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More M8 ambient for you.

This week I got some new gear, just a simple looper and reverb unit.

The new gear is mostly for transitioning between tracks live, but I've also been practicing with them and this track is the result.

I've been studying water sounds this week and found they could be very dissonant.

I've also been studying dissonant cyclical patterns of the chromatic scale.

The pattern used to construct the melody uses every note and interval of the chromatic scale.

It aims to "sour" every interval with a clashing interval before it, for example putting the tritone interval next to a perfect fifth.

Since everything is dissonant, it ends up sounding consistent.

After that, I just randomly cut out notes.

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It's been a few weeks since I used the $60 Univox for a track, so here's an arpeggio-heavy one. The first part I recorded (the arpeggiated theme at the beginning) turned out to be in 5/4, so I went with that where I could. As a rock-marinated person from small times, I kept falling into 4/4 and 6/4 in places, but I liked the interplay with the 5/4. Also inevitably, I ended up tracking a couple parts in 11/4. Is there a time signature I didn't use? (Yes, there are time signatures I didn't use here.)

Most of these tracked sections ended up long, and of course the 11/4 and 5/4 pairing wouldn't complete a full cycle before 55 measures, so there was a bit of a challenge in making these sections feel complete without feeling overlong.

Three tracks of Univox Coily hollowbody in Bb F Bb F Bb C tuning, no effect pedals. (I did try using my Montreal Assembly Count to Five here, but there's already so much going on, it didn't work in the ensemble. It would work as a solo guitar thing, though.) There's the usual convolution reverb send and the eq/compression/limiting on the stereo mix.

The title comes from the 646-ft. prominence of the Curlew Mountains.

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This was a strange week, spent many hours on 2 different ideas that I ended up totally scrapping the night before this was due, then just pulled in an messed with a bunch of samples rather than trying to force something I was starting to feel too precious about. Trying to learn from previous mistakes of forcing something that isn't working and just pivoting to something new. The result is something pretty random, kinda heavy synth from a UK Garage sample pack that reminds me of Aloboi. Then some breakbeat-like drums, other random percussion bits and sample re-sampling and modification. Finally some violins as the main lead, tons of automation, including parallel Transits on the master bus for fun, random DJ-like effects. Basically I got back in my 'The Impulse' mode, getting goofy and having fun throwing stuff together in a divergent-mode of creativity.

I had fun, I kinda like it, sure it's rough and not perfect, but I think Weekly Beats is a good avenue to try both - slog through something you hold precious and pivot, starting fresh on something random.

* Splice Samples for drums, violin, synth - lots of FX and manipulation

* Transit, Valhalla plugins

* Gullfoss + Izotope Elements for master

Total time spent: 3 hours (4 extra hours spent on stuff that was scrapped)

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A friend of mine was over and we were primarily working on a different music project, but we started joking about adding a renaissance breakdown in the middle of the song we were working on, and I jokingly picked a random strings sample after searching for renaissance in splice. Basically it got in my head, and this is the beat that came from that. My friend played the guitar, which I added a little dub echo on using a FX send I automated. A pretty sample heavy track, but I also played the bass on it as well. I've been getting back into my mpc 1000 style workflow, but now I'm primarily in the box, but I'm able to get a pretty close approximation with the mpd218 with the way it handles note repeat.

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Leaning heavily on my new bestie… named after my gran.

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Instrumental this week - working a lot with events coming up and as always I prio my time with family.  Everything created on the M8 - light master before upload.

Inspired by my son's playtime - how everything starts as something simple and then blooms into something huge - creative, brilliant, shiny and eventually rocketed violently into the void of space.

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This track starts with an air horn and a crazy trumpet sample. Add a distorted kick and I’m on my way to a finished beat.

This beat was made with the M8 tracker

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a little stop, a little go and some saturation.

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Listening to Virtual Dreams (Ambient Explorations In The House & Techno Age, 1993-1997) all week, such a great compilation with lovely tracks.  Inspired by those tunes to try something similar but a little more beat driven.  To try and capture that old sound pulled out the Boss Dr-770 (thankfully it still fired up) and recorded all the drums from it.  Sequenced the midi in ableton, so much easier and quicker then trying to program that drum machine.  All the synths were recorded from Polyend Synth and the vocals were sampled from splice.  Everything was arranged and recorded into Ableton to add a bunch of effects plugins to liven things up a bit.  Hope you enjoy this nostalgic tune.

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