I've been a bit quiet on the public performance front apart from two snwv installations in 2013 and one performance (guitar and Pure Data), but I've been active in composition and recording. Now it's time to be more public about it, and at the end of 2013, I heard about Weeklybeats, a voluntary commitment to write and record a new original song each week during the year. So I'm doing it!
My pieces can be found at weeklybeats.com/#/onezero, so go over and listen. This first one, "Beach Lab," is named that for its tropical feel (it's winter here; wishful thinking) and the hovering presence of Stereolab. It started as a little sketch in Ableton Live as a simple beat in Impulse with the trusty TR-606 samples, and then adding some Ableton Electric instrument over the top. Since I've also picked up the Lemur app, I thought I'd play with one of the algorithmic controllers, and added some randomized Electric playing an enigmatic scale. I let that sit for a day or so, and started adding more rhythms in other Impulse instances (808, K3M, percussion, MK1), more melodic Electric parts, and finally some guitar.
I tried a bunch of these snippets against each other, found some that worked, grabbed subsections of things that went on too long, figured out the best combinations, added some variations, and used Live to record the different ones I triggered. A few editing sessions brought it down from a too-repetitive 10 minutes to just over 7, and here we are. Let me know what you think.
