38. punched in the guts

2026 Copyright All rights reserved

everything makes sense eventually :) 85bpm a major :)

2026 Copyright All rights reserved

Thinly veiled reference - huge Cyndi Lauper fan. Intro chords were definitely influenced by the Goonies title theme, along with some of CL's melody tropes.

Remember the NES game was titled like it was a sequel?  Incredible arrangement of the theme in that game.

I also have been listening to a ton of the 1975 this week - there's a couple of songs where they have sparse production and drums, and the bass is doing a ton of work to drive song forward - I tried that here, ended up adding a kick on the bass hits to keep it from getting buried in FM sounds.

What I really wanted was to use big room recorded drum samples, widen them out, then have a bunch of square, saw and sine waves instruments do all of the other work closer to the center, came out pretty cool, then I started panning those out so you can hear everything.  I'm finding it's really hard to EQ a basic wave form to where it will fit in a mix, especially squares.  Give me a french horn or a guitar or something and I know exactly how to treat it, but struggling a bit with cleaning up classic chip sounds.  Probably b/c they were used in orded to sound big when you could only program a couple to play simultaneously back in 8 bit days.

I pulled this out of the M8 and took it into a reaper session for the mix - I wanted to see if I could outdo the onboard fx.  The only thing I did was make it sound a lot louder, that's a good thing though. - session on M8 is probably better sonically.  Maybe it's the reverb modulation - Raum is perfect for mood, but tough to dial in without a bunch of clashing.

I've rambled enough, thanks for listening.

2026 CC Attribution Noncommercial No Derivative Works (BY-NC-ND)

I welcome all critical feedback. Can relicense if you're interested, just ask.

See also: Mandatory Relaxation 1.

There's a particular construction to the pieces in this series. There's the consistent instrumentarium. There's atypical meters presented as natural-grooving meditative mantras. There's the subversive title.

Part 1 was answering the question "how long can you go on a single chord before somebody writes you an angry comment?". Part 2 is asking "how long can you go on repeating the same 4-note theme like a mantra before it starts feeling uncomfortable?". You tell me if I overdid it.

116 BPM 7/8, D-minor. Analog Rytm serving as CR-78. Fender Acoustasonic Std Jazzmaster rhythm guitar. All other sounds Osmose.

Composed, recorded, and produced in Vancouver BC. No AI used in any part of the process. For this year every cover art is a photo I took.

2026 Copyright All rights reserved

My first composition. Brand new to all this! Hoping the first is the worst. Made on M8.

2026 CC Attribution Noncommercial No Derivative Works (BY-NC-ND)

ehh, i only had 3 hours this week, theres a lot going on

2026 CC Attribution Noncommercial No Derivative Works (BY-NC-ND)

Low on time so no solos this week.

2026 Copyright All rights reserved

This week, I've been playing with Sonible's Smart:chain. Its actually a pretty handy way to get a mix going quickly. I didn't agree with much of the smart detected sounds but being familiar with smart Comp and smart EQ I could get results fairly quickly. This is just a simple jam with a whole bunch of Adam Szabo's Viper on it.

2026 Copyright All rights reserved

2026 CC Attribution Noncommercial No Derivative Works (BY-NC-ND)

Totally inspired by Apocalypse Now and the introduction scene where the protagonist is in his hotel room in Saigon, we can hear the helicopters the Doors, and he slowly goes into madness.

Another quickly done but felt right track. I have finally some time next week and might be able to get some focused work on music done!

2026 CC Attribution Noncommercial No Derivative Works (BY-NC-ND)