A quick little beat I made. Not much going on but I had to make something and couldn't come up with anything big, so I decided to get back to the basics. This is more of an exercise for me than anything, but I liked it so I decided to share it.

Sweat Lodge

Aberdeen

Chops Volume 1

I remixed the original track. Nothing about the composition changed but I cleaned up the imaging and balance and tried some things with New York compression and an 1176 Peak Limiter emulator plugin

Tulip Remastered

Another unmastered track from the Maschine. I wanted to attempt something faster this time. The drum track takes influence from the production of Derek E. Miller of Sleigh Bells. I really like the heavy feel of distorted drums, especially on the kick. I'm trying to move away from my dependence on sampled string sounds, but the tone of staccato strings just worked too well once I got this rolling. 

Bricks

Here you go. A five minute banger. I tried practicing separating out the different elements' spectral content, to avoid a lot of boost in one band, but that could also be due to the weird acoustics in my current environment, who knows. I wanted something that sounded like an old 8-bit side-scroller, without the whole "8-bit" part. Plenty of distortion and overdrive, with some lush pads on the quieter parts. I'm trying to forgo my reliance on strings for the time being, and explore what else my synths can offer me.

Precision Strike

This is definitely a return to form for my work with Downeast, very cinematic. I decided I needed to do more percussion layering so I threw some ethnic and uncoventional rhythym patterns in there. The track started with the synth pluck that dominates the track. I pecked away on the Maschine and came up with that pattern. after that I just built up, focusing more on the basics before adding more instruments.

Tulip

A house track I did in a bit of sprint, from conception to sweetening, to completion, doing as much as possible with a minimal workflow.  The beat sits pretty at 128 BPM, I threw some lush atmospheres in and subtle ambiance at all levels of the track.

A Vernal Pool

A short UK Garage style track I threw together while playing with the free copy of MASSIVE that NI so graciously gave out with the new MASCHINE 1.8 update.

Wine Cellar

This is basically an extended remix of Quarter. The Instrumentation is basically untouched, the structure of the composition is altered a little. The biggest changes come in the sweetening and effects I applied, using techniques I've developed since I first wrote this track.

JP Sweeney