After some eight years I’ve finally completed my first piece of fan music and released it the night before I departed to 2019 GalaCon when I should have been asleep. Parts of it are kind of rushed to get the song done in time or fell victim to less-than-optimal equipment.

GalaCon (Edit)

GalaCon

Written, composed and originally recorded by the great and powerful Aviators (https://soundcloud.com/aviatorscompositions/constellations), so all credits go to him (except for what I've done to his song).

This is of course a cover of Aviators' classic "Constellations" with a bit of TeiThePony's version thrown in for good measure. It had a somewhat 80s vibe to it from the beginning, so it's only natural that I like it, but being as old-school as I am, I decided to do what felt the most natural for me, go full 80s and do an Italo Disco cover. This included slowing it down to 112bpm, even if this meant stealing six minutes of your precious time.

Took me a while to get it done. I had had the instrumental backing done by 90% in November 2019 already, but couldn't get to complete it. I've finally finished this song (in this original long version anyway) today, on Derpy Day 2020 which is also the last day of the last Hearth's Warming Con. I actually recorded the vocals in my hotel room, but I had to gloss them over anyway since I can't sing.

A bit of explanation concerning the title: I plan to label all my covers as "editions". "Via" is a shout-out to the Italian YouTuber SynthMania who has made quite a bit of Italo Disco with an even more vintage instrument park than mine. And "Alitalia" refers to an airline and serves as a hint to Aviators himself.

Equipment I've used: Akai MPC2500 for the drums (with an external Lexicon reverb on the snare), Dave Smith Instruments Mopho for the bass, Novation KS-Rack for the noise hit, Novation Nova for everything else. Sequencing and instrumental mix were done in hardware, too.

2020-03-01

Constellations (Edizione Via Alitalia)

The name is Pulse Wave, I’m a brony and old-school electronic hobbyist.

Whereas the majority of electronic musicians make their music entirely in the box, i.e. inside a computer, tablet or even smartphone without creating or influencing sounds with outboard hardware, I am the opposite: All my synthesisers, samplers, effects, sequencers and mixers are hardware. I don’t have any vintage analogue machines, though.

Also, I’m not interested in making the music of today or creating the music of tomorrow. My interest is to recreate the (more or less electronic) music of yesterday, and that yesterday is long gone, about 1974 to 1988. After all, being born in the mid-70s, I’m old enough to have experienced the music of the 70s and 80s from a closer point of view than via YouTube.

What’s to expect from me? Well, nothing and at the same time anything.

The Pulse Wave Project

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