This is my first year doing WB.  I missed the first week due to a business trip so I'm only 3 tracks in.  I'm pretty happy that it kinda forces me to write music again.  I used to write quite a bit but slowly stopped over the years.

Another thing I've noticed is that after listening to so many different tracks on here with different styles, I listen to music more intently.  I focus more on the production, instruments, and beat than in the past; hopefully trying to spark some new ideas and push myself to try new things.  I definitely don't want to push out 51 tracks of the same crap, so listening more intently to music (on and off WB) is going to be important for me.

I don't really have any goals style-wise.  This being my first attempt at WB, I'm just going with whatever comes to mind that week.  I've also been trying to be more active listening/commenting on tracks.  I comment on every track I listen to.  I know I would appreciate it so I try to reciprocate.

Now it's time to take a day or two of rest before I start on my next track!

One goal I have for this year is about learning some conventional production methods and workflows in my DAW of choice: Ableton and from there make at least one self contained song; in other words, only use the standard ableton sound generators, effects etc.
I've already managed to leave my chiptune comfort zone by using my modest hardware synths, drum machines and other devices in my first wb-song of this year and hoping to get better att producing more of that in the future.

I think the only way I'm going to be able to make this work consistently with my schedule, especially after my seasonal freelance work kicks in late next month, is going to be doing everything completely OTB on my old portastudio.

So from here on out that's how it's going to be - a C-20 (so 5 minutes or 10 minutes maximum depending on what speed I use) all year, no computer at all other than digitizing the mixdown and normalizing, and only one tape so every week I'll be recording over the previous week. Without those limits I just spend too much time overdubbing and fussing with the mix.  Since the closest thing I have to a formal goal with this is to work faster and commit sooner, that should be a big help.

Last edited by TubularCorporation (January 28, 2020 10:50 pm)

This is a great thread thank you!

So far so good for me - my intent was to leverage my experiences in 2019 writing a song-a-day in January, April, and July to actually complete Weekly Beats for the first time, to continue creating without worrying about the quality of the result. My continued focus is on writing lyric songs. I'm also holding myself to a specific schedule more or less, allowing me to spend my work time for a specific day entirely on the mix, which has historically been nearly completely neglected.

And... so far so good! 4 weeks in, a song every week, they sound decent, I don't feel too pressured. I upload every Thursday.

The downside of uploading Thursday has been that I have a harder time getting around to listening to other people's material, which is something I love so much about WB. I do usually get through some on Friday while I'm at work but that's about it. At my old job back in 2014, I had an office to myself where I could stream WB all day on Monday but now it has to be in headphones and I get interrupted a lot, then I forget to comment... so that's been a challenge.

I don't know what happened there!

Last edited by TubularCorporation (January 29, 2020 6:07 am)

I'm hitting the themes I wanted to with my music (spaciness and mystery with some vicious lyrics) but I really wanted to work on production and am already discovering I don't have the energy for it. gonna be lo-fi indie forever :3 happy with the chiptune side of my work