I started this track after watching the movie Suzhou River. It's a tale of watching life go by from the outside and the intimate stories that unfold if you watch closely. But it left me wondering do those stories unfold in reality or just in the onlooker's imagination? So I tried to capture the interweaving threads of the story in all the layered melodies, but ultimately stweekruggled with where to take the track. I kept hitting walls and then ran out of time, so it's cut a bit short.

Suzhou River

I started this one by chopping up an old loop of mine with some synthy chords. The beat evolved a lot along the way, but I got stuck in loop land and couldn't work out how to get the song to build out of it. And I struggled with how to get the melody I heard in the chords to be carried by other instruments in the mix without it all getting muddled. If I had more time I would have liked to expand the song out so the first melodic idea comes back and to have the energy build throughout the song, but I guess that's a goal for next weeks beat. I still had a lot of fun making this one!

Searching For Clues

I tried a bit of a more conventional song structure this week, and to have a strong melody line running through. I'm pretty happy with the result, but I found it hard to balance adding elements to build out the song to support the melody, without going of course and burying it in layers. It also didn't help that the starting motif was the genesis of the song and while it lead me to the melody I came up with, it also battled for attention in the song. Mixing is hard!

Where Are You Now

This one started with the rain-droppy synth sound after playing with a delay and recording it while jamming on my keyboard along to the delay. I built a song around it, but then found that I'd added too many layers of drums and synth lines and totally buried the rain-droppy sound and the song felt like it went nowhere. So I stripped it right back and built it up again focussing on what feelings it brought to mind. I imagined the scattered and anxious thoughts after the loss of a loved one to death and the swirling emotions when trying to coming to terms with waiting until the afterlife to see them again.

When Will I See You Next?

This weeks track started from mucking around with piano through a delay, and improvising chord and melody ideas while recording. I sifted through the recordings and found some ideas I liked and put them in a rough song structure. I then added layers and found ways to nicely gel the ideas together. However, I got to a point where I couldn't think of where to take it further, but it still felt lacking. So I figured I might as well have a go at singing random lyrics over it, and funnily enough the chorus came out on the first take. That gave me something to write the rest of the lyrics around, and it came together much nicer than I expected. The backing vocals were fun to do as well, as I haven't tried doing harmonies like that before. I added lots of delay and chorus to float them in behind the vocals and I was surprised how well they fitted in. I'm keen now to experiment more with backing vocal harmonies in the future.

Look Back

Another Reason track this week with vocals. The song went through a few iterations, starting out just as an instrumental, then I put some vocals over it. I then took the vocal ideas I liked most and rearranged the structure to work around them. I then mostly rewrote the lyrics as I had  better idea of what I wanted them to be about. I wanted to build up the energy and tension and release more across the song, as I feel it stays the same too much throughout, but I ran out of time so I'll try on next week's track.

Holding Onto The Moment

I began this track by laying out chords for the whole song, and working out the structure first. I usually start with a sound as inspiration, and this week I wanted to try build up the song harmonically first with basic midi instruments. 

I had the rough concept of what I wanted the song to be about, after walking home from the train late at night and feeling on edge from the locals loitering around. I came up with a melody for the verse and chorus as I was putting together the chords, and I worked the lyrics around them. I found this way of working made rearranging and changing song sections way easier than my usual process, though it took up a lot of time trying to work out the chords and how best to transition between sections. I'm glad I tried this new way, as it really helped me come up with new sections that fit well with the other sections harmonically.

Long Road Home

A chill ride at 3am through Tokyo streets on my skateboard, exploring abandoned streets and alleyways. Neon signs whooshing by and reflecting off the rippling water of concrete canals. The only sound the rattle and crunch of my wheels on the pavement, and the cool wind whipping by. At least that's what this track conjured for me as I was making it. 

I wanted to do some vocal chop sort of stuff this week, so played around with playing a choir synth through a trance gate to see what I could come up with. Came up with a cool loop with the drums and then built this track around it.


Skating on Dreams

Inspired by a drippy percussion loop I made, this ones a journey that I'm still not sure exactly where to, but I had fun building up the layers to see where I could take it.

Triumph Underneath

Got back into messing around with my Elektron Digitakt and Digitone this week after along hiatus. I always found it hard to turn ideas I come up with on them into songs, so this week I tried recording a bunch of jams to see if I could stitch something together afterwards in Reason. Turned out a lot better than I thought it would, I think all the tracks I've been making recently have helped a lot in sculpting a track even with limited elements.

This was all one pattern on each of the Elektron boxes, bringing elements in and out with mutes. I didn't try pattern changes as I wanted to keep things simple and focused on messing around with parameters while jamming to give interesting variations for later stitching together. I recorded the Digitakt and Digitone separately, but not the individual tracks as that gets too unmanageable for later editing. Then in Reason, I took the last jam and added to and subtracted with parts I liked from the other jams, and layered bits in places. I didn't add any extra sounds, only layering and manipulating the recorded audio with filters and some extra compression and reverb.

Outward In

Mad rush to finish this one this week. Had a lot of fun recording guitar and synths live and mixing with a vocal line I'd recorded a few months ago.

Rush

I make music with Reason and Elektron boxes. I just enjoy experimenting with sounds, so I'm not much for conventional structure in songs. I tend to explore where a sound idea leads me, and often get lost in the weeds digging into how synths work and combining them in interesting ways.

Tarsiidea

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