all the tracks i've made, newest to oldest - except remixes and stuff that would get me copyright strikes.

everything

tried to ripoff porter robinson for the melody, but make a dubsteppy drop. came out okay, i think.

2LATE

i think this took like a year or more to finish, but it also marked the first "success" i had making something more dubstep-esque. influenced heavily by must die!

A10NE

written in about a day, during covid lockdowns, after reading about the death of hana kimura

Daydreamer - May Flower

wrote over thanksgiving break while visiting my mom in vt. used a bass preset i had downloaded, but played it way too low, or something

FE4R

i guess this is a remaster or something. i was listening to a lot of champagne drip when i wrote this

Smarty McFly - Anthropogenesis (2020 Version)

i had this project file laying around forever before i managed to turn it into something listenable. i can't remember what the vocal sample is from originally, but i found it via a bring me the horizon song

Smarty McFly - Anxiety (2020 Version)

no one else seems to like the drop in this one, but i still think its cool as hell

Smarty McFly - Desire (2020 Version)

i thought desire was cool so i figured what if i did that but more? again, no one else seemed to like it, but i still think this one bangs

Smarty McFly - Overscan

honestly not 100% happy with how this one turned out, but proud of the fact that I can recognize that, and that it's not going to get any better by continuing to bang my head against it, so I'm just setting it free and moving on to the next project.

sample is from a youtube interview with a corrupt cop, I thought it was kinda cool to rearrange the story to have a more positive arc.

got inspired to do some electro house or whatever this is after going to Portola Festival in September - specifically Skrillex's set (millenial alert 🤓). I used Chicken Soup by him and Habstrakt as a reference while I was composing & mixing this.

one thought I have coming out of this, is that I should pick a concept or a sample or something before I start composing; this track started as "I want to make house" - a more technical concept - and then I realized I needed some kind of vocal and just surfed youtube until I found something. I think it might have come out a little more coherent if I started with the sample or some kind of idea for the track to be "about".

also, I spent a bunch of time agonizing over creating lots of different fills and parts, and then a bunch more time deleting a bunch of them because there was too much going on in the track. I think starting with a unifying concept will also help with that problem, but also, I just need to remember to keep it simple.

Hold On to the Dream

This will be the 100th track in my playlist of originals - I've got 124 files in my "Final Bounces" folder, but some of those are stems or alternate mixes, etc. - so I'm going to consider this my 100th finished original track, which is a cool milestone. I don't remember who said this (maybe Jauz?), but I remember some successful producer say something to the effect of "Don't worry, because the first 100 or so songs you make are going to suck."

This project file was created 4 years ago, which kind of blows my mind. I felt a little depressed and a little frustrated when I realized how old the project file was - and, to be honest, when I realized this was my 100th track. I started playing with Ableton 12 years ago, and sometimes I feel like I just haven't made much progress.

I've been turning all of this over in my head the past couple weeks, and the more I think about it, the more I realize that this project - the project of learning to produce music - feels like a microcosm of my lifelong struggle with perfectionism. Which I guess might not be that surprising or profound, but it certainly feels meaningful to me.

I've only finished 100 songs in 12 years - 8 songs a year, give or take - because I'm afraid to ever call anything finished, worried that if I upload it now, I'll regret it later or be embarrassed of it. This isn't a new revelation; I've been aware of my tendency towards perfectionism for most of life, but awareness hasn't saved me from it.

This 100-song milestone feels like a bit of a turning point though:

First of all, it's one of my favorite tracks I've ever written, and I'm so excited to finally call it finished.

Second, as I was getting ready to post this track, I had the instinct to play it on just ONE more set of speakers and make just ONE more batch of mixing tweaks - but I didn't. I've listened to this render a couples times already, and I like how it sounds, and now I'm uploading it. Done. Here's to finishing lots more songs.

(Side note: This track has been named "Demons" forever - I was going to change it to something about "secret weapons" to reference the vocal, but after writing this, I decided that Demons is a more fitting title).

D3MONS

fell into the endless cycle of tweaking the mix and composition a bit on this one, but managed to tear myself away. It's always a little hard because sometimes the changes are really good - like changing the sub bass to follow the bass plucks in this track - and sometimes they're pointless - like the second compressor that I A/B for 30 minutes before realizing it literally did not make a difference at all.

i wish i had a sixth sense to know when a track has reached like, its platonic ideal...but all i can do is eventually cut myself off and upload the damn thing. 🤷‍♂️

anyway, this song has a couple samples from Breath of the Wild in it and a little 80s drum groove that i really like.

THINK OF ME??

this project file was created in april 2022 - sometimes when i open up old project files, i think "what the fuck was i on?" and other times i'm like, shit this is sick, did i write this?? this track was a bit of both - i thought the melodic portions were pretty cool, and was a little surprised that I had written them actually - but i was pretty...unimpressed with the sound design in the drop sections.

i ended up throwing away almost the entire drop and rewriting it, and i'm actually pretty happy with the final result. it feels pretty cool to be have finished three songs in a row that i feel proud of and satisfied with - i'm not sure if i've ever had that before, honestly. of course there are still things i want to get better at - i think the drop sections in my songs can often feel a little sparse, for example - but i have faith that i'll continue to improve at those things :)

onwards, to #103! i was just looking through my unfinished project files and there is some fire in there waiting to be finished...

TURBOF*CK

there was this video of rick rubin going around a little while ago, where he basically says, "i don't know how to play an instrument, read music, or use a mixing console, but i know what i like and what i don't like, and people find the confidence i have in my taste helpful." it's kind of a silly video - i think i originally saw it as part of a twitter joke - but it got me thinking...

i've written here before about perfectionism, and the endless loop of making tiny insignificant tweaks that can ultimately ruin a song - and certainly ruin the fun of making a song. ultimately, i think a lot of that stems from not trusting my own taste, and trying to find some sort of "objective" answer to the question "does this sound good?" - which is, of course, impossible.

so, while working on this track, i challenged myself to to trust my own taste: no second guessing creative or technical decisions, just go with my first gut instinct. try a sound, do i like it? yes, keep it, no, delete it. i have a sticky on my desk that says (in terrible scrawl) "have strong confident opinions."

the result was that i honestly had a ton of fun working on this one. i'm not perfect - some of the final mixing stages still felt like a bit of a slog - but overall this track was a blast to make, and i'm pretty happy with the result as well.

so, yeah. trust your taste. it's all you have to go off of anyway :)

HACKERZ

believe it or not this track started life a couple years ago as my best effort to rip off SORROW TECH by @mustdiemusic

i feel like the melodic intro, goofy dumb drop vocal, and aggro drop don't really go together...but i also like the track so 🤷‍♂️ also my gf says this is her favorite one yet so i must be doing something right

MIND GOBLINS

i'm pretty happy with this track. the vocal sample isn't the most inspiring, but i do like the way i chopped it up in the breakdowns. i realized i hadn't done anything with sung vocal sample in a while, so i wanted to challenge myself to do something different.

also, i think i'm getting better at recognizing when a song is done - ie. "as good as it's going to get" and moving on to the next one. 

i'm starting to run out of old project files to finish up; i have 5 left, but if i remember correctly, only 1 or 2 of them have a melodic idea figured out yet, so that's exciting.

i had originally hoped to upload 1 track/month this year; this is #7, so I didn't quite hit the target - but i finished way more this year than i have in the past couple years, so i'm counting it as a success. hopefully i'll get one more out the door before the end of the year :)

DIS T  A   N    C     E

ALL IT NEEDS IS A LITTLE BIT OF THE ZIPPY ZAP

absolutely lost my mind trying to master this one, but I'm happy-ish with how it turned out.

made this while watching Must Die!'s masterclass (this is a must die stan account now), and significantly changed my process - the biggest change was bouncing stuff to audio really frequently instead of keeping everything in midi. i got backed into a corner a couple times because i decided i didn't like a particular melody or something and had to go back and rewrite and rebounce everything - but working with audio is also pretty nice. so i think I'll keep playing with that part of my process.

LIED FREGG

tried some new sound design stuff in this one. i was originally gonna upload a clip every week and a finished song every month this year, but i decided that was dumb. art happens when it happens. i think i've gotten good enough / confident enough to know when the song still needs work and when i'm just tweaking stuff out of perfectionism. 

shifting my mindset to think of myself as serving the song that already exists and helping it express itself, rather than thinking of myself as "creating" something. idk if that really makes sense when i type it out, but it makes sense in my head :)

art is by @ben_mort on insta

CORPOCYDE

BEAMSWORD

back to trying some four-on-the-floor stuff - I'm way happier with the way this one turned out than the last time I tried about a year ago. 

this one also felt really easy and fun to make - not sure why but hopefully I can replicate that in the future.

I did want to have some kind of vocal sample for the bridge sections, but I couldn't find anything I liked; I tried recording something but it wasn't coming out the way I wanted it to, so I figured maybe it just wasn't supposed to be there.

FUCK ICE

this one is fine. i think i learned a lot making it though.

DARKNESS

a (mostly) complete record of my journey trying to get gud at making music, since 2012. the only stuff i don't upload is stuff that will get me copyright strikes.

everything

NEKRON.99