Weeklybeats is a 52 week long music project in which artists compose and publicly release 1 song a week for the entire year.
Starting January 1st 2024 GMT each participant will have one week to upload one finished composition. Any style of music or selection of instruments are welcomed and encouraged. Sign up or Login to get started or check our FAQ for any help or questions you may have.

Winter Sun

By onezero on January 1, 2017 8:07 pm

What a year!  Thank you all for listening!  I tried to get this one in for the Sunday deadline...but apparently the new year and the script clocks didn't play nicely with each other. 


This one came together quickly with percussion, bass synth, and lead synth, though I had to mull over the guitar balance.  It seems summery.


As promised, production notes!  Drums are two drum racks: a dry trap kit (Auto-filtered the kick with a high-pass to accentuate the resonant frequency and low-passed the kit with drive to take some harshness off the snare and cymbals) and a 909 (high-pass to accentuate the kick, low-pass with drive on the whole kit).  I also added a kit of miscellaneous percussion. 


Next up was a synth bassline with Analog, sawtooth through a lowpass with a very low cutoff frequency (135 Hz), and a higher organ-like synth (cutoff 378 Hz).  Initially these had a more minor-key feeling to them, and I didn't want to end the year on an ominous note, so I tweaked a few things to be less obviously oppressive. 


Then I put on some Electric (MkI 2 crunchy), and gave them a Simple Delay send (4 L, 5 R).   I then tracked snippets of guitar, all with the Epiphone Moderne through the Vox Wah, but also some with the Reuss RF-01 fuzz on.   I ended up using most of the snippets, adding another channel for clean guitar counterpoint and keeping a third channel for the fuzz guitar. Both channels of clean guitar got Auto-filter, one high pass (and Cabinet), and one band-pass, both with drive. Each went to a different convolution reverb, to differentiate their apparent space. 


Mixing/arranging was tricky--I was able to carve out different spaces with the differences in filtering, but some of the fundamentals of the notes were very close, so I had to rely on the filters and pan for differentiation.  (In the end, I think I should pull the clean guitars down a bit, bump up the fuzz guitar, and definitely bump up the synth and Electric.)


Not a lot of automation on this one, but I did put M4L Humanizer on all the MIDI instruments, and auto-panned nearly everything.  Full-chain master on the 2-mix.


Thank you all for listening!

When I unpluggeed, the shorting made a nice sound, so I went back and recorded that, and put it at the end.

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Nice, smooth evolution.

And, yeah, what a year. ::)

Another beauty, Great way to end this wb. I enjoyed your music very much. Thank you for inspiring me!

Jim Wood wrote:

Nice, smooth evolution.

And, yeah, what a year. ::)

dj someguy wrote:

Another beauty, Great way to end this wb. I enjoyed your music very much. Thank you for inspiring me!


Thank you both!  That means a lot! 

What a year it's been for everyone here! This track is a very nice way to end it, a great laid back groove to this. Best wishes for 2017, keep making great music!

Nice track - love that guitar. Production is lush and great as usual. Thanks for all the music, love that you take time for production notes, I learned a few things from those. WB is a great journey, see you next time!

This track has a nice "goodby" feeling. I hope you will have a peaceful and inspiring year 2017...

Plantrain wrote:

What a year it's been for everyone here! This track is a very nice way to end it, a great laid back groove to this. Best wishes for 2017, keep making great music!

Thank you!  And you too!

miraclemiles wrote:

Nice track - love that guitar. Production is lush and great as usual. Thanks for all the music, love that you take time for production notes, I learned a few things from those. WB is a great journey, see you next time!

Thank you!  Glad to help!  I'm planning on doing the streak-week thing this year, so...  Keep going!

Q-Rosh wrote:

This track has a nice "goodby" feeling. I hope you will have a peaceful and inspiring year 2017...

Yeah, there was a closing-out of the year feeling to me as well--I think the way it treads between major and minor feels.  Thank you!  And to you too!

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