WeeklyBeats.com - Music RSS Feed

All sequenced on M8, swift master in reaper.

Started with the intro motif for Caves of Qud, an obsession for the past 2 years, though I swore off video games for the year when I started this challenge - major scale 7843 then I built around it and it's buried in there somewhere :D.  Family and I are on vacation this week - got a lot of this in on the plane.

As always thanks for all of the encouraging words over the past few weeks, I was in a gauntlet of brutal work, london one day, LA the next, now back to the east coast with literally no full 24 hour days at home.  I'll get back there soon enough, at least I got the loved ones with me.

Hope you are all having an amazing summer. :)

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

One take performance on the OP-XY.  No edits.

This song started as an experiment using the internal mic on the OP-XY for sampling direct to the device.  The first thing I sampled (while my heater fan was running) was an old nylon string guitar which I sampled chromatically over one octave so the various notes have different tonal characters even though most of the notes used here were a single source resampled down.

The other sound source I sampled was a lock groove on a Roberta Flack record I was listening to.  This was sampled straight from my stereo speaker into the mic.  This gives the track that warm vinyl texture.  Authentic!

The rest of the sounds were ones I already had in the device or from the built in synth engines.

All the chops/edits/fx/glitches were done in real time on the OP-XY also. 

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZ7A9e0pys4/

2026 Copyright All rights reserved

This week the constraint was to use only Baby Audio plugins with the exception of Teto.

The Synths are BA-1 and Grainferno

Drums are Tekno

FX Spaced Out, Crystalline, TAIP

In general I was reminded how great Crystalline and TAIP. Grainferno is really cool and not something I'd used before. BA-1 is good, but a bit limiting.

Went for a super fun sped up UKG type beat with no less than 3 key changes.

Lyrics are about people trapped in some kind of fantasy world controlled by AI and escape. The final scene reminds me of the end of Wall-E

Brilliant graphics, by my daughter Martha who loves Teto.

Lyrics

Welcome to the future

We live in the sky in a hot air balloon

We all love the future

There's a rainbow machine that controls all our dreams

Eating candy playing VR

The fun just never stops

Living in the future

Working underground in the candy mines

We trust in the future

We all do as we're told by the statues of old

Following instructions reading the rules

The fun just never stops

Sometime I wonder

What this all means

But why sit and ponder

When thre's candy to eat

Loving in the future

We're assigned our friends by our social trends

Worried for the future

The statues went dark when the charges went off

Must make our own way

There are no rules

The fun has reached an end

Welcome to the future

We live on the ground in a hut we made

We don't know the future

There are no machines

We control our own dreams

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

49 Trips around the sun

Some VCV Rack this week to mix it up a bit:

2026 Copyright All rights reserved

take some riffs and melodies that sound damn near nothing like each other and slam them together to try and make a song out of it even if it sounds incoherent

2026 CC Attribution Share Alike (BY-SA)

I did an unintentional Big Bud homage this week. My pal came over for a 1-hour sample challenge on Sunday evening. We randomly dipped into a sample pack of vintage answering machine recordings and my brain took it into into spacedub land.

Most of this is from various sample pack one shots. Somehow I cobbled together this swelling bassline from four different samples. It wasn't quite dumb luck but it was a mix of trial and error and SOME luck. I'm really pleased with how the bass came out. It was a bit tough to nail down at first. The two drum layers are sample pack full loop business so I can't take much credit for those, aside from dropping them into the DAW. I was mostly hands off there short of dialing in some transient tweaks and EQing.

90% of this was done Sunday. I spent the rest of the time this week trying to dial in some EQing and mixdown related things. I finally added the played Rhodes parts and the one random darker choir pad this morning (Saturday) to try to make this is bit more dynamic. I think I botched the last Rhodes chord so apologies to the real musicians out there who know what they are doing. I will go back and fix that once I have some time.   

Happy Week 26 halfway point to you all!

2026 Copyright All rights reserved

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

SPEEEEEEEED TRAAAAAASSSHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

(this one turned out interesting... for 1.4 hours of work, i didn't expect it to be even remotely appealing, but i kinda like it! :lol:)

I AM THE WEEKLY BEAST! BEAST MODE, BAYBEEEEEEEE! WUT!

2026 CC0 Creative Commons Zero (Public Domain)

a pretty decent track

2026 CC0 Creative Commons Zero (Public Domain)

The base track of this is from my friends week 24 submission. It was licensed no derivatives, but he said it was ok if I used it - I have licensed this one the same as the original

I used Ableton's stem separation and broke out the drums/bass/synth parts, and did a little processing through some external gear for each of them. The vocals are all my V22 analog vocoder, with no original voice mixed in. I wanted to make it a bit more dynamic, but didn't have enough time to fiddle with the MIDI to get it sounding as good as it could.

The lyrics are references to 80s movies. How many can you find?!

› Lyrics‹ Lyrics

I can't escape

this unstoppable machine

but I totally recall

what my directives mean

crystal clear dreams

clawing out at me tonight

pins and needles chainsaw vibes

killer ghost no place to hide

my science is weird

but my genius us real

99 red ballons

on a Wednesday afternoon

Fell'n McFly in my

Time Machine, ride or die

maxing out my navigating

air guitars and future shaping

[Chorus]

I've been going to the movies

soaking up the silver screen

scifi horror comedy

action thriller fantasy

I've been going to the movies

watching all the cheesy scenes

neon clothing, action heroes

big explosions, rebel teens

› Lyrics With Movie References‹ Lyrics With Movie References

I can't escape [Escape from NY]

this unstoppable machine [Terminator]

but I totally recall [Total Recall]

what my directives mean [Robocop]

crystal clear dreams [Friday the 13th, leading into...]

clawing out at me tonight [Nightmare on Elm Street]

pins and needles chainsaw vibes [Hellraiser, Texas Chainsaw Massacre]

killer ghost no place to hide [Nondescript freebie, but I was thinking of Chucky/Poltergeist]

my science is weird [Weird Science]

but my genius us real [Real Genius]

99 red ballons [An homage to War Games]

on a Wednesday afternoon [Ferris Bueller's Day Off]

Fell'n McFly in my time machine [Back to the Future]

ride or die [Generic reference to all the best-friend movies]

maxing out my navigating [Flight of the Navigator]

air guitars and future shaping [Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure]

[Chorus]

I've been going to the movies

soaking up the silver screen

scifi horror comedy

action thriller fantasy

I've been going to the movies

watching all the cheesy scenes

neon clothing, action heroes

big explosions, rebel teens

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