Oficina
By cmcavoy on January 6, 2026 5:59 pm
Put the MPC away this week (see last week's track for an overview of my beat making workflow recently) and messed around with the OXI one mk2. I'm still learning it but it sure has a lot of potential. Process was
1. choose a handful of software synth presets that sounded good together
2. harmonize them to a super simple (in retrospect, too simple) chord progression
3. add a drum track
4. add a simplr machine with a splice sample, it turns out the performance mode transposition does really great things to simplr, creating new beats on the fly. Will definitely use this technique again.
5. record a longish jam as midi tracks in Ableton, effects effects effects (stuck with the dub echo & reverb kit from last week)
6. edit edit edit
7. add an office sample from freesound to break things up a bit
8. spend entirely too much time tweaking the "mastering chain" I used last week to get the volume up without losing the crunchy thriftstore tape vibe I want. I ended up with ableton as the end of chain effects handler (with a limiter at the very end), exporting a wav file, then using the logic mastering tool to finish it off and get it louder. I'm not thrilled with the multi-tool process but I think it sounds better than last weeks final mix / master. In fact, I went back and "remastered" last week's track with the new process as well, which I'll put out on bandcamp at some point in the near future.
In short, I spent way more time on developing a mastering chain I was happy with than on constructing this track, but I'm happy with the result and decided to get this out the door rather than spend more time tweaking the arrangement. I anticipate using the oxi as my main composition tool for the next couple of tracks.
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