Full Metal Shacket
Posts from the 2023 Song-A-Day Challenge
After a slightly inebriated evening with the neighbors, I wandered home to start today’s track. I’m not sure if I had a specific approach in mind from the start, but I quickly decided to try and adhere to what I (now amusingly) had planned to do this entire month: keep it simple. I had initially loaded up the synth sound that opens things up and created the riff that runs throughout the song. It’s strange … Continue reading
Almost immediately after posting Laika, I started a new project and got to work. My intent was to try an instrument or plugin that I hadn’t used yet. After scanning through the options, I decided that it sounded fun to do a chiptune track, and fired up Plogue Chipsounds. This plug models a bunch of sound chips from older computers and video games systems like the Atari 2600, Commodore 64, and Nintendo Entertainment System. After … Continue reading
It’s easy for Song-A-Day to become an all-consuming thing for me, especially now that I don’t have a normal work-week gig. Working a day ahead has definitely paid off in terms of stress, but now that I’m accustomed to the schedule, I find that I’m leaving things to “finalize” the next morning, but actually end up doing a lot more than intended. With this piece, I was determined to break that cycle so that I … Continue reading
We arrive at the month’s first dodged bullet. My time management over the weekend, complicated by impromptu hang outs with our neighbors in the evenings, led to me getting a late start. It’s hard to go to bed at a decent hour when you don’t go into the studio before midnight, but I was generally happy with both Continental Transit and Mare Vaporum, so I had no reason to think this one would be any … Continue reading
Once again, going into the studio having already decided to do something instrumental took some of the pressure off. I loaded up a piano and a pad sound and started playing to figure out where I wanted to go. And then, I immediately went there. The piano part you hear is pretty much the first thing I played. Except that I wasn’t recording. Luckily, my recording software added a feature a version or two ago … Continue reading