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The Daily Music Experiment


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Greetings Piepeople!

 

I decided to do an experiment/project for at least the next week, during which I will produce and publish a new piece of music every day. Why, you ask? Well, partly because I have nothing better to do, and partly because I normally take such an absurdly long amount of time to complete songs that I wanted to force myself to do otherwise.

 

So here's the deal: starting today, I will post a file every day until next Thursday (7 days). If I think I can handle it, I'll keep going after that, but I only guarantee it for the next 7 days. Don't expect these files to be good, or complete, or long, or consistent in any manner. I will spend no more than 1 day on each piece.

 

Feel free to join me if you want, and feel free to critique the music as you want. If you want to join me, try sticking with informational format below:

 

Date: October 9, 2009

Genre: Acid

BPM: 180

Length: 5:05

Equipment/Software Used:

Drums - Sonic Charge μTonic

Bass - Novation BassStation Rack

Intro Pad - Dave Smith Instruments Poly Evolver Keyboard

303 sound - Audiorealism ABL2

Melody - Native Instruments Pro-53

Outro Pad - E-Mu Orbit V2

Sequencing - Ableton Live 7

Mixing/Mastering - MOTU Digital Performer 5

Story/Info: I started this yesterday, as you can tell by the file name (1008 = October 8. Here in the US we put the month first when writing a date.) Yesterday I was in a bad mood, and on the way home from work I listened to Nine Inch Nails' "Broken" and part of Slayer's "Reign in Blood", so I wanted to make something fast, hard and dirty. I finished pretty much all of it last night in about 5 hours of work, although I was interrupted in the middle when I had to go help a friend with something, so I was up really late and got about 4 hours of sleep before work this morning. The only thing I did today was some minor tweaking on loop arrangement and changed the sound of the ending chord, plus the mixing and mastering. And before anyone mentions it, let me mention that I know it ends horribly. Keep in mind that I produced this in (at best) 1/90 of the time it normally takes me to complete a song. I had to post it today, and I just couldn't spend any more time coming up with a better ending.

 

http://www.veracohr.com/audio/1008.mp3 - 192kbps

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I didn't have much today:

 

Date: October 10, 2009

Genre: Mood music?

BPM: 110

Length: 3:45

Equipment:

Drums - μTonic

Pad - PEK

Lead - Native Instruments Massive

Sequencing/Mixing - Live

Mastering - DP

Story: By the time I finished yesterday's I was pretty drunk. I tried to start on the new one, but all I got was the drum sounds programmed and the loop written. I started the day with a nice hangover and have been sitting around watching episodes of Family Ties. I didn't have much creativity so I just found a sound already on my PEK, which I'm not even sure I programmed myself, I think it might have been the one factory preset I've kept. So I just fucked around for about an hour and half and here you have it:

 

http://www.veracohr.com/audio/1010.mp3

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Nice Start! The first track just needs to be finished up a bit.

The second has a long way to go. Inspration has never been even keel for me.

I'll throw this in 2

 

Genre: Tech Trance (i think)

BPM : 124

Length: 4:30

Sounds:

z3ta+1 - bassline

Battery 3 - drums

Juno 106 - sounds

Cakewalk Rapture - pads

Dimension Pro - melody from 2:36

Moog little phatty - bass

Drop Zone 1 - wisp sound

samples from a sci-fi collection...

Sequencing : mix of live and step

 

In Search Of

still don't quite like this, spent too much time on it perhaps

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I just remembered today that the next few days is going to be really tough to get this done. This week is my office's quarterly national sales meeting, which means I'm busy with work people even after work, plus tomorrow I've got my bowling league.

 

Date: October 11, 2009

Genre: Ambient

BPM: 80

Length: 6:40

Equipment:

Pad - PEK

Bass - BassStation

Tinkly sound - Native Instruments FM8

Drums - Reason

Recording/Mixing/Mastering - DP

 

I didn't program the FM sound myself, I'm not that good at FM. I just went through and found a preset and tweaked it a little. I had a hell of a time trying to find a high pass filter plugin that is controllable via MIDI CC. There's a multimode filter plugin in DP that isn't too bad, but the cutoff is only controllable via MIDI notes, not CC. I tried downloading some free ones, but what I found wasn't controllable at all, so I ended up just using an LFO instead of manual control for the cutoff.

 

I kind of like this actually, it might not be too bad if I wanted to develop it further.

 

http://www.veracohr.com/audio/1011.mp3

 

 

In Search Of

still don't quite like this, spent too much time on it perhaps

 

It's got some interesting bits, it could be something.

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Okay, so technically it's the 13th as I type this, but it still counts as the same day since I haven't gone to sleep yet.

 

Date: October 12, 2009

Genre: Trance (Classic Trance?)

BPM: 130

Length: 5:12

Equipment:

Drums - μTonic

Bass - Pro-53

Pad - Reason/Thor

Beep - Reason/Subtractor

303 - ABL2

 

I know this is boring, but I had a super busy day. I wanted to so some thing "classic trance", but honestly I wasn't into trance during the "classic" era, and I think I've really only heard a little of it

 

http://www.veracohr.com/audio/1012.mp3

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I just remembered today that the next few days is going to be really tough to get this done. This week is my office's quarterly national sales meeting, which means I'm busy with work people even after work, plus tomorrow I've got my bowling league.

 

Date: October 11, 2009

Genre: Ambient

BPM: 80

Length: 6:40

Equipment:

Pad - PEK

Bass - BassStation

Tinkly sound - Native Instruments FM8

Drums - Reason

Recording/Mixing/Mastering - DP

 

I didn't program the FM sound myself, I'm not that good at FM. I just went through and found a preset and tweaked it a little. I had a hell of a time trying to find a high pass filter plugin that is controllable via MIDI CC. There's a multimode filter plugin in DP that isn't too bad, but the cutoff is only controllable via MIDI notes, not CC. I tried downloading some free ones, but what I found wasn't controllable at all, so I ended up just using an LFO instead of manual control for the cutoff.

 

I kind of like this actually, it might not be too bad if I wanted to develop it further.

 

http://www.veracohr.com/audio/1011.mp3

 

 

 

 

It's got some interesting bits, it could be something.

 

It needs more structure.

That's the problem with most ambient, it doesn't have an identifiable structure - they get all these nice sounds and then just put them together without a form holding it all together. That's why I hear the criticism 'ambient is just noise' because song structure is still important, even in ambient.

It's also why I don't collect ambient, I don't feel satisfied listening to most I hear.

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