While exploring the polyend synth i found this sound of the vat- engine, wich reminded me of a vintage scene, somewhere in a little bistro where milchshakes and burgers are served and i tried to capture this feeling- at the end it sounds a bit boring to me and maybe that's exactely what this scene is or was..

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Since I’m just noodling around this week, this one is named after my review of the bad Italian food I had the night before.

It’s been a busy month, but wanted to at least submit something and try some experiments while I was at it! The first being drum loops — when I’m looping at home I usually use a Novation Circuit, but these are just the built in drum patterns from my DAW copy and pasted around. It’s not my ideal workflow but it was fun to try.

Next experiment was the tones. I’ve been back to using my Zoom CDR-70 pedal to create some ambient textures — so the reverse delays, bleep-bloops, and lofi sounds are all coming from that device, sweetened with a little boss RV-6 reverb.

And lastly was creating the bass sound from just sending my guitar going through the Helix “Boctaver” effect. It’s alright.

I’m still enjoying having a reason to finish some ideas and familiarize myself with different features in my DAW — and this week I’m ok putting out some “Mediocre Manicotti”

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This piece sort of came to me while I was trying to think of something else to write I was noodling on my acoustic. This is my first really good sounding acoustic. It's a Taylor that has koa wood back and sides. It's an endangered wood. They can only cut when the volcano is gonna burn down the forest anyway. I bought it years ago over 20 years ago when I heard it in a Music store and it was on sale for half off and I have to put it on layaway because that was a little tight for my budget at the time, but it was the best sounding acoustic. God played at the time. It didn't have a pick up on it and that's probably why most people didn't buy it but that is exactly why I didn't buy it. It didn't have its own pick up and I could pick my own pick up to put on it. I didn't wanna cut a hole in a side or anything so I put a Fishman bar underneath. The bridge is very passive pick up that doesn't affect the sound of a guitar at all anyway recording, though seems to be all to the left because for some reason, I recorded it in stereo, but it all went to one side and then when I tried recording in it mono, it still went to one side. I don't know what's going on with this this happened once before about 5 to 6 years ago, I just didn't remember how to fix it. I'm kind of on a time crunch here so this is my composition for this week. I'll fix the recording as I can and maybe I'll be able to put it back up later if they'll let me if I can get this one to do right

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Ahhhh first non-Jamuary Weekly Beat... Got to work on this one over several sessions. Grew organically from the main melody, especially the chorus chords. Still following the Jamuary thought of playing everything live, except for one of the string layers that I MIDIed in. Last thing on the track was the bassline, which is kind of odd for my process.

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Sprinting to the goal with no time left! I love nujabes and he's on my mind so I tried to emulate that sound. I'm working on a recording with a band where I don't own the music so I can't post it here, which is why I'm out of time!!

Thanks for listening. Hopefully this turns out better than I think it will; I just don't have any time to digest it!

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First M8 track of the year, aimed for sorta-retro-dub-techno, landed on retro-deep house. There's just a few too many limitations on modulating the M8's delay to really hit dub-techno out of the box.

The title is absolutely a play on words. (btw, M8 tracks get their random-generated titles in all caps cuz they're fun and also makes it easier for me to track them down later lol)

Related to that - I'm now helping with the Red Means Recording monthly Discord challenges on the RMR discord, which is a fun monthly song-writing challenge based on a prompt, technique, genre, etc... Last month's challenge was all about granular synthesis, you can watch the stream here:

RMR Monthly Discord Challenge January 2026 - Granular Synthesis

Many of the challenges are theme-based, but we try to make them as educational as they are fun - last year the Chicago House challenge was one of my faves, it was a genre WAY out of my wheelhouse but I learned a lot and made some awesome tracks. Some of that definitely spilling into this week's song.

Which, is also related, because the discord theme for this month is "love" (with plenty of room for interpretation and cynicism if desired lol), and I decided - barring disaster - that I'd theme the next few weeks of tracks as "Love, Sex and Longing in the Void" - space music, and probably space-dub-techno-house nonsense too.

On the notes of barring disaster, it's been a bad week, and it's gonna be another bad week, but we will see how we get through it.

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sometimes i get a bit emotional

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

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I wanted to get away from chip tune style songs this week, but still wanted to focus on the lessons I've learned this year about creating different sections of the song with varying energy levels. So I started off with my other standard M8 technique of using the hypersynth for the chords. I just picked a progression I hadn't used before (i VII iv v), put it in and already it sounded good. Really seemed like a nice FM bell would go well with that, so I found an instrument from trash80's pack that sounded perfect. Added some synth drums in and really tried to change the energy levels, including starting to ramp up the drums before the start of the next section.

I also tried a couple new things here that I've been wanting to. I started the intro and first verse in A minor then switched the chorus to be in C major. I even telegraphed that by switching my chord progression to include a C major chord in it that it didn't in previous loops. I'm not sure if any of that comes through well in the final song since my "extra energy" in the chords makes them harder to hear. I added an extra measure to end the chorus. I was worried it would throw off the song, but I really like the way that turned out.

Ultimately, I think this songs sounds "okay". I feel like I left the listener hanging at some points, where I could go back and expand on a section to give it more emotion, but I ran out of time. I also feel like I feel into some old habits in my opening and first verse of just repeating everything, but changing one element in each phrase.

Finally, I'm a little worried that normalizing this song to -14 LUFS messed with the balance between instruments. It looks like I made the song entirely too quiet to begin with though, so I think the volume boost is necessary.

Download the M8 Bundle

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Daniel Green

Randomisation only gets you so far, you know?

02:50

Made using dials.

I feel like this would be good live, with some big speakers. Really melt some brains, y'know?

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This wasn't a very productive week of music for me as I recovered from Jamuary. I took some time to return to my Elektron space after being away from it for months now. This track is me trying to work with my Digitone II to produce some ambient for an upcoming compilation in the EZBOT discord.

I'm not thrilled with this. Even at a very subdued bpm, this feels like it is moving faster than I want. I am also not crazy with how different elements fade in and out or play with each other. There is a lot of work to be done to make this sound the way I want, but it is a track that I made this week, and this is a weekly beat! :D More importantly, I am glad to be working with this fantastic hardware again and just trying to keep a bit of the momentum I built up last month going for this month.

Thanks for listening. Have a great week!

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