Weekly Beats 2024

Weeklybeats 2024 is starting and I wanted to get something done quickly as I knew I wouldn't have much time left during the rest of the week.

This is built around a simple melody on Klevgrand's Speldosa. I absolutely love the sound of it but it is so. hard. to. mix.

I find the track slightly boring, as there's not much happening chord progression wise but I ran out of time in the window that I had.

In the end probably more a sound design exercise than a song writing exercise.

WB2401 It Makes A Sound

Unfortunately I had to skip last week due to some health issues. This week was a bit busy so again, this is more a sketch that shows the potential.

The name is a nod to the all time classic Mango Drive from Rhythm&Sound, which in turn is a remix of Mango Walk.

I don't see this as a sort of reproduction or even remix but more of a study of the spirit and the techniques of the original. 

Produced using the Ableton 12 Beta, but hardly using any of the new functionality (I used "strum" for the second guitar-ish synth chord)

It would by quite easy to stretch this to 5-8 minutes with some melodic variations and some proper dub style echo automations but I ran out of time as I won't have much time during the weekend. (Writing this on friday)

WB2403 Mango Sykkel

This week I stood in my own way, started way too late on Thursday and then ended up with something completely unusable. I thew away everything melodic, just kept the beat and started from scratch.

The sounds are a bit stereotypical, but I like the anthem-ish sound of the super saw synth.

Again, sloppy arrangement, but at least this one has a couple of transitions if a bit random.

WB2404 Drilling Through

No idea what this is. The groundwork, including parts of the pads in the background, the bleepy melody and the two drum loops were done on the OP-1, but then I pivoted to Ableton Live as I was getting nowhere on device.

I tried to add more to this but the song actively resisted.

WB2405 Clamshell

I went into the week thinking that trying to do some minimal techno could be fun. I then unexpectedly had time over the weekend, as I was trying to get rid of some cold viruses. 

This became a fun excersise in time and space with various different time signatures running against each other and constantly changing amounts of reverb on the main pieces. I also had a bit more time for arrangement so not only is this the longest beat this year so far, it probably also has the best breaks and transitions.

If you can't tell, I am quite happy with this one :)

WB2406 Drain The Groove

This is another quick one, all in all something like 3 hours maybe. Still I think I came up with some fun ideas and somewhat executed on them. Arrangement could be better, I would love to have more time to get the mix right (I know that the master compressor somewhat messes up the drum levels), but I'm willing to live with these sacrifices :)

The voice is Klevgrand's Pipa, Synths are almost exclusively Live's Wavetable. I'm quite fond of the pads that are quite simple in design but have enough movement and are quite lush and so give a nice backend to the track.

WB2407 Varifocal

Ran a bit out of time here, so it's a bit on the short side. I love the fact that this does not actually contain any form of kick drum. 

The noise in the background, if you listen very carefully, turns out to be the 3D printer I had running in the background today (not super easy to master with that) that I sampled with a handheld recorder and then did a bit of filtering for it to be not super obnoxious.

WB2408 Oat Milk

Bit of a weird one this week: I am not really happy with the end result and the process was kinda painful with lots of dead ends. In the end the result is somewhat coherent, I think, but also very, very stereotypical. I was going for that particular sound aesthetic, but was hoping for something more interesting.

In the end I am just glad I pulled through and had something to upload. Maybe it's just one of those weeks.

WB2409 Regulators

For a while I wanted to do some actual ambient work. When playing around with the release version of Ableton 12 and the new Granulator III, I stumbled across this preset called Piano Quartz that on its own already started like half of a Nils Frahm song. (Don't worry, I don't want to belittle Nils Frahm, the other 50% are 99% of the work, and also, I love his music). It feels a bit like a cheat, but the result is quite soothing I think. I added some well hidden drums, some rainy ambience and a bit of noodling.

I know this is probably a bit of a downer after last weeks track, but I darn well do what I want here :)

Funny side note: My once beefy desktop machine can't handle the 3-4 voice Granulator, I had to freeze the track which is fun on an 8 minute track.

WB2410 A Very Long Preset

Another surprisingly long one. Heavily inspired by listening to too much Von D, but hopefully able to give it my own spin and atmosphere. Lots of different delays and reverbs, definitely not skimping out on the post processing.

It is developing slowly but I wouldn't have it any other way in this case.

WB2411 This Is Not a Cake

I wanted to do this for a while, sort of to prove myself that I'm able to do it. I am somewhat ambiguous towards the lofi genre and do enjoy listening to the Girl's stream from time to time, but I didn't have to create this to figure out that most of those tracks are relatively low effort.

Still, it was fun to play around with some nice chord progressions and the lead melody. 

WB2412 Stereo Type

Everyone was talking about the Amigo VST for the last few weeks and since I spent most of the 90's in Protracker, and the price honestly made it a no-brainer, I picked it up. This track is supposed to be a slightly modernised throwback into the 90's - gritty samples of questionable sources, distorted 808 basses, etc. etc.

I resampled a couple of synths into Amigo as well, notably the pad and the arp, to give it that grit. In the end I didn't spend as much time with the drum editing as I expected as the sound of that more mellow melodic jungle didn't need it.

This was fun and I think Amigo will part of my toolkit from now on. Definitely recommended.

WB2413 Remember Me

I've been watching a ton of historical documentations on old crafts on this youtube channel: 

https://www.youtube.com/@AlltagskulturenimRheinland

One of them was about preparing flax for spinning, including the threshing to free the flaxseed from the pods. Threshing by hand in a group inevitably produces some sort of rhythm and that's how I ended up sampling

https://youtu.be/9zL34U99U0U?si=LZOlxFn1zlFpdzgS under the CC license.

I didn't spend a ton of time on the track except for arranging the voice samples and making sure the threshing was somewhat in rhythm. Lots of warp markers in these.

WB2414 Flachsdreschen

This started out with a sound exploration in Serum for the stabby sample (now played through AMIGO) that flies in at the beginning. The timing of that sound was a bit odd which prompted me to try to make this a triplet based Drum'n'Bass thing.

I had a bit more time that anticipated on friday and tried to make this a bit more interesting with a couple of nice transitions and breaks but this is still not my biggest forte.

My plan is to reuse that sample next week in a more dub-techno kinda affair, let's see if that idea holds up.

WB2415 No Compromise

The title means "secondary utilization" and is part of the bigger compound word Zweitverwertungsrechte which translates to secondary publication rights and I found this fitting because this reuses the main sample from last week's song. This was a bit of a close shave as I was only able to start on friday and I was lucky in that my SO was unlucky and caught a cold so I basically have an unplanned free weekend. 

Nevertheless tonight feels like I need to submit this, as working on this was a bit annoying. Dub tech stabs are usually a bitch to mix, with the filter sweeps and all, but this one didn't want to gel at all and I still don't think it is particularly well mixed but I tried.

Last week I was pondering how this year feels different in that I don't feel particularly burned out (In both 2014 and 2018 I stopped submitting somewhere around this time of the year with a couple of unsuccessful reboots over the rest of the year) but this week felt a little bit more like, you know, work. Maybe I'll need to pause next week or do a little quick sketch or something so that I can relax a bit. 

In any case, 15 Songs per Year is my current record and I just beat that with just one missing (in week two where I was seriously sick), so I should feel pretty good about this. 

Let's see.

WB2416 Zweitverwertung

I started with this track last Sunday by creating the chords and was initially quite happy with the track. Then I ran into a brick wall over the course of the week. This morning I had an idea and then had to wait the whole day to finally be able to try to get a go at it. This isn't super original or exceptionally funny but I am quite happy with how this turned out in the end.

This uses a sample from freesound:

Amnbiente café México (lluvia, voces, tazas)_02_LR.WAV by vicocintle -- https://freesound.org/s/672829/ -- License: Attribution 4.0

WB2417 Interlude 030

The base of this is the weird percussion/drum loop that I constructed from some samples I recorded when sitting on deck of a ferry that would bring us back home from a short vacation. For a long time I had no idea where this is going but somehow this slightly jazzy downtempo jungle thing emerged.

Uses a sound from freesound: Catterline Harbour.WAV by inchadney -- https://freesound.org/s/95256/ -- License: Attribution 4.0

WB2418 Waiting for departure

This was a fun one, as this almost 100% turned out the way I wanted it to. The only compromise is the lead melody that was supposed to be an improvisation on top of the rest of the beat but I suck too much at keyboard playing for that to be viable and the result being usable.

I really like the way the chords are repeating at a very odd period - I tried to reign them in a bit, but it made things sound worse, so I kept them at a length of 2.2.2, never really matching the beat which is why the beginning of the song sounds so weird.

WB2419 Vibin

So, just to make it clear, the voiceoover is a bit. I am somewhat content with this, I didn't have much time, so this *is* more an exploration of different sounds than anything else. 

It's something!

WB2420 It's Something I Guess

As I have other endeavours that take up most of my time right now, the WeeklyBeats sessions become more and more speedrun sessions. Not the "fruityloops a new beat in 20 seconds" type of thing but this one more or less took an hour. Which is about double of what I had to spare. Again, "It's something".

I'd like to have a more normal week next week, please.

Weekly Beats 2024

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