I've been busy with other projects and not feeling very musical until I got inspired by this video from Jeremy at Red Means Recording: https://youtu.be/gxg3yPP1nw8.

The Digitone is so good at evolving, driving, 16th note synthwave basses. I had to try to build something around that. Hopefully what I came up with is different enough to be more homage than rip-off.

The Digitone is doing bass, keys, lead, and that sort of cymbal swell. I have track 4 full of trigs whose condition is only on fills. The sound for that track is a slow attack noise in legato mode. So whenever I hold the Fill button, it swells in and then fades when I release.

Other drums are all DrumBrute, of course.

Recorded multitracked into Ableton Live with additional effects and mixing there.

Video: https://youtu.be/0G8gKLQYIH0

Minor Crimes (Digitone, DrumBrute Impact live synthwave)

I suppose it was only a matter of time before I got a Digitakt. This is the first thing I've put together with it. Only a single pattern just using the samples it ships with, so more like a jam than a real track. But, wow, what a joy to use.

This is my first time working with a sampler, and I have a lot to learn. I tend to build sounds bottom up with other synthesizers, so starting with samples and making music in more of a collage style is way outside my comfort zone. I'm looking forward to learning my way around it.

Video: https://youtu.be/2EM-1x92BYc

Atro (Digitakt jam)

I wrote this track earlier this summer, but didn't manage to find the time to record a performance and video until well after the leaves started to change. This was created all in Ableton Live. Most of the synths are Reason's Europa. Drums and effects are all stock plug-ins and samples with some Valhalla Shimmer.

I'm constantly working at the limits of my amateur musical knowledge. I have a lot of trouble finding chords and melodies that reach what I'm aiming for, but I'm happy with the chord change on the keys halfway through the song and the riff that comes in near the end.

The live performance is simple—just a few buttons to turn drum parts on and off and knobs mapped to various effects parameters. But I learned a whole lot about how to use Ableton in a live setting in the process. For example, the pads here don't turn off the drum track audio, they actually mute the MIDI itself. This way sample tails don't get cut off. I also did some neat tricks like mapping a knob to the snare roll which also automatically mutes the kick. Live is amazing.

Video:  https://youtu.be/Iku05xfnW54

End of Summer (Ableton Live jam)

The Digitakt continues to be a pure fun machine. Here, I'm using it for drums, bass, and pads. It's also MIDI sequencing the MB33. The MB33 is running through an old bass distortion pedal to give it some dirt, and an equally old guitar delay pedal to add some tape echo. The pad is something I made in Reason and sampled into the Digitakt.

I multitrack recorded everything live into Ableton using Overbridge. Being able to record every Digitakt track separately is awesome for mixing. Also, since the Digitakt sends its external inputs through Overbridge too, it is essentially a general purpose 2-track audio interface on top of its other capabilities.

Once I recorded all ten tracks of audio in, I spent a bunch of time mixing and doing additional production on it. This one is more of a jam than a real song—the arrangement isn't exactly very interesting—but at least it gives me an opportunity to practice mixing.

Polyhedral (Digitakt, MB33 live deep house)

My biggest limitation with making music using hardware has been chords. I love dub techno stabs and huge melty pads, and those really beg for a subtractive polysynth. I finally got a Novation Peak to fill that void and I love it.

Of course... I end up using it for the bassline here, which is essentially monophonic.

I'm starting to feel the complexity of working with hardware. The Digitakt, Digitone, and Peak each have their own sounds and sequences. (Well, no sequence for the Peak.) Every time I sat down to work on this, I had to make sure to save any changes I made to the patch in Peak, and save the patterns and projects in the Digitakt and Digitone.

This was also my first real push to get over the one pattern rut I've been stuck in. The chord progression change halfway through is a different pattern on the Digitakt sequencing the Peak. I like the way it sounds, but setting it up was a hassle. Lots of copying and pasting sounds between the two patterns any time I made a tweak.

All of this has made me rethink how much I want to make music outside of a DAW. Everything is so much easier in Ableton Live, even if the process isn't quite as fun and inspiring.

Either way, I'm fairly happy with this little jam. I love the bass patch from the Peak, and I think it complements the other two machines well. Both the bassline and the little melody are things I find myself naturally writing using a step sequencer but never seem to come up with when writing in a DAW.

Recorded using Overbridge into Live with some additional mixing and effects in there.

Extraction (Digitakt, Digitone, Peak live)

This is maybe the first track I've made where I could picture myself playing it for an audience. I'm so surprised by how all of the elements came together: the keys playing a big extended minor eleventh chord running through a syrupy modulated dub delay, the classic deep house square wave bassline, the vocoded and repitched vocal chops, heavily swung drums with lots of shaker and hats. There's a whole lot of sounds that I love jammed in.

Everything here was made in Ableton Live. The keys are Wavetable run through a bunch of effects. The bass is Reason's Europa synth. Vocals are a sample from Splice heavily repitched using Reason and then run through a vocoder and other effects.

I feel like I got really lucky with how this track came out but now I've inadvertently raised my expectations. That's good when it helps me make better music, but I fear it will leave me paralyzed and disappointed with whatever I work on next. I guess there's no answer but to keep making more.

Video: https://youtu.be/cl7H2sik42o

Just To Say

My dream groovebox has synth drums so I don't have to waste time scrolling through samples, chords for stabs and pads, subtractive monophonic synthesis for basslines and leads, a powerful sequencer, and enough tracks so that I can make complete songs one one device on my lap. Apparently, Elektron has been watching me while I sleep because the Syntakt was practically made for me.

It has its annoying limitations, of course, but they are so few that they aren't worth mentioning. I love it. Here's the first jam I put together with it.

Regression (Syntakt deep house jam)

I started this track a while back but shelved it when I felt like it needed more. When I came back to it a few months later, my tastes had shifted and even though it was fairly minimal, I was happier with it. I added a tiny four note melody and the pad lead line that comes in later, but that's mostly it.

The main thing I did was wire up a bunch of effects sends to complex, evolving delays and reverbs. The track itself is mostly an eight bar loop, but the jam stays interesting to my ears by always having some timbral modulation or varied effect going on.

I'm working towards building a full-length live set, and this is a big step towards that for me. I like how this jam came out, and I was able to play it live fairly easily just by adjusting knobs and adding layers.

Live video: https://youtu.be/_diBCM9T3_0

Diffusion

I've had this pattern sitting on my Syntakt for a while but was too busy on other stuff to sit down and get it recorded. I really like how this one came out. The Syntakt just sounds so good out of the box.

That's probably why it took me so long to finish this track. When I really start to like a pattern, my perfectionist tendencies kick in and I never feel like I'm ready to call it done. But I'm trying to internalize the idea that it's better to put an imperfect track out there than to have one that no one will ever get to listen to.

Either way, this one was a lot of fun to make and I can't wait to do more with the Syntakt.

Rev (Syntakt deep house jam)

I realized that I hadn't touched my Minibrute since I had tucked it into a not very accessible corner. So I did some desk rearranging to put it front and center next to the Syntakt. Literally a few minutes later I had this sequence running. I had forgotten how wonderfully immediate the Minibrute is and how *full* it sounds. Just a monster of a synth.

The Syntakt is doing the drums, and effects. The effects track on the Syntakt is doing a lot of work here. The overdrive and ducking are a big part of what makes the synth line bounce, and the delay helps fill in space and make it some more harmonic.

It's only a sixteen step sequence, but I think it's a fun little jam.

16 (Minibrute 2S Syntakt jam)

At the beginning of the year, I started thinking about working towards playing live on stage. I created a huge Ableton Project with a bunch of tracks and began figuring out what to automate and what to do live, trying to mix things better to sound good in a venue, setting up Instagram and starting to network with fellow musicians, etc., etc.

I basically turned my enjoyable music-making escape into an anxiety-filled job. Unsurprisingly, this killed all my mojo and I made no progress at all for a couple of months.

I would still like to work towards playing live, but I need to figure out how do so in a way that doesn't feel overwhelming. Until then, I decided to take a big step back and just make a fun little jam, which is what got me back into music in the first place.

For this one, the Digitakt is doing everything except the pad. All of the tonal sounds are from the Peak, with the bass, chords, and chord stab sampled into the Digitakt. Then the Peak is doing the pad live. Digitakt + Peak is an excellent combo.

I really like the rhythmic modulation on the pad. To me, that's where this jam really came alive. To do it, I have a bunch of trigless trigs on the Digitakt's MIDI channel sending mod wheel CC to the Peak. I can sequence those to be as rhythmic and interesting as I want. Then on the Peak, I use the mod matrix to control how much the mod wheel affects the filter frequency. That lets me dial in the amount of modulation in real time.

As always, the filter on the Peak sounds incredible.

Fuselage (Digitakt, Peak jam)

For a couple of months, I've been working on new music for a longer set. I was inspired by Martin Sturtzer's work and wanted to build something that was both longer and yet simpler than what I've done so far.

The idea is to build a full set out of eight tracks. Each track is a single eight bar pattern with the arrangement done live to bring the different parts in and out. Every track has the same eight conceptual parts: kick, snare/clap, shaker, hats, bass, sharp synth, softer synth, and atmosphere/lead. Each track is a single row of clips on the LaunchPad Mini, and each part is a column. Once I've filled every square on the LaunchPad, I'm done writing.

For the live performance, each column on the LaunchControl maps to a part. The faders are MIDI mapped to switch between different MIDI clips so that I can bring parts in and out and do fills using the faders. The knobs are mapped to various synth parameters, effects sends, etc. I use all of that to build an arrangement on the fly within each track and to transition between them.

I've only got about five of the eight tracks roughed out now, but I figured it made sense to start recording live jams of each separate track before I work my way up to performing the full set. This is the first one.

The atmospheric sounds that come in at the beginning are a bunch of notes I recorded playing my Telecaster, run through Reason's granular synth and then layered with lots of reverb and delay (of course).

Video: https://youtu.be/Uz-bpeLmVGE

8x8 Part 1

This is a live arrangement of the next part of the longer set I'm working on. It took a lot of iteration, but I like how this piece came out. The bass/lead is using Diva and the filters on it sound as good as I'd hoped.

The high pitched arp-like line that comes in about halfway through does some fun semi-generative stuff. There's one sequencer controlling the gate for the notes, another for the pitches, and then two others that have random sequences to shift the notes up and down an octave. All of those sequences have differently lengths, so you get this melody that has some internal consistency but also never really repeats.

The piece has eight tracks: kick, clap, shaker, hats, bass, chord stab, pad, and lead. Every track is just an eight-bar loop. Then the entire arrangement is built on the fly using the Launchpad whose knobs and faders are mapped to filters and other parameters to bring those parts in and out.

Video here: https://youtu.be/_W2LZeB6GLQ

8x8 Part 2

This is the third track in the live set I'm working on.

I feel like it needs one more lead/melody part to really hang together, but after trying a bunch of things, I decided to just go with what I had. I'm always fighting my perfectionism and tendency to get analysis paralysis and this set has been taking way longer than I anticipated, so I'm trying to just get some momentum on it and get pieces out there.

I really like the bassline, both the sound design and the bassline itself. Also, I think I did a good job with fills and grace notes in it that I slip in at different parts during the performance. I also MIDI mapped two knobs for tweaking the sound live that give it a lot of flexibility. One of them brings in another oscillator an octave up and opens the filter, so it kind of turns it into a lead. The other cranks up the filter envelope and adds some delay which makes it more prominent and energetic.

One of the parts in this one is a Granulator running on a sample of ocean waves that I field recorded. I run that through a bunch of delay and reverb and then into some very heavy sidechain compression. I use it for a riser and transition and I think it works pretty well.

I hope you enjoy this one. I'm looking forward to making more progress on this set and then eventually recording a full live set to share with you all.

Video here: https://youtu.be/IcPxVTOHShM

8x8 Part 3

I had aspirations to get this "8x8" project done quickly. Then I wrecked my ankle in a bicycle accident in May and all of my plans came tumbling down. Five months and two surgeries later and I'm still not fully recovered, but I'm finally at a point where I feel like making music again.

This time of year here in the Pacific Northwest always inspires me. Nothing matches the mood I'm going for in my music better than a cold, rainy blue hour.

This is part 4 of what I'm aiming to be an 8 track set, so I'm halfway there. We'll see if I'm able to build any momentum and keep going. I'm really looking forward to recording the whole collection as one seamless live set.

Video here: https://youtu.be/FJ8GEIZDMZk

8×8 Part 4

My first complete track on the Electribe 2. All sound is coming from the Electribe (took about ten takes before I managed to avoid note stealing). No other processing aside from normalization and trimming.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2zeqRNSu_Y

Neonate (Electribe 2 live)

Made entirely in Reason. The vocals are from https://www.looperman.com/acapellas/detail/13281/silence-142bpm-acoustic-acapella. I abused the pitch correction in Reason to graft a new melody and key onto them.

I'm happy with how the bass synth came out. I'm not sure whether I'd classify this song as house or techno or neither or somewhere in between.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdqVSJLeKK8

Silence

Another track made entirely on the Electribe 2. All sounds and effects are from the Electribe. All I added in post was a little compression and limiting. Only took three takes this time before I got it. Maybe I'm getting better at this.

(Re-uploaded because I forgot to trim the silence from the beginning and end of the track. Amateur hour!)

Video: youtu.be/2a4bWSKxsuI

So Down (Electribe 2 live)

It's hard to focus on music during such a stressful time, but when it works well, it's a wonderful escape. I hope listening to this gives you a little comfort too.

This was made all in hardware using a Korg Electribe 2 (drums, bass), Behringer (main lead), and a couple of guitar pedals for delay and reverb.

Recorded from a live performance. Video: https://youtu.be/CM9u_x7Qcjs

Make Your Own Light (Electribe 2 + Crave live)

Made this entirely in Reason using the built in synths and samples.

I still get overwhelmed by how much I have left to learn to be able to make the kind of music I want, but it feels good to make progress. When I listen to this, there are a number of things that don't quite work for me, but I also hear that's aiming in the right direction.

Focusing on music has helped me cope with all the stress of what's going on around us. I hope this provides some comfort to you too.

Video: https://youtu.be/HPWlK4dEFM0

Lapse

I took my Digitone to a vacation on the north side of the Olympic Peninsula. As you can imagine, the place is naturally inspiring. I had a goal to make something like a crashing wave to get better at FM synth sound design. Pretty quickly, I got something I liked using a lot of feedback to create the noise and a filter sweep to make it crash. To make the waves randomly timed, I filled a pattern with conditional trigs.

The remaining three layers came together quickly after that. For the bass, I wanted something vaguely foghorn-like. It is an unusual three-bar loop, which helps give the track a sort of circular, never-ending feel. The two lead parts each have a different length. So between the three of those, melodies are constantly going in and out of phase with each other. Both lead parts have a few conditional 1:2, 2:3, etc. trigs so that with a single pattern, I get a lot of variation that spreads out over time.

While I find FM synth sound design challenging, the Digitone's sequencer is a delight. All of the audio for this is from the Digitone, played live. I applied some compression and a little extra Valhalla Shimmer reverb in Ableton Live afterwards.

I'm trying to get better at moving quickly with music to defeat the perfectionism that cripples my creativity. This was the fastest and most effortless making music has ever felt for me. Usually by the time I'm done with a song, I've heard it so much I'm sick of it. But with this one, I had the pattern down in about half an hour, recorded the performance in one take, and was done. It rarely goes that easily, but it's magic when it does.

Video: https://youtu.be/uwVUYYEub_Y

Salish Sea (Digitone live)

This is the first song I've completed using Ableton Live. I got frustrated by Reason's pretty limited sequencer and so-so effects. Maybe this is just the honeymoon phase, but I love Live. It's a beautiful piece of software. I'm still heavily using Reason's synths (which I like) inside Live as a VST, but most of the effects and mixing are coming from Ableton. So far, I really enjoy the combination.

I've been listening to a lot of lo-fi house, and this was an attempt to emulate that style, with an obvious nod to DJ Boring's "Winona". I hope this comes across more as respectful homage than cheap rip-off. This style is a little out of my comfort zone, so it was a good exercise to help me grow. I listen to a lot of house, but I struggle with genres that are heavily sample-based. Lo-fi house in particular is very "less is more" and aiming for that is a good lesson in simplification. I like the end result more than I thought I would.

The footage for the video is all royalty-free stuff I found online with effects and color correction in Premiere. I'd like to get out and shoot more of my own material, but a hot dry summer didn't quite fit the vibe of this song.

Video: https://youtu.be/lpsIw4RHU9E

Probably the Best Time

I still get overwhelmed by how much I have to learn to make music that lives up to my aspirations. But this one is the first track where I can say that it captures some of the mood I was going for, and that feels really nice.

Made all in Ableton with Reason providing most of the synths. The pad during the breakdown that leads into the drop is my Fender Telecaster run through a Big Muff fuzz pedal and then paulstretched out to turn it into a wash of sound. This was my first time incorporating some actual recording into a track and it was a lot of fun.

Video: https://youtu.be/OMhfTcivffE

Chroma

Performed live to a multitrack recording and then post-processed in Ableton.

I've had the DrumBrute and MB33 for a while, but haven't had the space to have everything wired up until recently. This is the first time I've tried them all together and it's everything I'd hoped it would be. An analog drum machine and a digital synth is sort of backwards from how most hardware setups work, but I love the sonic variety the Digitone produces and the DrumBrute Impact has a great solid sound. The MB33 is the perfect complement to add some subtractive analog goodness on top.

I made a few mistakes in the performance. I recorded this multi-tracked into Ableton and I think that introduced just enough latency for me to miss some of the cues and cause me to bring in parts a hair past the beat. But, overall, I really like the hybrid workflow of running all of the hardware into Ableton. That let me add effects and fix levels and EQ afterwards. In particular, the side chain compression on the bassline is a really key part of the sound. I'm looking forward to making some more tracks this way and getting more used to the setup.

Video: https://youtu.be/P3O2l4A16Wc

Transmission (Digitone, DrumBrute Impact, MB33 live)

With all the chaos of this week, I found it really hard to get into the right headspace to make music. Fortunately, I'd put this pattern together last month, so it was mostly a process of making some tweaks, rehearsing, and then committing to video. I originally had a sequenced pattern for the first melody, but I found pretty boring and repetitive. I tried a bunch of different sets of chords with the arpeggiator on and eventually realized I liked the effect of playing the arpeggiator live. It let me extemporaneously play a melody without having to worry about my timing very much.

Video: https://youtu.be/mFyILbUorXg

Wet Plate (Digitone live)

I love performing live with hardware synths and sequencers, but a full hardware setup is expensive, complex, and hard to get sounding polished. I switched from Reason to Ableton Live in large part to try to recapture some of that feel but using a DAW. This is my first attempt at that. I built the whole track in Ableton's session view and then MIDI mapped the knobs to various parameters.

The end result is something I can play live like a hardware setup but that has all of the flexibility and sound design power of a complete DAW. So far, I really dig it, though I found it pretty challenging to perform. This took about a dozen takes. With actual hardware synths, it's easier to build muscle memory for each knob since they always do the same thing. When you can freely MIDI map them, that association is lost and sometimes I got confused and grabbed the wrong knob. More practice, I guess.

For the song itself, I was initially going for something on the dub techno side. I went through several different basslines but none of them quite did it for me. Then I wrote the one you hear which is more in a deep house direction. It's my favorite part of the track.

The vocal bits are an acappella I found online. I chopped it up and pitch corrected the pieces radically to fit in the song's key. Then I took some of those and used Paulstretch to turn them into a wash of sound. That's what you hear fade in near the beginning. I think it gives the song a human touch without sounding explicitly vocal.

Video: https://youtu.be/8XEQuRn9GjE

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