Souless Touch (Acoustic)

art from orchis_lox (Momo Ayase from DanDaDan)

Bailão Do Antares (frikke remix)

"You want to take a crack?  I'll give you a smack.
I'm a plus, you're subtract."  

Playing with a few new toys on this latest Interbay track (did you know that a new, never before heard by ANYONE, Interbay track is being posted EVERY DAY here on SoundCloud?  You should follow this page so you don't miss any.  AND you should go back and check out yesterday's posted track, "What A Way To Go"--it is a fun track and it got absolutely slept on!)  

Where was I?  Oh yeah, new toys.  

Plugins, whether effects or instruments, are tools for computer based music producers to be able to get the sounds that are in their head into a a shareable product so that you can also hear those sounds--but, they are also toys to experiment with, to find something unexpected, unplanned, and to go beyond the limits of one person's imagination.  

Two of the new toys (new to me, at least) feature prominently on this track. Zynaptic's Pitchmap Colors is the first one--using this plugin took a bog standard chord of mine and turned it into a whole vibe.  This track wouldn't sound like this without that vibe--and I have just barely scratched the surface with what I might be able to do with that effect plugin.  

The other new toy used for the first time on this track is the Typecast Text To Speech program.  In the past, I've either used royalty-free vocals (that don't always say what I want them to say), or Icarus-endangering sourced snippets (which carries with it some inherent risks...however much fun they are), a narration-specific text to speech program (much love to the Elevens for making many of these SoundCloud Exclusives possible)...but this is the first time that I could craft vocals from my words in a rap flow.  Now, I still have to do a lot of work on it to make it fit--and I'll admit, this is a skill that I intend on improving as I use it more in the future.  

But, for a first try?  I think it gets the job done.  

Of course, your mileage may vary.  

I worked backward from the royalty free sung vocal hook and built a "don't call it a comeback" narrative around it.  Granted, the full vocal and the narrative don't match up exactly--but the Tesla Cybertruck proves that "matching up exactly" may be overrated (or, depending on your keen eye, undervalued.)  

Also, don't read too much into the thumbnail today.  Falling back into line is a hard thing to find a visual representation for...  

There's a lot going on musically in this track (another new toy, Drumtraqs, provides the old school drums you'll hear in parts and there are a couple of new synth sounds making their way into the final mix of an Interbay track as well.)  

There are parts of this track that give me a Talking Heads, Remain In Light-era feel.  Not sure if you'll feel that, but I do.  Similarly, there's a section where I get a "Body Language" by Queen connection.  

Mea Culpa:  there are a couple of rough transitions here that might offer the opportunity for a re-edit/remix someday, but nothing so painfully bad that I couldn't share this original version with you today.  

Let me know if you agree by giving it a listen.  

And, if you like it--like it!  
Do all the things!  
Please!  
Thank you!

"Falling Back in Line" *SoundCloud Exclusive*

"I don't mean to flex, but..."  

The whole idea of me "flexing" to anyone about anything is, frankly, ludicrous--but producing this track, "Flex", allowed me to "flex" certain creative muscles that don't get much exercise.  

(Have I said "flex" often enough already?  Well, get used to hearing it a lot when you click play and listen to this latest Interbay track!)  

The rhyme style on this track is old school.  The funk is definitely old school, with a few nods to the Minneapolis sound that I grew up with...as well as some of the hard club funk from my dj'ing days.  

Like many funk songs, the structure is a bit looser than either most pop songs or most dance songs--it's about feel, and this sure feels funky to me.  

Skritchy guitars, wet and thick synths...and an unrelenting (MF Doom inspired?) drum sound.  I think it works.  

As always, the ultimate test is whether YOU like "Flex" by Interbay--and the only way to take that test is to click play and give it a listen.  If you like it, let me know!  Give it a like!  Repost it! Share it! 

And, so you don't miss any of these daily (so far!) Interbay posts, make sure you follow Interbay's page!  

(And if you don't like "Flex"--insert frowny face here--give me one more chance, because tomorrow's track will be something different.  Not that I know what tomorrow's track will be, but tomorrow's track is always something different!  Hmmmm, is THAT a flex?)    

"Flex" *SoundCloud Exclusive*

主催イベント''ハッピーグルーヴ ep3'' テーマソング
https://x.com/happy_grooove

Into the Groove

glaive - icarus (nathanchko edit)

When you hit play on today's Interbay track (posting new tracks every day, so far!), you're going to hear some very bright and brittle horns.  That's not what you typically get in an Interbay track.  

Then, a loping drum break comes in--giving a very chill vibe (what people of my generation called, for a few years, "world music"...because sometimes it was difficult for us to absorb that there were whole parts of the world with as many niche genres as we had in ours, only we couldn't be bothered to learn all of them...so we took a Sharpie, wrote on a cardboard box "WORLD MUSIC" and shoved it all in there.  Mea Culpa, but I'm working on learning all I can.)  

If you've followed this Interbay music project for any length of time, you know how little respect I pay to hard genre walls or style segregation.  Throw it all in a blender, hit puree...and VOILA!  A tasty Interbay smoothie!  And perhaps no track exemplifies that approach more than this one.  

I feel like Stefon (the Mulaney written, Hader performed SNL character) when trying to describe this track.  "This Interbay has everything.  Jazzy horns, synth pop keyboards, dirty low-fi grinding bass, dancehall organ, soulful vocals, afrobeat flourishes...and a Zombie Larry King singing songs from Hedwig and the Angry Inch."  (OK, maybe not the last one--but the rest are accurate.)  

This is another track where I feel like a remix at some point might be in order.  Though I thought it was cool when I did it, today, listening to the section near the beginning where it sounds like the volume rather dramatically gets louder five times in succession...and it really doesn't,  I'm not sure the effect works.  It might just sound like a mixing mistake (same with the incredibly bright horns.  Maybe I need to throw a french horn or a trombone in there so it is less brittle?)   There's also some fuzzy (but not overpoweringly so) distortion on a bass synthesizer line that I wanted to sound "lo-fi" but, again, I worry it sounds more like a mistake than a choice.  (I swear, it WAS a choice.)  

But, because it is both SO Interbay AND SO different at the same time, I couldn't wait to share it with you...and if I second guessed EVERY decision I made, I wouldn't be able to post new tracks every day (so far!)  But, just know that I might revisit this one in the future.  

Considering how dark Interbay songs can get, I think this is a nice bright sunny day in comparison.  Like a backyard party where people can dance if they want to and they don't have to worry about looking cool doing it--they can just vibe.  And now, so can you!  

Listen, please!  Like, Comment, Share, Repost, Playlist and Follow would be awesome too!  

PS--Bonus Interbay points for anyone who can sing along with the last vocal part of this song.  Good luck (but don't pass out trying to hold the last note long enough.)

"You're By My Side" *SoundCloud Exclusive*

DISCLAIMER-1:  Today's Interbay track has NOTHING to do with Coldplay.  I had no idea they have a song called "The Sky is Full of Stars" (I saw stories about the kiss cam scandal, but didn't know there was a song specific to it.)  I only learned about just as I was about to upload this track.  

What's funny to me about that is that the decision to call this track "My Sky is Full of Stars" was one of the last things to happen.  For most of this track's life, it was known as "Hello, Mr. Kendrick"--from the old movie sample that starts and ends the track.  

DISCLAIMER-2:  Despite a couple of references to Mr. Kendrick, this track has NOTHING to do with Kendrick Lamar.  My kid is the hip hop head...and I only know what I know of modern hip hop by osmosis through them.  

I was certainly a hip hop and rap fan for years and years--and for years, spinning hip hop or r&b was certainly expected for the dj gigs I had--only in the last few years before retirement did I switch to only the various genres of uptempo dance music that I suppose we'd now call EDM.  (And even then, I'd find ways to mix some hip hop in--if only to drop acapellas in sped up to 45rpm -8%.)  

But, though I've loved it and I've worked with it...I have no right to claim the culture.  This track is me as a tourist, blending my own synthpop/electronic sensibilities with tempos and vocals from a genre I don't feel entirely confident in my ability to produce anything of merit.  

Yes, the words are mine--though not the flow or the delivery...and I freely admit that I put on  my fiction writer's cap when writing these lyrics.  (Is MY sky full of stars?  I'd doubt it.  I mean, how would I know, I barely go outside. ;)  Too busy in the Labs, cooking up more Interbay.)  

I wonder what my kid will think of this track.  Nahhhh, I already know.  "I'm not listening to Interbay if you're going to use text-to-speech, dad."  But...I think it would be MORE cringe if I'd tried to drop these bars myself.  (And again, knowing how strong of a lyricist and a rapper Kendrick Lamar is...remind yourself of Disclaimer #2 above--this ain't that, nor is it my attempt at that.  This is just Interbay, doing Interbay, like Interbay does. )  

Like, Repost, Share, Comment, Playlist and...absolutely, Follow.  The Interbay train keeps a-rollin' and who knows where we'll end up next--but, if you follow this page, we'll get there together!  

PS--Sample trainspotters might have extra fun with this--not so much the music, but the words.

"My Sky is Full of Stars" *SoundCloud Exclusive*

This is the second "Rethink Remake Remix"--an attempt to bring some of the earliest Interbay tracks up to the standards I enforce on the material I post here on SoundCloud.  This was originally "Experiment 2"--shared to Facebook in January 2023, but this is the first time this remix has ever been shared.  

I was still very new to FL Studio when this song formed in the rather meager initial version of Phantom Laboratories West.  My arrangements were simple, I used a lot of stock plugins, and, frankly I didn't know what I was doing.  But, I thought this was better than Experiment 1 (the RRR version of which dropped here a week ago, called "End of Eternity.")  

At the time it was posted on Facebook, it was an instrumental and it featured a video, made by me, for it--as all of the 140 tracks that were posted onto Facebook before I started posting exclusively (for now) on SoundCloud.  I was as green to video production as I was to laptop music production, and I hadn't even figured out that I wasn't limited to sequential still images yet.  (I was using Premier Rush at the time and literally was using it without having done any research on how it works--I'd try something and...there's my video.)    

My conceit for the video was that I would use large Impact font text to indicate what instrument was playing at that very moment (not all of them, that would be madness--but enough to get the vibe I wanted.)  So, when rethinking Experiment 2 for this RRR for SoundCloud, I leaned into the video conceit--and turned those descriptor cards into the vocals...using a glitchy filtered robot voice to do so.  

I think it works with vaguely electro music that iti s supporting.  

Once again, I do think this shows that the music I'm making now is stronger in structure and execution than the music I made two years ago...but, in the innocence and wonder of those early days, there's still something there...and I'm glade that this track got the Rethink, Remake, Remix treatment and that I can share it with you, here, now.  

(Not EVERY track posted originally to Facebook deserves the RRR treatment--for example, I will NOT be trying to salvage Experiment 3...which is more of a joke than a piece of music.  I was trying to sound less electronic and more like I was playing real life instruments...and testing to see if I could, basically, "jam" with myself.  I don't think there's any rescue possible for Experiment 3.  (I wasn't ever planning on going "in order" and do every track in an RRR way.  But I thought the first 2 Interbay Experiments deserved to be the first 2 RRR tracks shared here on SoundCloud.)    

Let me know what you think of this track.  Give it a listen and give it a like if you do.  

Do these RRR tracks interest you?  I hope so.  I also hope you follow this page for lots more Interbay--some of these RRR tracks but also freshly baked, just popped out of the Labs, new tracks as well.  You can expect track drops EVERY SINGLE DAY (so far...and my consecutive days posting new tracks streak is at 468 days in a row, as of this posting.)

"Assembly Instructions" (exp2 RRR) *exclusive remix*

If it weren't for Eliminate's "Audio Combat" YouTube series, there wouldn't be an Interbay.  

(Now if, for whatever reason, you're not a particular fan of Interbay--please, don't blame Nate.  The mistakes, all of them, have been mine and mine alone.)  

Let's speedrun through the backstory--I was the front man and co-songwriter for a few bands in the late 80s to the early 90s.  In '92, I moved to Seattle...and, somehow, never found myself a band during the Seattle scene explosion.  I still had song ideas--especially as my nightclub dj career took off--but I hadn't figured out how to craft them on my own.  I started collecting gear, but I'd always put off "putting together a home studio" to some later date.  

"If I only had some extra time..." I'd say.  

Then, in 2015--I was diagnosed and hospitalized with blood cancer (just half a year after my wife had been diagnosed with colon cancer--not my favorite year)...and when I got out of the hospital, I was so weak...I couldn't imagine going back to my previous jobs full time.  If EVER there was a time to set up a home studio...it would be at that moment.  I bought a laptop that I was only going to use for music production.  I bought Ableton 6 and a Push 2 and a Focusrite and some monitor speakers and tons of cables and a mixer and I opened a new folder and titled it Interbay 2017 (because I realized that there was a learning curve, I knew it would take some time before I'd create anything worth sharing.)  

And then?  Nothing.  Most of those things are still in the boxes I bought them in.  The learning curve was so daunting--and I just wanted to have fun making music!  And then I recovered enough to get back to my comedy industry career and the moment was gone.  

A few years later, the Covid lockdowns happened--and I was forced to not work, forced to stay home...and I put together some of the gear I owned (I set it up on the dining room table) and it made me never want to do that again.    

I was mad--I said "If I only had some extra time"--and then I did, and I didn't do what I'd been telling myself for a couple decades that I really wanted to do.  

And then my wife died (while I've been declared cancer free, her cancer kept coming back. :( )  

I was suddenly a single father--a role that did not mesh with my comedy industry work, so I retired.  Despite the horrible circumstances that created it, I was given one final chance to get back to music production.  

And watching "Audio Combat"--an open challenge to take an awful sample and turn it into a 1 minute long track in 2 hours, while Eliminate did the same--made me feel like that was something I could do.  That I wanted to do.  

And Nate used FL Studio.  And FL Studio made sense to me.  

Two months after I got myself FL Studio and started making music again (and decided that I would learn by doing and that I'd make my mistakes in public, so I posted the first tracks I managed to produce on Facebook), I competed in my first Audio Combat.  The sample was that of an old Russian helicopter squaking itself to life, when started.   I would compete in every single Audio Combat during the 3rd "season"--and nearly every 1 minute track I'd make for Audio Combat was then turned into a full length Interbay experiment.  

This track, this noisy funky track with video game samples and hidden helicopter sounds and a classic funk vocal sample, is based on the first track I ever made for Audio Combat.  It became "Experiment 32" on Facebook.  And now, it has undergone the Rethink, Remake, Remix treatment to share it here on SoundCloud.  

Time for your turn in the Soul Train dance line as Interbay gives up the funk.  

(Listen, Like, Repost, Share, Comment, Playlist and Follow.  Please!)

"I Wanna F-F." (exp32 RRR) *exclusive remix*

(Perhaps numbers were down because of yesterday's holiday--but I think "Tryptophan", the Interbay track that dropped yesterday, deserves more ears.  So, give that a listen, please, if you haven't already.  If you like it, give it a like.  THEN come back here and check out this track!  Thanks!)  

You might not recognize this track because it FEELS busy...but this is one of the most minimal tracks that Interbay has ever made.  There are four instruments--a drum machine and three synths.  And there's one female vocalist, singing ethereally--but mostly repeating certain phrases.  

(I know that some of you like the songs where I manage to work in actually sung vocals, rather than the spoken words or dialogue snippets that I often use for a song's mandatory "vocal element."  Well, this is one of those!  Check it out!)  

At 116bpm, "How Does This Feel?" isn't slow...but it is slower than the vast majority of Interbay tracks (don't check my math on that--that's a guesstimate.)  The sound is digifunk--digital and digital sounding elements making funk music.  Or this old white man's approximation of funk--perhaps less George Clinton and more Bill Clinton?  (It's a fair cop.)  

Too fast to be chill, too slow to fill the big rooms--this track is more selective in its appeal.  You've got to like it when various effects are slapped onto the drums, giving it a technological psychedelic feel.  Like, what might the laptop computer equivalent to LSD?  Whatever THAT is...then that!  

The vocals are simple, direct, and heart breaking.  She can't find the way.  (What way?)  The way to describe how does this feel.  And, finally, at the end, she finds the perfect word to sum up how this DOES feel.  (Spoilers, sweetie!)  

I had another track in mind to drop today, but when I opened this up and found how close I'd been to finishing this track whenever it was when I'd put it aside, I knew that I had to get this one polished and off the lot.  Sometimes, you just get a certain "now" vibe from a track--and this one is that.  (Despite it being heavily rooted in some 80s vibes.)  

So--like yesterday's "Tryptophan"...I can only ask that you give "How Does This Feel? (Can't Find The Way)" a listen and a like, if you do.  If you want to, you could repost it or share it with a friend (or more.)  You could add it to a playlist that is missing some digifunk spark.  You could leave a comment--though, I will say, I much prefer the encouraging ones!  And, perhaps most importantly, consider giving this page a follow.  Did you know that a brand new Interbay track drops EVERY SINGLE DAY (so far!) and the only way to keep your head above this wave of musical content is to follow along as these tracks keep a-comin'.    

Thanks!  (You thought I'd given all the thanks I had yesterday?  Nope.  Always keep a supply of thanks on hand--because people have earned them.)

"How Does This Feel? (Can't Find the Way)" *SoundCloud Exclusive*

trackmake / dj
⅓ of @swapnotes
2003

illust by oniguruma_

Post-punk, dance, indie, electronic, and mutant pop in various styles (seriously!)--new tracks being posted daily (every day for over a year, so far!)

Interbay is the new project of Peter Greyy (previously of Cremation Dance and DangerScience), based out of Seattle and Phantom Laboratories West.

New tracks tagged #digifunk