Grimecake

Note: This post was written in 2025 and backdated to appear on the day I wrote and published the track.

Another day, another beat-driven electronic piece. Yesterday’s track ended up having some oddness / quirkyness that I ended up enjoying. I’m doing my best to stop writing the same old thing and stretch out a bit. Take some risks. Break some things.

I don’t remember the order in which I discovered the various sounds. In all likelihood, I started with the drums. XO (by XLN Software) has quickly become my go-to tool for rhythms and loops. It has a quite decent factory library, but there are a couple of reasons I don’t want to use any factory loops. First, it’s likely someone else wil also use it. This isn’t a major thing¹How many tracks use the Amen Break and essentially the same DnB programming, after all, but if I can have something original right out of the gate, why not?

Secondly, and more importantly, an online copyright strike is far more likely when using a factory loop. This isn’t actually a legal violation, it’s just that companies like YouTube decided to try and automate copyright detection in maybe the laziest and most enshittified²My favorite new term of the century. If you haven’t heard it before or don’t know what it means, please see LINK way possible. Neither of us has the time for (me to write and you to read) a 2,000 word rant on this, so we’ll just leave it at this: there is a not-insignificant legal risk to me using samples in ways that might trigger a copyright strike from a lazy algorithm. When possible, I try to make my stuff either unique or sufficiently altered via mixing, processing, and effects.

In the case of XO, this is not only easy, it’s a big part of the draw for me. Typically, I browse through the factory patterns until I find one that sounds interesting or generally fits what I’m thinking of doing. Then I completely replace all of the samples with other samples. At this point, minor tweaks to the patterns might be necessary, so I do some rearranging until it’s exactly what I want.Another big part of what makes XO awesome is that I can feed it my massive library of drums, percussion, and effect sounds and it does the heavy lifting of creating a general organization. If this particular 808 kick drum isn’t working, maybe one of the 2,000 other 808 kick drum samples I have (and that’s probably a very low estimate) will be better. Or maybe I want a kick from an Alesis HR-16. XO makes it quick and easy to surf through this chaos and dial in what I’m looking for. While it’s not a true AI, it’s machine learning and pattern matching that is genuinely useful and a great example of how I think AI will ultimately end up helping creatives instead of wholesale replacing them. Well… some of them anyway.³Aren’t you glad I decided not to rant about crappy copyright detection algorithms?

Get Back to the Quirky

The XO loop in question is the main beat you hear from the beginning. Nothing extraordinary, though that four-beat “aah aah aah aah” thing at the end of the looping pattern is pretty cool. At this point, I started looking for odd sounds. When I found the slightly out of tune pulse sound, that immediately put everything else into focus and then it was just a matter of finding complementary sounds and arranging things. It’s a cool groove to just kick back and soak in.

I added a few more drum loops to give it a bit more thunk, weight, and variety. The orchestral sounding loop is from the excellent Cycles library by Slate + Ash. What I liked about it was that it kind of hiccuped and changed its rhythm against the drums when it reached its own loop point. This is a trick I often use intentionally⁴I love using different periods to create lots of different interactions in repeating motifs. The first experiment I can remember doing this on is the track Lacuna, which I wrote during Song-A-Day 2018 and which appears on my second album, Phage. but it was a happy accident this time around.

The last little bit was the percussive arpeggio that appears around 2:08. This reminded me a lot of a track from an ambient techno group named Sounds from the Ground. I was initially worried that it was almost exactly what I was remembering and that I was just ripping it off, but it ended up being just an influence thing.

When I played this track for Mary in the morning, she described it as “sexy” and “grimey.” Grime is a great word and, after a few clicks on a random word generator, decided to pair it with cake.

Colophon

Instruments & Samples

XO, Phobos, S+A Cycles, Spectres, & Choreographs, Falcon, Hive2

Effects, Mixing, & Mastering

FabFilter, Gullfoss

Image Credit: Stephanie Carter (CCBY-ND 2.0)

---

Notes

• 1
  How many tracks use the Amen Break and essentially the same DnB programming, after all
• 2
  My favorite new term of the century. If you haven’t heard it before or don’t know what it means, please see LINK
• 3
  Aren’t you glad I decided not to rant about crappy copyright detection algorithms?
• 4
  I love using different periods to create lots of different interactions in repeating motifs. The first experiment I can remember doing this on is the track Lacuna, which I wrote during Song-A-Day 2018 and which appears on my second album, Phage.