carbon’s synced up to:

Roland TR-8
Future Retro 777

Both of those have their own onboard sequencers. (The Mono Evolver does too but I find it hard to use.)

I control the Carbon Kilpatrick with a Linnstrument using MIDI IN.

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Tuesday, Oct 25, 20:30 - 22:30.

Doing more live setups. Today, I’m doing a lot of pattern editing to set up some decent-sounding loops. One thing that’s pretty clear to me after doing this for a bit of time is that I’m actually much faster doing loops and patterns on the computer than on x0x-style sequencers.

Did a lot of sound editing for some whacky effects and an overall song bass.

Carbon: Song Bank 3
Notes: TR-8 Pattern 9
777: Song 1 (plays Pattern 9 A A E G)

Sat, Oct 15:45 - 17:55. Mucking around with more sound design, doing some pattern creation for the track as well. One interesting thing about the sequencer is that it forces me to compose all of my individual parts, but at the same time I have to try to remember where they all appear in the song too. Currently I don’t have chord changes because I don’t have all of my instruments synced up either.

Sat. Oct 22:30 - 23:00. More sound editing.

Sun. Oct 9:00 - 9:30. More sound editing. The andromeda patch I had going was terrible, that thing’s difficult to program :( 

Sun. Oct 10:00 - 12:05. I don’t really have a good workflow yet. Still storing a lot of patterns in my head.

Some software effects. I’m kind of tired, I think I spent a lot of time working with sounds rather than on the composition.

Total time: 8h 10m. I think this must be the longest I’ve spent on a WeeklyBeats song.

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Over the Rooftops

Look upon the space sky above. Look upon the bold lights below. Ascend no higher, hero.

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Originally, I did this for last week but I missed the deadline by 30 minutes.

A synthesizer jam. I wanted everything to be airy and a little breathy feeling. As usual, mostly hardware with software effects. All done in a continuous live take as a live jam (though it took many takes of practice to get a version I was happy with).

For those who like setups, it’s pretty similar to how it’s been in the past few weeks:

* Nord Lead 2x (with 4 parts. I do most of my leads and pads and some basses with this)
* Dave Smith Instruments Mono Evolver Keyboard (I did one of the leads with this)
* Alesis Andromeda A6 (I did a relatively quiet background pad with this)
* Future Retro 777 (rythmic bass)
* Roland TR-8 (drums)

I also used various SoundToys plugins, Logic Studio’s compressor/EQ/other stuff, and iZotope’s Neutrino.

The Top of the Towers

The Shining Underground. Keeping it low-key for now. Another ambient song. Enjoy. Spent very little time on composition, much more time on the sound design aspects. As I mentioned, I wanted to go with that kind of “cyberpunk ambient” feeling.

Steel Crevices

I did this for this week's WeeklyBeats. There's some low effort elements in there (the stupid noise sweep didn't quite come out right) and a few mistakes (I do these live) and if you listen to my other stuff you might notice that there's a reused melody (because I reused a song project out of laziness) but overall, it's a cheesy dance track.

Weekly Beats 51

This would have been done for WeeklyBeats #52, but it seems like their site had an issue and is marking Week 52 uploads as Week 53.

Pensive Beginnings
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We prepare to deploy. Stay focused.


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Last song of the year. Well, technically the first, but it’s week 52.

I think what I’d like to do is to focus on weekly “exercises” for the coming year rather than necessarily making complete songs. I’d like to work on some exercises (especially focused on composition and songwriting) and then use those in a short song that I’ll upload weekly. More importantly I’d like to try to make these new composition tools a habit.

Sun, Jan 1, 11:50 - 12:10. Time to revisit suspended chord harmony. I used them in a prior song a while ago . Most of this time was spent reviewing what they are and how they’re effectively used.

14:15 - 16:45.

Total time: 2h 50m

Pensive Beginnings

A day of asteroid mining - sitting in the sun and fighting for survival.
Enjoy this chiptune theme for a day in space.

This track is a remix of a One-Hour Compo track that I did almost six years ago. I really liked the melody in that track, but it didn't go anywhere, so I've always dreamed of continuing it, but never was able to think of how to end it. Making something like this reminds me what I like about composing.

Some track notes:

- I used Logic Studio X, a bunch of built-in Logic Plugins (including Alchemy, ES1, ES2), Nord Lead 2x, Future Retro 777, MASCHINE 2, Stutter Edit, Valhalla Shimmer, and Neutron. There may be other plugins here and there.

From The Dust

The Weekly Music-making submission - a little over two hours at the computer. Needs some cleaning up, I might do that later.

A lot of Nord Lead doing the saws and leads. Some of the bass was Alchemy. Arps were a Massive patch with Logic effects. Drums were a combination of MASCHINE samples and the Basimilus Iteras Alter module on my Eurorack, which was actually super amazing and really brings me some joy.

16:55 - 19:01 (2h 7m).

Weekly Music 2017

Impressions At The Alter (two-hour WIP)

I kind of rushed the production because I ran up against the WeeklyBeats deadline. I might have to go back to it and polish up the sounds a bit more.

WeeklyBeats 2018

Deadly Virus Network

I wrote this for National Solo Album Writing Month (November 2018). It is roughly seven tracks but it's recorded live as a single set.

Recorded from a Eurorack modular synthesizer.

emeraldarcana

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