Day 1 - Echoes of a new Beginning

Day 2 Messing around with Manipulator and OVOX
Day 3 Tiny notes to make a full sound

Day 2+3 - Fresh Horizons of Tiny Notes

This idea combines two challanges
- only four tracks
- pick 3 presets of instruments

Grabbed Pigments and chose three random presets (Futar Pluck, Glitch Box, Ultra Res Octaver)
One of them was weirdly long and ghostly, so that was a natural start.
The bass is an absolut beast so I tried to use it sparingly.

I eventually expanded to 5 tracks because I just had to hear what this sounded like with a beat (forgive me, Brian..!)

Day 4 - 4 tracks

Today's challenge was simply to make something i 5/4.
This particular beat and rhytm always makes me want to go full folk.

These words are mostly gibberish but some of them are part of a made-up language, I've been using for song-writing

Day 5 - Five-Four

Today's prompt was recording stuff from my environment.
So I recorded my walk from the bike to and through the front door.

The arp came from my key making a bell-ish sound and running that through a Spectral Resonator.
The bass was just a snippet of the recording run continuously also through Spectral Resonator.

Day 6 - Found Sound Orchestra

Today's challenge was related to the number 7 - you'll figure it out;)

Day 7 - Lucky Day

Today's prompt was 8-bit, baby!
It kinda reminds me of some game, but any game from the 8-bit era probably had a tune that was something like this in some part of the game.

Day 8 - 8-bit

Playing around with panning.
Started out by going crazy with LFOs controlling the panning but it got too messy for me.
So instead I opted for taking things really slow and that somehow made it much more exciting for me!

1 Pigments for bas
4 Pigments with different sounds coming cascading in.

Day 9 - Panning Playground

Today combines two different prompts
- "Texture First" which is me exploring mostly singing a one-note drone
- "Call and Respons" where I react to what I had sung in a previous take

Had some fun with Valhalla DSP's Supermassive!

Day 10+11 - Textured Call and Response

Today's challenge was to make something centred arount the good ol' 12-bar blues.
So I I guess this was somewhat that:D

On a side-note:
I didn't at all feel like doing music today.  I was feeling sad and depressed but then I decided "hell no, I'm not gonna miss my jamuary just because of that!"  My mood gradually improved and I ended up spending an hour enjoying myself all the way.

Day 12 - 12-Bar Fun

Today's prompt was all about dynamics - building up to climaxes or the reverse.

Not sure exactly what went through my head when doing this.
Loaded up the Atoms plugin and one sound specifically set the mood:P

Day 13 - Dynamic Shifts

Day 15 - Trying to create percussive melodies using rhythm as the focal point.

I have no idea if I achieved that but I certainly ended up making something, I'd never have come up with otherwise.

I think locking the scale to Hungarian Minor helped on the spook-level.

Day 14 - Rhythm as Melody

Had another of those packed days so I didn't have the best of motivations.
Nor did I have a whole lot of inspiration today but I showed up - and that's what counts, right?


Day 16 - 16-Bit

Distort everything!

I swear, I feel much better than the lyrics would suggest. Both before and after the jam xD

I somehow felt like taking this into the vibe of The Knife / Fever Ray and ended up improvising some lyrics on the fly.
The part about "Grandmother" was a one-take:P

Day 17 - Digital Distortion

Could for sure have gone more crazy with this.
I tried just stretching and squashing clips haphazardly for about 30 minutes to only then realise that changes in long sustained notes don't really come through that clearly.

So I slapped on a delay at 100% at the end and cranked it for the true stretch.

Not all days are masterpieces xD

Day 18 - Stretch and Squash

Today's prompt was to have contrasting sections that feel like morning and evening. This was a strange one for me.  My initial mood was "Alright, cool prompt!".
Kinda liked the chord progression. Then it sounded forced. Then I just wanted to quit but i also couldn't step away from it.

And so this kinda happened.

My favourite Ableton device is the Microfillz preset for Beat Repeat.

Day 22 - Night and Day

Day 23 - Silent partner
- trying to leave space - use silence as a compositional tool.

Today was a strange one. I tried to recreate an effect / sensation / illusion, I experienced in a song where I had the feeling that... and this is going to sound mental.. the feeling that the silence was being panned around.

Problem is, I can't remember the song!  I think it's by Jon Hopkins but I'm still looking.

Anyway, I tried playing around with automating gain, filers and panning. I can't say I succeeded..  But before the synth came in, I almost had the impression of what I was trying to achieve.
I also asked AI to help me recreate (the song cover is AI's attempt at explaining a way to create the illusion)

It was such a crazy effect. But this was a failure, although the great Thomas Edison also had a whole bunch of failed experiments before inventing the actual light bulb.

“I have gotten lots of results! I know several thousand things that won’t work!”

Day 23 - Silent Partner

Day 24 
Woke up early and instead of thrashing about trying to get that one more hour of sleep (which wasn't going to happen), I got up.  This happened.

Today's goal was to make one minute of music.  Curious how that almost took an hour xD

Day 24 - One Minute Wonder

Day 25 is all about contrasting in motion. Specifically the challenge was to create to melodies that moved in opposite directions.

This was a hard one!  It feels so counter-intutive and inharmonious to me that the melodies would always move in opposite directions and never follow each-other.
So many times I wanted to change that but I thought.. no.. leave it..  if you hate it, it's probably good for you to try to accept it:P

Day 25 - Contrast in Motion

Day 26 - Clockwork
- have a metronome or a clock be part of the song

This one turned dark pretty fast. Initially, I wanted to make a dreamy soundscape to get lost in but instead it became this monstrous thing with a terrible ending.
Time is a pretty brutal concept.  xD

Lyrics (in no particular order):


    Killing time
    Robbing time
    Suspend time
    Wasting time
    Losing time
    Gaining time
    Spending time
    Stop time

Day 26 - Clockwork

Day 27 - Create a groove where melodies or rhythms emphasise the offbeats

I wanted to make this all mysterious and kinda got it. 
But I ran out of steam pretty quickly.

Don't know why it had to take off but that seemed appropriate at the time:P

There's something quite amazing about the Reese bass. It's almost spiritual in its sound.
Gatekeeper helped with the rhythm at the end.

Day 27 - Offbeat Grooves

Day 28
Let's go for a dive!

Even though, I've been at this for a month, I'm astounded to find that I still have new music in me.

It's amazing what can come of starting a completely fresh Ableton Live project and just search for "water"  and pick random stuff to throw in.

Added a band-pass filter on the master channel to emphasise the underwater feeling as well as a  Convolution Reverb with the ABLCR Underwater Confession  impulse response.

Once again Pigments had some trusty presets:
- The Sea Remains
- Ice Crack
- Bamboo and Water

Day 28 - Underwater Dreams

Day 29

Not much time to day and too many ideas trying to make their way through.
Initially, I wanted to sing some nice bass vocals over some strings but I couldn't find the right chords.

So instead I found a DnB loop and loaded up Pigments xD 
Wobbling Seq Inc is a crazy preset.  Totally unwieldy!

Whatever... I'm still in the game:D

Day 29 - All about the bass

Day 30
Using toy-like sounds or unconventional instruments to create something fun.

Literally just did a CMD+F and typed in "Toy".

Grabbed a few things that sounded inticing and started MIDI'ing away.

Most sounds are Brian Funk's:
Drums:
- BF77 OP-1 Toy Drums 
- BF155 BPB Yamaha Toy Drums 
Keys:
- BF93 SB Fairlight Toy Organ

Searched for "Toy" in Pigments and found the "Haunted Toy Piano" which was immensely cool. Bas was Turbo Pluck also from Pigments.



Day 30 - Playful Noise

Day 31
Write a piece that feels like a goodbye or closing a chapter.

For some reason, jazz seemed natural for this thing!
So I tried to find some jazzy drums and a chord progression.

The lyrics were more or less improvised on the spot.
Which is also why there's an... unfortunate phrasing towards the very end xD

But I ended up laughing so much over it that I thought "whatever.. leave it there. it's part of the jam!"

Jamuary 2025!
We did it!  Yes!

Day 31 - A Farewell

Fooling around with the equipment.
Succeeded in hooking the iPad up to PA.

Nintendo, dark

Sound smith. I make live looping music more often than not using only my own voice. I'm a singer and beatboxer.

Gomez

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