laguna: Recent Episodes
laguna
Long time ago I started tweaking sounds with my computer and became addicted to the art of sampling. I try to tell small stories with my music, so if images appear in your head when my sound comes out of the speakers, my job is accomplished. Thanks for listening. Please let me hear your stories too! And, by the way, I believe in sharing, so all my songs are under the Creative Commons licence. Collaborations and remixing are encouraged.
I created a semidecent but really short Sega Master System chiptune on Deflemask, and I'm quite new to the program so I didn't knew where to go from there. I thought I could make it work in a slower context, so my 16 bars lasted more and I wouldn't have to write that many music wink
Also I was making some breaks chopping some of the drum loops included in Renoise's factory library. I think it's quite lame use them as they are.
Everything was going more less as planned. Creating content for a future video, recording the creation of those breaks and loops... but I kept wondering if I could make it work. I mean: could I possibly just slow down my chiptune and make it work with a chilled 73 bpm hip hop beat.
Week advanced and then it's Sunday morning. I've got all elements, but I haven't mixed them. Load them into Ableton and ... they don't fit at all! So I just have less than a day to find some interesting drums and try to make this work!
So, long story short, I basically used a loop made with some TR606 samples timestretched with an Akai s3000xl and sequenced with Linux QTractor. The "acoustic snare" breaks are made using Ableton's own internal library. All the chiptune stuff is Deflemask, pitched down and stretched so it would fit from 93-94 bpm to 73.
I used a vocoder modulated by the beatbox and some reverb and delay to make things a little bit interesting. Then I resampled everything and pitched it down, filtering it (low pass) dinamically with the drum amplitude. Lots of EQs per track so that mid range doesn't pierce your ears (I hope.. if I messed it up, let me know).
So basically this one is some drums and a lot of copies of the same chiptune with different EQs and sends in order to fake a more interesting arrangement.
Well, never fall in love with a break without checking if it fits the rest of the song. Lesson learned.
I choose to open this year remastering a piece I created a few months back, using Linux own Hydrogen drum machine as a chromatic sampler. There's something funny (for a little while, at least) about trying to do electronic melodies with an instrument planned for acoustic real-life sounding drums.
My Linux open source DAW skills are limited at the moment, so I had to do all the tweaking and polishing dumping each separated track into Ableton Live 10 on a Mac. I think the mix turned to be somewhat decent and not as muddy as my usual stuff.
Thanks in advice to everybody for listening. Again, it's really great to be back another year
This week I worked on a different project, even on a future video for a track. However, I had to work on different other things, my own Linux Server included, so around Friday I started looking around my old Reason projects.
I know, I know smile It's quite monotone and really sparse. I had not enough time and the melodic ideas I have went nowhere, so I prefered this minimal glitchy hip hoppy jam to a rather annoying bassline I kept almost until the end "bacause it was on the original track" from almost twelve years ago.
Maybe with some work, it could become something more than a sleepy background music. Hope you find it relaxing, at least.
Well, I don't know if I must feel proud or embarrased about this one. I think it's kinda fun but pretty weird, and as usual I would have loved to add some more melodies to it, because it was basically born as a ProTracker exercised that was then moved to FastTracker (running on DOSBox within Retropie on a Raspberry Pi!)...
The cuts were added last minute using a lot of pitched down "atmospheric" noise effects of cristals and glass items. Original samples were taken from the "Chaos" part of the classic Budbrain megademo, back from the Amiga days (in case anyone remembers).
Cooked over about 7 hours prior to the Weeklybeats deadline. I spent most of the time restoring some "bright and life" to those original 8 bit samples, and I wonder if I should use clean synths instead of this sonic overequalized mess smile
I was aiming to the excellent Grillo/Ecso type of sound but ended like this, so go figure...
Hope you find it kinda funny
Well, first of all, this hasn't any "tumbao" feeling at all, I'm afraid, but just 10 minutes before the deadline I couldn't came with a better title. Not honoring the afrocuban rhythmical tradition, I'm afraid, thouht I think the swing is kinda neat.
I just came off-duty yesterday, and after attending some family matters, almost zero time for music this week, so I tossed this really quick one less than three hours before the deadline. Pretty repetitive I know, it's just a sort of "long bassline" but... maybe adding some melodies here and there it could become something.
This week the weather has increased my workload a lot, so less time to make music. Also, I started some sort of "spring cleaning" since I had to change some cabinets... therefore even less time. I was working on some ambient guitar and some other beat oriented stuff, but then the bad weather came along again, and ...
The snowstorm made me spent my Sunday in a hotel, waiting to get back on the road. I hadn't any of my regular computers on me so I cooked this little synth jam on Ableton in slightly more than one hour using three simple analog instances and some delays. Extremely simple and short, I know... I was about to give up, but guessed it is what is is. I guess I must continue my planned project this week, then.
Sometimes life gives you a night in a random hotel dinning with strangers, with snowflakes softly hitting the windows smile
This week's been pretty busy, going back on duty and rewiring and redistributing my studio on my spare time. I'm discovering the joys of using a looper and slowly learning how to lay ideas on it. I've practiced every day but just a small part of that is recorded.
So, after a very musical week, Sunday came and I had nothing to show, so I made this tiny dubby jam 5 hours prior to the deadline, from start to finish.
Guitar, bass and some lame pad mashing for the "riddim"... I know it's very sloppy in some moments but I wanted to keep it simple and don't overdo things. It's a "new" thing for me to actually PLAY, so remember I am NOT a guitarrist by any means. I just know how to place my fingers and do some extremely easy basslines.
Started on Ableton 8 and finished with some maginal Max4Live reverb and some minor tweaks. Nothing fancy, really.
27 minutes to the end of the deadline. Will press "submit" and go straight to bed. It will be a long day tomorrow.
Ok, this week I went in a different way: after I completed the whole 3 seasons of "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" on Netflix, I felt like doing something more uptempo and positive than my usual stuff, thought my "upbeat" skills are quite limited.
I've been improving my own server and self-hosted cloud, so while digging in some forgotten folders in order to regain some more space, I found a really cool arpeggiated synth loop WHICH BELONGS TO A VSTi SYNTH DEMO. I say again, the main synth phrase, as catchy as I think it is, wasn't written by me. It was featured as an example of the VSTi capabilities.
I labeled my sample as "Tactile Sound - Transparent" and I downloaded it circa 2009-2010. Googling it did not showed me any significant results. Did those guys went out of business? If you have any info, please let me know.
Well, apart from the origin of that sticky synth loop, I thought it was pretty uplifting and it was sad to let it go to waste, specially when those tracks often go forgotten and not considered pieces of music "worth keeping". So I added a few layers of really simple drums and a bass line. I was starting to add too much elements when my family told me I was messing too much with the idea, so I decided to leave it that way.
So, here you have, a "borrowed" synth hook, a bass and some schematic beats. And a title that means "bye bye sadness" (Didn't went for my original spanish "adios tristeza" because I forgot a very famous spanish band has a whole album under that title).
I'm not specially confortable taking some sample which I could not properly give props and credit, so maybe if you know about that "Tactile Sound's Transparent", please let me now.
This one was cooked in the weekend after a week "without direction". I mean, I wouldn't know which path to follow so this ended up being build with a strange arrangement of layers:
One from my previous Linux Qtractor sequencing experiments, twisting some TR606 samples inside an Akai s3000xl sampler. The others came from long forgotten unfinished Ableton projects circa 2011 and 2012.
Bass is simple yet effective Steinberg's VB1 virtual bass plugin.
Pads are a youtube Yamaha TG33 demo video sampled into the Akai and then mangled with Calf Linux plugins.
The "funky" acidic squeak and the chippy lead are instances of Ableton's Analog.
Subtle pitchshifted strings curtesy of the Waldorf Streichfett pad synth.
"More Cowbell" samples are of course courtesy of Christopher Walken in the now modern classic skit from Saturday Night Live. No copyright infrightment intended, you know. I think they sound fit because I REALLY was struggling with the mix levels in this one. What do you think?
Finally, the slightly spooky vocals in the background... they're basically several "instances of me" fooling around with Ableton's looper and a microphone. I don't like my voice, but I think they don't completely suck drenched in effects. I almost suffocate doing the "lalala" part... singing is hard, y'all !
My inspiration for this one was the funky playful sound of Ipaghost: he makes distictive parts and clever melodic changes, sample mangling .. and yet I still don't know how to change from one scale to the next, stay in the same tune the whole song and rely too much on "drum trickery". Anyway, for this week, I did my best to be a little bit funkier.
It was hard for me to mix this one, and so many layers made it a little bit muddy, so I avoided any compression and just used some limiting. If you find any useful suggestions, please let me know. I'd love to improve.
Hello Y'all !!! I'm so glad to be back for my fourth WB smile Lots of both new and familiar faces. The Weekly Family has gathered again!!!
This week I've prepared a half cooked downtempo track, and I can help to feel that itchy "something is missing here" sensation again. Uploaded and rendered in the last minute (that's sort of a tradition here, isn't it).
I found an old Yamaha TG33 "vector" synth for a good price, and while making my first steps into Linux Qtractor sequencer, I created the bassline and some of those mallet-ish patches you hear. About mid-week, I decided to dump everything into Ableton and start mixing, although I'd really love to be able to finish a whole project start to finish inside Linux by the end of the year.
My first jam with the wonderful Automatonism modular toolset for PureData. My deepest thanks and appreciation goes to Johan Eriksson for kindly creating this and sharing it to the community.
Visit his work at https://www.automatonism.com and start patching!
Watch this little patch in action at https://youtu.be/mDgZSBt4h6I
This one started as a last minute jam went bad, but I reworked it and tried to make it funkier and more interesting. Hope you like it!
I cooked this one from an almost finished track that never came to life back in WB'12. Tried to apply everything I've learned in terms of production, but I still fill the song is half baked. Anyway, Weeklybeats is just about that, so we have to throw our "still missing something" creatures out to the world and see what happens.
Not exactly deep bass, but I expect this one has enough low end. The mix could be greatly improved but I just worked on this one a few hours after watching the new "Doctor Strange" Marvel movie (one of my favourite characters) smile
How many songs do you guys have in storage that "are missing that extra instrument" or "the last verse" or "a cleaner mix"... Do you know what I mean, right?
Less work this week. Maybe I'll start to get my life back wink
Have a great one, people. Lots of love from Spain
Finally, Weeklybeats 2014 comes to an end... And I'll be missing you guys a lot, really. We've never met in person, but your work touched me, quite often much more than any commercial release hyped by the media. Pleople making music for the sake of it, not caring about trends or audiences, just trying to give the best of themselves and learn in the process.
This one is almost done, as always. Let's have 2015 for fine tuning and mastering. I thought about making something slightly different to close the year: an ambient piece, almost played live, mixed on the fly. Simple ideas, trying to be hypnotic and spontaneous. My humble take of the Berlin School sound :)
Tools of the trade: Ableton Live 9 for sequencing, Meeblip digital synth through Korg Monotron analog resonant filter, Waldorf Streichfett for the strings, late analog bubbles courtesy of the Korg Volca Bass. Delay sends using a Korg miniKaosspad. M4L Convolution Reverb Pro and few takes. Manual tweaking and panning tricks, with some slight DAW touches afterwards.
It's been a pleasure to discover your music every week, being both challenged and astonished by the quality and diversity of your music. Some of you will keep in touch and were present from day one, others came by, in and out. Some commented and some just listened from time to time. To everyone in the community, wherever you are, my deepest respect and best wishes for 2015.
Looking forward to see you in the next WB !!!
Merry Christmas, y'all!
Well, this one's got out quite crappy. I had a great one that happened to infringe one of Weeklybeats base points: I was using a prominent sample of a beautiful song by Cat Stevens, obviously recognizable and maybe suitable for another project in 2015, so...
I decided to start over and, guess what... let's update my Mac to OSX Yosemite in the process... As expected, some projects were broken without enough time to fix things, so...
I present you this tiny fake Xmas carol based on that crappy sounding "musical cards"... Ableton Live and Boss SP-505 in all his crappy lo-fi glory. For you pianist out there, I'm guessing you maybe recognize the sample, although strongly bit reduced ;)
Please don't be too hard with this tiny piece finished in a real hurry. I even fantasized about doing some guitar parts, but I didn't even mastered it... man, what is wrong with me sad
Wish you the best week and I'll definetely have fun listening to your stuff and catching up with the comments
Peace from Madrid, Spain !!!
Just two weeks to go... Whoa, man!!!
Sometimes in life, you better be afraid of what you wish... in case you finally get it ;)
Musically, I wanted an Akai MPC 1000 for years, but now, in 2014, after I finally get it... So unintuitive sometimes, so crippled and limited... big moment of "meh" :(
Personally, I waited and suffered long for a person until I gave up, and suddenly this week, out of nowhere, she rings because "she misses us"... Dude, please!
Well, musically: Ableton Live 9, Arturia microBrute for the bass, Akai MPC 1000 loop rebuild into an Ableton drum rack. No proper mastering, so I have to post a proper Soundcloud update (I wish I could catch up on that)
I would love to polish this one better but week's been very busy. Finished in the last 2 hours before the deadline, almost falling sleep in front of the computer :)
Just three to go, fellas! It's almost unbelievable
This one's a little bit different from my usual stuff. I've been messing lately with the Monome emulator for Launchpad and tried some MIDI only, melodic weird sequencer called Polygome. Made a quick jam with it plugged to my trusty Modart Pianoteq Stage piano plugin, and chopped it in Ableton, adding some automation and effects.
Just recorded the audio. Wish I could have exported the MIDI notes so I could add some intensity variations but, overall, I'm quite happy with the spontaneous result. One audio track, two sends for delay and reverb.
My pretty simple take on minimalism... quite more chip oriented that my man Michael Nyman, which I respect and admire :)
This one took a lot of time, really...
It all started with a skeleton from an old ModPlug tracker piece from back in 2001. I bounced and resampled a lot of tracks until I rescued something decent from that. Then, it came Ableton and lots and lots of automation, trying hard give it some kind of dubby feeling. Details, more EQ, more sends... And finally, 45 minutes before the deadline, finally the bassline appeared from thin air smile
So I give you my small tribute to Clyde Stubblefield, drummer extraordinaire and the father of the Funky Drummer.
For some, there's "Stairway to Heaven" or a Chopin's Nocturne. Me, I won't be doing music without that drum break. Still hits me with the same streght as when I was 8.
Peace. Hope you enjoy
Today I present you another almost uncooked piece. Very quick mix and mastering, and a lot of details and tricks missed from the programming.
I've got to be in a family appointment... 10 minutes ago! (And still rendering)
Tools of the trade: Ableton Live 9, Volca Beats, Meeblip for the nasty low bass and some Akai MPC 1000 as a guest MIDI sequencer!
Hope you like it and please stay tuned for another Soundcloud update. Peace!
This saturday some people at work were sick and I had to cover for them in the last minute, so my whole music weekend went south, in a way.
I had this track which was supossed to be a tribute to our King Of Glitch, Perplex On, but I'm posting a much rushed, muddy and almost unfinished mix which is not anyway near his amazing work.
I really would like to upload an update from Soundcloud, so please stay tuned.
Here's some chilled ambient for pixelated rainy afternoons.
Reason 2.8 with internal effects only. Two samples. Two tracks. Two sends.
Only seven more weeks to go. I'm starting to miss you all guys already :)
Peace!!!
So, although this week's been still challenging personally, I managed to find a second hand Boss SP-505. It's a wonderfully limited and sometimes slow machine that takes minutes to make what you could achieve in Ableton in seconds but... It has something, at least for me.
So I pretend to be Pete Rock for a few hours, mashing pads and staring at a tiny black and green LCD :)
I found some anonymous samples inside from the previous owner, so I proceed to destroy them in the best abstract hip hop way I was capable, hoping Dj Krush would be proud... No UNDO, remember ? ;)
Maybe some of you think it's some sort of hardware snobbism but, working with some technology which some will surely label as obsolete, I'm forcing myself to be focused and rethink my workflow.
No undo. Just on effect at a time. Will take 25 seconds to map a sample chromatically. Quite limited indeed. I had to do my best BEFORE I reach for my DAW.
That being said... some dope after mastering in Ableton Suite 9. Just not ready to give up some pleasures yet
Respect to my college year heros: Shadow, Cam, Krush, Vadim, Spooky
Hope you enjoy this tiny boom bap. Just 8 weeks to go... Unbelievable!!!
This week's been pretty hectic for me. I've lost my wallet and some money, and it's been a little ruff at work, so I didn't achieve the kind of peace of mind to do some worthy effort sampling an excellent track by my fellow WB Tone Matrix.
Instead, I made this one as trying to get a brief relaxed moment in life. Just Ableton devices and some tricks taught by experimental master Onezero.
Respect y'all. Hope to get some zen while hearing your tracks.
This week I had another hardware project planned, but due to work schedule I ended unable to have those machines at my disposal, so I migrated to a different idea, using the great and still mostly unknown Ardour Linux DAW... However, last friday I got sick and wasn't able to do much music (or anything else for that matter) in a couple of days.
Finally I dug in my 2009 vaults and found an Ableton sketch full of all the wrong things from a producer standpoint BUT, lets not forget I was under some medication and a soft fever. Long story short, I made this weird piece which for some really strange reason sounded "folky" to me.
Not happy with it, I decided to dump the whole mix (really close to the deadline) and use it as a background for some creepy old tape effect. Little I knew then that my old cassette deck's motor wasn't playing at the proper speed, so when bounced back to Ableton everything was out of sync, and I had to warp the living s**t out of it (remaining just 25 minutes to the deadline).
So... warped up weird glitch song plus real wabbly tape bounces. Fever and a weird text from an ex girlfriend I have not seen in 3 years... Makes any sense? I guess not, but I should be sleeping and sweating anyway.
The Celine Dion tape you could see in the picture is actually the one I use to make this weird tape bounces. It has unknown origin and probably was kept under direct sunlight, because it's wabbly as hell !!!
A huge hello to all weeklybeaters out there!!! Glad to see both regulars and new faces around!!!
This is my first submissision, including some original CGI artwork (just started with Blender...)
The whole melody is quite simple, so I ask all of you real piano players out there not to laugh at my really lousy playing. I Kept the uneven timing to give some human feel to the whole thing (I guess) smile
I've been working lately on what I call the "fake modular" technique, which really is just sampling semi-random audio snippets from modular synth videos from Youtube into my brand-new second-hand '94 Akai s3000xl sampler. Then I try to mess with the audio until I have some usable patch (no UNDO and not too much thinking). All samples should be small and fit into one floppy disk if possible. Later I create a simple sequence, bounce it to the DAW, leave it to rest, so next day I could chop it or maybe even dump it back to the hardware sampler and repeat the process.
Audio quality should be OK, but I'm more concern about having fun than "not leaving the digital domain".
The track started with that bass drone you could hear in the backgroud, then I added another fake 606/808 beat made with a Yamaha RM1x (get one, guys, is one of the most underrated cheap boxes out there) and chopped up with the Akai sampler into simple drum breaks. Finally the piano, which with my limited harmonic knowledge was difficult to fit along with the bass. I did some trial and error until it was "kinda listeneable".
All sequencing, FX and mastering was done in Ableton Live 9.5. Four tracks and 3 FX sends with various cross-sends inbetween so feedback was always around the corner, much inspired by fellow WB synthetist OneZero.
Hope you enjoy it. Looking forward to hear your new stuff!!!
Hallo, Weeklebeats!!!
This week is hardware-based: Korg Volca Keys, Meeblip, Casio VL-1, Korg Electribe ER-1 + ES-1 and Korg Minikaosspad and Electro Harmonix Memory Boy for the nasty feedback delay smile
Lots of small toys to play, and Ableton Live 9 and iOS Nord Beat for sequencing. I tried to record small sequences made on the fly and tweak as many knobs as I could. After that, chopping and rearranging to this mid-tempo 110 bpm beat.
Hope you think it's worth it. Please enjoy
This week new hardware arrived: two Volcas (bass and beats) and an amazing string machine emulator, the Waldorf Streichfett. I wasted a lot of time just grooving and jamming without getting any actual work done, so this one is still ruff in the edges and does not even scratch the surface of the machines.
I tried some monome MLR stuff since I discovered I could run that software with a Novation Launchpad but... Nothing conclusive yet, just evenings having fun playing with buttons.
You can hear the Streichfett and the Volca Beats. The more classic drum loop is sequenced in Renoise and then processed with analog delay pedals and a little bit of chorus. This one really need some imaginative structure, because now it's more like 40 bars of ... You know.
Hope you get some mellow mood at least. Peace out!
I offer you all this little downtempo piece this week directly from my hotel room. Inspired somewhat in one of my old pieces and the latest work of fellow WB sensei Matt Nida.
As usual, I'm very slow creating basslines, so there isn't any here... yet. Maybe I'll try to play some real bass and post a fix on Soundcloud.
Quite unfinished. No mastering at all, just moved the faders so it does not clip and then normalized.
Just Ableton Live and a lot of resampling to remove any "brightness" from the beat and the pad. Maybe I'm slowly getting back to my tracker roots (I did brought my Amiga 600 back to life a couple of days ago!)
Hope you like this little one. Peace
This one should be a soundtrack for one of my CGI animations. Volca Keys, Arturia microBrute and Ableton Live 9. Trying to make a good Berlin School drone atmospehere, I'm actually too sleepy to write a proper introduction smile
Hope yoy relax and enjoy
This one took a lot of effort. Maybe is not even good, but it's already week 39 and I do have to struggle for ideas!
I've listened to that stacatto synth so many times in the last 3 days... I personally don't think I can take it much further right now so... Hope you like it.
Tools of the trade: Ableton Live 9 with its Analog synth, iOS DM1 drum machine and D16 Phoscyon acid gold plugin.
Wishing you all an excellent Autumn start.
Wrecking my nerves rearranging my studio and putting all those cables back together... I make this really poor 1 bar idea and tried to give it some movement.
As usual, Ableton Live 9, Meeblip and some guitar pedals. No automation, just tweaking knobs. Very tired and rushed to make a proper mix.
Thanks to Mr. Phil Harmonic for his patience with my continuous upload mess
This week I rearranged some crucial elements of my micro studio and worked on a hardware based project. I had to travel and most of my stuff wasn't either with me or ready enough for Weeklybeats, so I sat down with Reaktor and messed up a little bit until I got this evolving drone.
Feels a little bit like cheating but, guess sometimes it's simply not possible to get everything right on time.
Hope you enjoy this little fluffy evolving pad :)
Dear fellow Weeklybeaters:
I'll be leaving for Berlin in less than an hour. It's Friday morning and the only thing I could came up with was this tiny piece of music, intended to be used as soft background music in a friend's audiovisual project.
Not my usual blips and beeps. It's five tracks and some reverb, made with my loyal Ableton Live 9.
Will be back at tuesday night. Plenty of your excellent tracks will be joining me in my trip.
Peace to all!
Hi, I finished this one in about hour and a half, after a really crazy week with no time at all to make music, but finally... I'M ON VACATION!!!
Tools of the trade: Ableton Live 9, Kasio and Analogue Drums MaxForLive instruments. D16 Phoscyon for the acid.
Three tracks, very few patterns... I guess this is it. Hope to catch some inspiration from your wonderful tunes this week
Extra thanks to Phil Harmonic @ Weeklybeats for providing me a new upload link so I don't mess it again trying to upload it on the run :)
This week I've arrived really tired from work everyday. Did this simple one last saturday night in about three hours, and since I was on duty on sunday also, there weren't any moments left for nothing more than a few EQs and compression adjustments here and there.
Extremely simple: Ableton Live for the Drum Rack beat, iOS VyrSyn Tera for the submarine pad and the FX.
Three tracks and three sends total. Pad and weird FXs recorded through my thrift store Danelectro delay and Zoom Studio 1205 reverb... not exactly high end equipment. Synths tweaked and played by hand in three takes. My usual mastering chain without any special taste this time in the evening.
I tried to make it more complicated, but for now let's say this is an imaginary soundtrack for an animated series of an Earth where the poles melted and everything is underwater. Submarines, miles-deep cities, nuclear warhead torpedoes... and radioactive monsters, of course smile
Hope you enjoy. Will try harder next week, I promise.