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I started this hoping for a Kazoo.  Musescore did disappoint. I wanted to have some sort of a kazoo-Honkytonkpiano encounter.  I have to talk to them about this.

(A COMPLAINT)

(Even though I began my electronic musical journey in the 1970s in a music lab between a couple of Moog Synths-- and was taught via patch chords and ADSR and white noise generators how to sample the waves and create all sort of sonorities-- can't Musescore just devise a kazoo for me?)

I also was hoping for a Hurdy-gurdy. (I really want a real one of those.) Alas Musescore did not have one. So block chords, with a jaunty little melody in the Harmonica, which my husband thought sounded like a Wild West Bar-so it is named. The Piano and HonkyTonkPiano sounded too much alike.  I was hoping for some quarter-tone dissonance-- as HonkyTonkpiano is supposed to be wildly out of tune. I did play around with Dominant 7th chords and Major 7th chords to raise a few eyebrows.

It is a happy piece with a bit of a maybe 1930s swing tempo. 

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Many thanks to Günther and Bjarne for their support. It became a beautiful piece of lo-fi music.

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Thanks so much for all the continued support, due to unforseen events my side project has become my main project and believe it or not somehow I have even less time. However, I did have a bit more time to work on this weeks track and that was good. I haven't fired up my hardware (minus the guitar) in a good minute but I do hope that my less is somehow more time will let be get back to exploring the TR1000 and friends.

In Lak'ech

_mzunguko

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A quick one using some stems I started at random points throughout 2026, pulling them into something resembling a track. Since it was short and feels a bit fleeting, I'm calling it an "interlude" even if it isn't really one 😅

Quick, rough, and a poor mix; but as always I appreciate any feedback!

This weeks pic is another heavily modified picture, this time a parking garage in Philly.

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Had a different track that was 70% done, but it just didn't feel right, was very forced.  Scrapped that track and this one came together more naturally and felt much better.  Thanks for listening and stopping by in this corner of weeklybeats.

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Hi everyone :)

A new week, a new Weekly Beat.

Well… every week seems to come with its own little challenge.

This time it was something I haven’t really experienced like this before: ear fatigue.

Even though I really try to keep my listening volume at a reasonable level and avoid producing too loud (especially since I produce almost exclusively on headphones) This weekend it honestly felt like my ears were only working at 70%.

I’m not exactly sure what caused it, but maybe some of you have tips on how to deal with that kind of thing?

Or maybe I just need a vacation ;)

Anyway, here’s my entry for this week, hope you like it :)

Have a nice day :)

Cheers

KaZu

P.S. As always, I’m really grateful for any constructive feedback, opinions, and so on :)

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Another song of yesteryear... I did a demo for this in Pro Tools around 8 years ago and thought I did alright at the time, but since starting with Studio One in 2020 for my first Weekly Beats outing, that demo has been at the back of my mind for how lackluster and 'toothless' it now seems.

The general composition is similar to the demo with a few revisions, particularly some lyric tidy up, because there were literally two lines I ad-lib'd nonsense in the original and were just left there because I couldn't think of anything better, and some other lines that were either too repetitive or needed a bit more coherence.

Production and performance-wise is the most notable lift over the demo, giving the vocals more oomph and using a better collection of plugins to give it an audio overhaul using my slightly better understanding of mixing. Another thing that always bugged me about the demo is that I didn't properly understand delay fractions and such, so even though the 'dotted 8th' intro is how I intended it to be (I wrote it with an analogue delay pedal), the demo riff only has an 8th note delay, because I couldn't figure out the Pro Tools delay plugin to sound like the pedal. Such a noob...

One reason this one took so long to revisit is through my laziness, I intended to reinstall Pro Tools at some point and transfer over whatever elements I could recover from the original demo to Studio One so I wasn't starting from scratch. I eventually reinstalled last year, and........ I couldn't find the project anywhere... So, I dragged the MP3 of the demo into Studio One and used that as a base to rebuild a new project over, and here we are. I'm glad though, it was more work to start again, but better for it.

Another reason; I've been having doubts of my vocal and guitar strength the last couple of years as the age progresses further away from youth (and also because I never practice). I remember the chorus vocals being a bit challenging 8 years ago for the original demo, so that's been a hurdle in my head, and I remember getting crazy sore fingers from all the takes. Thankfully though, I managed the vocals and guitars fine, and even felt less sore in the throat and fingers afterwards, even though these vocals have notably more oomph than the original. Yay!

Bonus trivia:

The riff under the solo is possibly the oldest remnant of my early days of guitar that has made it into any proper songs of mine. I believe I landed on that one when I was around 14 years old, because I remember jamming with a childhood friend of mine I was visiting in my home town after having moved away when I was 12, and we had both discovered guitar while separate. He was very into grunge (because early 90s) and he was throwing down random 'Cobain/Vedder' style vocal ideas over my random riffs because I hadn't even considered singing yet. We were recording to a cassette at the time, but that disappeared years ago. I can still recall the melody he did over that riff because I liked it. When I was writing this song around 2018, it was kind've by accident that this riff became part of it, but it seemed more like a solo moment than a vocal moment, and even though there is probably 0.00000000001% chance that he would even recall an improv melody he did over 30 years ago, it felt a bit icky to use it without asking him.

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I'm overwhelmed how fast summer came. Everything is green and there are so many flowers I can't even count. I wanted to make something that feels melancholy but from joyful things

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This week took much inspiration over from a pretty matchbox I found.

In life always felt grateful to find myself staying not too distant from railway tracks of my city. That i fail to find a more honest sound then a sound of a moving train to live by. Always sparking a joy upon hearing it. Magnific source of inspiration. [later]

Based upon the color combinations from the matchbox’s rail car image, built a inspired m8 theme that I can keep going back to. Here the link to the theme if you’d like to try it out for yourself.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EX4OKgMRsb7PMrQ_i9hKuSWBRqxpVFHl/view?usp=drivesdk

Few screenshots of how the theme looks like, to me it appears decent for writing and also joy to mix and master my song with. [later]

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Yes, it is. Recycled drums this week, and addition of fun synths over it.

Did find a fun free 80's inspired reverb vst as well that I did put into this track quite a bit... :)

So basically, my acoustic rock drums (from another of this year track, you can go back to my tracks to find it... ;) ), 70's inspired vst synths (mellotron and other synths emulations).

It is a bit of a mess, but it is what it is!

Voilà!

Picture from last week trip to Calgary, this is Banff railroads...

Fitness journey, not bad at all, did about 6,5hrs of cardio, all outside. Weight is steady at about 90 kg. Did eat mostly healthy.

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