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:
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:
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:
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.
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:
During making last weeks track I found allot of versatility in the vocal sample I had recorded into the OP1. When pitching it down to a lower octave and more of a bass range it sounded completely different then its original sample and I started to toy with it. After creating several different melodies with the vocals I tried to find accompanying instrumentation that would suit the piece and continued to do this for the rest of the week.
On the weekend I went into the mixing stage. I had created over 20 different melodies with different instrumentation that all lasted around the 6 minute mark. As the sound of the track was driven by the repeating vocal melody and I had a lot of different textures already, I decided to leave drums out and make it a more Ambient affair. I played all the individual stem recordings and mixed them live into a master stereo recording of the track to create a more drifting reactionary sound. After several different attempts at a mix down I was happy with the result and this is the one you can hear below:
This week took a darker turn from the original summery atmosphere intended. Use of distorted vocal samples over a Hip hop beat have created a dark and brooding track which morphs into something a little more upbeat at the halfway mark:
This week measures the halfway point for the year and the last track in my Spring collection which will be up on bandcamp as an album for downloading soon. The aim for the spring collection was to release a track each week that contained at least one instrument with a coiled spring as its sauce (namely Guitar or Piano) and I achieved it.
Signing off was a way to send off things with a more ambient sound something of a pallet cleanser before the summer collection which will roll on next week. Have a listen bellow:
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.
Yet again I’ve been forgetting to post my weekly beats music on my blog, Although I have still been making it so during this week I will add what i have been doing for the past few weeks.
This track was made with guitar and my OP1: