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.

Death Threats

By orangedrink on January 31, 2016 11:40 pm

You are at an elegant ball for ambassadors and diplomats.  You are a person of great prestige and power.  A waiter approaches you with an envelope addressed to you, and a flute of champagne on a silver platter.  You take both.  You open the envelope.  It reads, in beautiful calligraphy on an embossed card: "You will die tonight."  You slowly scan the crowd.

It could be anyone.


--------------
Enough of being hopeful, time for some TOTAL DESTRUCTION!  This was all done on OP-1 and edited on Ableton Live.  I have been listening to a lot of D'Angelo (with drums by Questlove) and J Dilla, and have always admired their ability to swing beats.  I can't really do that when I play drums, but luckily I can swing (60%) on the OP-1!  This is a minimal piece, trying to just focus on the drums, noise, bass, and then the melody drone.  I wanted the "third act" to linger, but still have some variation, as the threat of danger still lingers and is not resolved.  The melodic drone appears when the main character makes eye contact with the actual assassin, not realizing that he's looking at author of the note.

Things I did:
- high pass and low pass filters to clean up the hi-hats and bass, respectively
- Used the insane DNA synth to make a super disgusting chord [C,G,C]
- I think I used similar notes as I did in "Carved By Glaciers"

Things to do:
- learn how to do send/receive on FX
- finish next week's track on Friday
- consider opening the track with a creepy vocal sample, if this would go on an album (I am thinking it will, I like it a lot!)

Last week's track was late, so please check it out if you haven't already! smile

YES. You've put me in a Lynchian state of mind that will soon drive me mad.

interesting but grating noise sound stole the show on this, cool sound. drums sound kind of weird, maybe hihat loudness vs kick loudness. sounds cool when it morphs into the ring modulated sound.

mechlo wrote:

YES. You've put me in a Lynchian state of mind that will soon drive me mad.


Thank you!  That reference is a big compliment!

george bowles wrote:

interesting but grating noise sound stole the show on this, cool sound. drums sound kind of weird, maybe hihat loudness vs kick loudness. sounds cool when it morphs into the ring modulated sound.


Good point on the hi-hat.  I EQed it down, but I might do it further, or re-record the beat and lower the original volume.  I exported the drums and wasn't able to adjust individual elements.  Thanks for listening!

Very nice vibe. Sinister and would go well in a movie! Keep it up!

Murder music ha, this is like a slow Oizo, I dig!

love the dirt

I love that you tagged this black metal lol. It's awesome. Jdilla is my hero.

Genius!

Nice conspirative wonky music!

Ipaghost wrote:

filby wrote:

Very nice vibe. Sinister and would go well in a movie! Keep it up!

donnyjankowski wrote:

Murder music ha, this is like a slow Oizo, I dig!

yan_g wrote:

love the dirt

Diagamblic wrote:

I love that you tagged this black metal lol. It's awesome. Jdilla is my hero.

Naikymusic wrote:

Genius!

laguna wrote:

Nice conspirative wonky music!


THANKS FOR ALL THE COMMENTS!  I am only now catching up with my WB correspondence :-)  I'm glad you all felt that it had a movie-soundtrack vibe.  Maybe I'll have to make a movie for it!!!

You need to login to leave a comment.
Login Sign-up