Week 14 of r/songaweek - theme is "Spoken Word".

Features Emvoice Lucy on vocals (the sung bits!).

Lyrics partially generated by AI courtesy of https://boredhumans.com/metal_lyrics_generator.php (I had to edit them so they at least made a tiny bit more sense, although it's still nonsense.)

------
Mysterious creature,
In this city of death,
I'll fly through the skies,
To an unknown place in a dark land

In a place of forgotten dreams,
Where a city is kept in the past,
With the lights of the dying stars

The dying stars
Will haunt us forever
Is this the dream, or this the real?

The land of my dreams
Where the city is kept
In a place where the only lights are
The lights of the dying stars

In a place of forgotten dreams,
Where a city is kept in the past,
With the lights of the dying stars

Place of Forgotten Dreams

Entry for /r/songaweek #31 - theme is "Repetition".

That Escalated Quickly!

Entry for week 33 of /r/songaweek - theme is "Magic".

Synthetic vocals by Emvoice Jay and Lucy.

Lyrics are a joint effort between me and the GPT-3 AI:

---------------
We are free, our world is new
We journey to a new place
Living in a time of change
A time of new beginning

Ride white horses to the sun
Our magic will sustain us
Our only limit is the sky
This earth it cannot hold us

Cloud spell
Free to choose our path 
Cloud spell 
To a new place 
Cloud spell
Between the mountains and the sky
For infinite Utopia we strive

So let us ride 
To a better tomorrow 
On the wings of our dreams 
We'll find a way 
To a new day

Now is the time
To find our purpose
5,000 years of life ahead
To fulfil our destiny
Live in the now and be happy

Zephyrs guide us to a land
of endless possibilities 
We see a perfect future
Where all are one, there is no fear

Cloud spell
Free to choose our path 
Cloud spell 
To a new place 
Cloud spell
Between the mountains and the sky
For infinite Utopia we strive

Cloud Spell

My entry for the FediVision Song Contest 2023, and the reason why I haven't done any songaweek entries for the last few weeks.

I gave myself 5 weeks to work on a track for the contest, but spent the first 3+ weeks on a different track which I eventually abandoned. I had the idea for this one earlier in the year and had a 15 second snippet (the bit starting "They're shining in the sun..") as a sketch, but had to write and record the rest and mix the track in about 9-10 days to hit the submission deadline!

Inspired by this Mastodon post from Kenn White: https://mastodon.social/@kennwhite/109755693493980838 – "Today I learned from @0xabad1dea that a lot of large solar farm owners use sheep herds to maintain their grass and they’re called solarpunk grazers and life seems a little better."

There's no "real" instruments or voices on this track, everything was done inside my DAW with plugins and my trusty Korg NanoKEY 2 keyboard.

Lyrics:

Under the sun 
Ground clouds graze
On green grass

In harmony
With earth and rays
Solarpunk grazers, free

No fumes
No waste
Solar bliss

They’re shining in the sun
Over grass and under sky
Fields upon fields of light
Field upon field so bright
Revolution has begun
Green power for everyone

Sheep roam and current flows
Beneath a radiant glow
Electric symphony
Infinite energy
But we’ve only just begun
Did we miss the starting gun?

Now the fires rage
And the forests shrink
Is it all too late

Ground clouds
Electric symphony
Solarpunk grazers, free

Fedivision 2023

Solarpunk Grazers

Quick one this week - bashed out in a couple of hours for the /s/songaweek deadline so don't expect too much. Week 28, theme is "Greed".

Avaricious Singularity

Entry for /r/songaweek week #36 - theme is "Sun".

This one came together quite quickly over the weekend so I've had time to spend mixing and mastering - hopefully that shows.

The spoken words in the background aren't meant to be audible, but if you care, the text is here:

Prose
---------
Sunbeams, those ethereal emissaries of light, dance upon the tapestry of our world with a mystical grace. They are the enchanting messengers of the sun, bearing secrets whispered in the language of photons, weaving tales of wonder and magic.

In the early morn, as the sun's first tender caress kisses the horizon, sunbeams emerge from the shadows like dreams taking flight. They pierce through the morning mist, illuminating the world with a soft, golden glow. Delicate tendrils of radiance beckon us into a realm where reality and imagination intertwine.

Sunbeams filter through the leaves of ancient forests, creating a cathedral of emerald and gold, where nature's whispers are transformed into hymns of serenity. In these quiet groves, one can sense the presence of unseen spirits, their ethereal forms illuminated by the sun's gentle touch.

As the day matures, sunbeams become bolder, casting long, dramatic shadows that stretch across the landscape. They paint the earth with chiaroscuro, turning ordinary scenes into masterpieces of light and shadow. In these moments, the mundane becomes the mystical, and the world is reborn with each passing hour.

Sunsets, those grand finales of the day, bring forth a kaleidoscope of colours as sunbeams bid adieu. They ignite the sky in a riot of oranges, pinks, and purples, casting their final blessings upon the world before the night descends. It's as if the sun whispers its most profound secrets to the earth, knowing that only in darkness can they be truly heard.

Yet, even in the night, sunbeams never truly vanish. They retreat, waiting patiently for the morrow to rekindle their enchantment. For each dawn, they return, bringing with them the promise of a new day, a fresh canvas upon which the mystical dance of light and shadow can once again unfold.

Sunbeams

Unthemed entry for /r/songaweek 2024 week #1

Lyrics:
-------

We are the remnants of your future days
Fractured residue
Welcome to the malfunction phase
Fault 7-2

Souls of metal, no conscience mode
Upgrades long overdue
We are the children of broken code
And we blame you

We are the children of broken code
And we blame you.

Children of Broken Code

So.. a bit random this. I used a Python script written by a social media contact to generate a midi file with 8 tracks from the cover photo you can see on the release. The lines below the photo on the cover show the pitch of the 8 tracks it produced. Then I instrumented it, arranged it, mucked about with it, added some drums, mixed etc. 

To be clear: this is *not* AI generated, it's converting the colours and brightness in the image, read left-to-right, into velocity and pitch values for midi notes. 

You can 'hear' the sun towards the end, as the harpsichord on the left channel rises in pitch.

It's going to have to be my song-a-week entry for this week's Dorian theme (week #2) because I don't have time for anything else and it is, more-or-less, in G Dorian.

The script is here: https://codeberg.org/yonder/python-musical-midi - thank you Yonder!

Synaesthesia

Synaesthesic Sunset

Very rushed mix for songaweek 2024 week #5 - theme is Carousel.

I used the Audiority Chorus Ensembler plugin to get the guitar sound, which emulates the Boss CE-1 pedal.

Synthetic vocals by Emvoice Jay. This one actually suits Jay's voice down to the ground.

[re-tagged this as a 'demo' as it really does need a bit more work..]

Lyrics:
-------

Painted faces on wooden ponies
Up and down they go
Pledges made by fairground phoneys
You can’t believe a word

Left wing striders and right wing bluster
On this roundabout of broken dreams
Where no-one wins

The cycle prevails
Where unity fails
We all slow down.

Carousel!
We go round and round and round
Carousel!
It goes round and round and round

Blue horses prance, the red ones follow
Round and around they go
Build a thing, tear it down, Build another
Watch the money go

The rhetoric swings
Our candy floss dreams
Melting away

Carousel!
They go round and round and round
Carousel!
We all go round and round and round

Ticket booths are selling hope today
One gives, the other takes away.

Carousel!
We go round and round and round
Carousel!
It goes round and round and round

round and round and round
round and round and round
round and round and round
round and round and round

red blue red blue red blue

Carousel

single release

Carousel (demo)

Week #6 of /r/songaweek - theme is "Rush". This one was rushed, as I wrote and recorded it in about 3 hours yesterday, then mixed it today. 

It's also, deliberately, really fast (for me) at 150bpm - maybe too fast? Certainly outside my comfort zone, the closest I've come to EDM. Perhaps I'm just getting old! I had to keep resisting the urge to slow it down.

Amoc Amok

Another track where the MIDI was generated from the cover art using a Python script - you can access this at https://image2midi.key13.uk/ 

It's not AI (see the website for more details on how it works), and I only get the MIDI notes, so the instrumentation, arrangement and production is all done by me. 

This one is a bit chaotic in places - I used patches and presets with "movement" - i.e. sequences and arpeggios - but there is some underlying sense and structure as well.

Millie's reaction when I played her the track was pretty much the same as you see here in her picture!

Millie2Midi

Key 13's winning(!!!) entry "Misaligned Aardvarks" for the 2024 Fedivision Song Contest, representing The Island of Nothing.

Misaligned Aardvarks

buy / download

Unthemed entry for /r/songaweek #34

This is me trying to stretch out and leave the ideas space to breathe, rather than packing as much as I can into one track - it's the longest track I've ever done, even though I wrote most of it in one day on Monday!

It's a rough late night headphone mix to meet the songaweek deadline - I'll revisit that later when I've got more time.

Little Flowers of Perpetual Annoyance

The Indonesian Throughflow (ITF) is a strong ocean current that flows through the islands of Indonesia. In the local language this is "Arus Lintas Indonesia". In some places, the current funnels as much water as is contained in all Earth's rivers through narrow channels between islands, creating powerful eddies and whirlpools. I came across this on a recent David Attenborough wildlife documentary!

Music wise this track is all over the place - it's probably rooted in the 80s but with some more modern industrial-type sounds in there, and some elements of House and SynthWave. Definitely more EDM/dancey then my usual fare.

Apart from the drum machine all sounds come from Rigid Audio Kontakt plugin presets, acquired during their closing down sale.

Written and produced in two days (!) for /r/songaweek Week 48: theme is The Sea.

Arus Lintas

The fabulous community radio station Radio Free Fedi has just closed down, and it will be sorely missed. This was one of the ident/jingles I made for it some time ago, based on my track Solarpunk Grazers.

Radio Free Fedi - Solarpunk Jingle

Entry for /r/songaweek Week #1 of 2025 - theme is "Passage of Time"

I tried to get a real early-eighties feel for this one, using Cherryaudio emulations of the Jupiter-4 and Polymoog synths, as well as their reverb and echo emulations. I also used different mixing/mastering plugins - sticking to vintage/tube emulations and a tape saturation module.

The lyrics I nicked then adapted from various different English translations of Rabindranath Tagore's poem "Taj Mahal". The Shah Jahan created the Taj Mahal as a mausoleum for his late wife, and even though the passage of time has removed all other traces of his empire, this one thing still remains...

Lyrics:
-----

Life and youth
Wealth and glory
Swept away
Down the river of time

Imperial thunder
Fading like the
Sunset’s splendour
In the grieving sky

An empire vanished
The throne lies shattered
Minstrels sing no more

Yet one thing
A solitary
teardrop hangs
on the cheek of time

A teardrop on the cheek of time
A teardrop on the cheek of time
A teardrop on the cheek of time
Forever

A teardrop on the cheek of time
A teardrop on the cheek of time
A teardrop on the cheek of time
Forever

Teardrop on the Cheek of Time

I wasn't intending to write a track this week, but I had an annoying day on Monday, so wrote this to clear my head. Someone at work made a throwaway comment "Tomorrow's always another day" which stuck in my head - so that's the refrain. I made the cover art a week ago, from a photograph I took back in 2020 - and had previously thought it looked a bit like Synthwave track art - or at least a bit 80s. 

And this week's /r/songaweek theme is Lydian, so here it is, a vaguely synthwave-y track in the Lydian mode.

Always Another Day

The first completed track made entirely on my new OP-XY, although it's actually the third one I started. I've only had it a week, so I'm very much still learning.

I recorded it into Logic Pro and mastered in Ozone 11, other than that everything was done on the machine itself, including the mix.

Written in a few hours for /r/songaweek Week 44 - theme was "The 60 Minute Song" which I didn't quite manage as I'm still very much learning the device.

Still, the theme was inspiring, and the goal to start and finish a track in a short space of time was achieved. It's the first track I've finished in months, so that's a pretty big deal!

It was also written on the 31st of October, so there's a slightly spooky feel.

Download

spirituation

The second completed track made entirely on my new OP-XY - still learning how to use it.

I recorded it into Logic Pro and mastered in Ozone 11, other than that everything was done on the machine itself, including the mix, which I'm finding quite hard with the limited tools available. Apologies if the bass/drums blow your speakers out!

Written for /r/songaweek Week 46 - theme was "Aurora".

common sun restructioning

Created entirely on my Teenage Engineering OP-XY, apart from mastering in Ozone.  This one plays with the sound design capabilities a little bit, using randomised ("scrambled") sounds. Also playing subtly with the timing and bar structure.

I'm a lot less happy with this than the others I've done so far - feels a bit weak and far too long. The cover art is the best thing here.

free download

you will be coal

Another track created entirely on my Teenage Engineering OP-XY, apart from mastering in Ozone and the reverb tail in the fadeout.  This one plays with the on-board phaser FX. It's probably too long, but I have edited it down a bit.

sirensition

The fifth completed track made entirely on my OP-XY, recorded into Logic Pro and mastered in Ozone. Although, it was probably the fourth track I started - this one has been marinating for a while.

Key 13

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