Weekly Beats 33 (Burst Transmission)

Week 33 (Burst Transmission)

This weeks piece of music is a more beat driven orientated affair and I’m very happy with the outcome. This mellow track was composed and built on the Teenage Engineering Op1. I then added a few clap samples from a 909 at the end and about halfway trough an effect soaked Melodica comes into the track.

Give it a listen below:

Weekly Beats 32 ((%))

Week 32

This Week I wanted to crate something with a more summary mood. I started with the initial OP1 brassy pad sound that you hear from the beginning and iterated on it to build up the track.

Unfortunately midweek I managed to fall whilst climbing and badly injure my left arm. Although I haven’t broken anything it’s made playing instruments over the past few days painful and I was worried that I wouldn’t finish the track. Luckily a close friend and collaborator John George stepped in to provide the bass line and help me with some of the arrangement to get it out on time:

Weekly Beats 31 (Krubera)

Week 31 (Krubera)

I recently picked up M01d, A Software Replica of the Famous Korg M01 for 3DS. Although still getting used to it, I thought the perfect way to give it a baptism of fire would be to use it solely to make the track of the week.

Krubera is a dark and roomy sounding track that was made using purely the sounds available on the M01d including effects. The reverb available on the M01d was also a deciding force for the track and was a major contribution towards its composition.

Give it a listen on Weekly Beats Below:

Weekly Beats 30 (Smile)

Week 30 (Smile)

The original idea for this track was to create something along the lines of Acid house. It didn’t take long before it had gone in another direction but the use of the 303, 909 and Piano samples are still there although re-appropriated for the track.

This is also the first track where I’ve had a direct collaboration with another musician. Adam Wheeldon provided Live guitar and Bass for the Piece.

Weekly Beats 29 (Daybreak)

Week 29 (Daybreak)

This week’s track was a little different. I wanted to create a track representing a sunrise. I knew I wanted a wall of sound approach to imitate the suns awesome power and after a few Ideas I decided that the use of radio static (the audio remnants of the big bang) was a perfect imitation.

This track is made up of many layers of different recordings of static with pitch shifting and automated EQ to add rhythms and melody’s to the track. I then accentuated elements that I liked with a heavily distorted electric guitar and a bass line from Monark, which I recorded through an FM radio using a transmitter:

Weekly Beats 25 (Shadows On The Silver Screen)

Week 25 (Shadows On A Silver Screen)

During this week I got hooked on the repetitive dark bass line that opens this track. Yet again teenage engineering OP1 provided the background to most of the synth noises and an electric guitar crashes into the track halfway through turning the whole thing into something new.

Weekly Beats 23 (filament)

week 23 (filament)

This week was a bit of a struggle. I almost came to the completion of a track by Wednesday but didn’t like where it had gone. However instead of scrapping the whole thing I stripped down and sampled all the individual instruments to the core elements I liked.
I then added these fundamental samples to a collection of drum racks in ableton live and by triggering the samples with ableton push created a new track from the core ideas of the original one. The majority of sounds are from the OP1 with a sampled 909 for the drums and guitar played by myself and then chopped up for the new track:

Weekly Beats 22 (Standardised)

week 22 Standardised

After several weeks of a more structured fare I decided to go back to something more repetitive and hypnotic. The basis of this track was made using several of the sequencers of Teenage Engineerings OP-1 but sending the midi information out over usb to some synths in Reaktor.

Tombola was a key sequencing element from the OP1 which gave me little control as to the rhythm of allot of the instrumentation giving the track a rather woozy feel. Once the randomized base of the track was there I then added guitar and bass instrumentation, trying to follow the timing of the piece before finally adding drums to a fixed tempo. The aim was to create something that is quite hard to pick up on as the instruments drift in and out of each other and give a mixed feeling of Loss, hopelessness and tiredness:

Weekly Beats Week 20 (Indigo)

Week 20 Indigo

Last week I made a jaunty little track which was based heavily on the chord structures surrounding the piece.

The original idea was to come up with the basics of the piece on piano at first and then expand those ideas to multiple instruments. My thought process behind this was to come up with a track that was orientated towards a more complex structure than my usual works outside of my solo piano pieces.