Weeklybeats is a 52 week long music project in which artists compose and publicly release 1 song a week for the entire year.
Starting December 29th 2025 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.

pencils

By ilzxc on January 11, 2026 11:57 pm

[demo, needs work]

fors.fm opal bass + superberry growl + junior bleep
Nanoloop ONE | Nanoloop TWO [various fx]
Sequenced on the M8

M8 scratching based on noggin's el soul
(vocal sample of my favorite person ever who's been w/ me... 22 years almost)

Audio works licensed by author under:
Copyright All rights reserved

awe several species of creatures are back for some adventures i hear! 
hope to hear more from you w/ favorite person this year - this is super fun kids!!!

Ooooo, the sound design is incredible. The song just keeps on giving with new little rhythmic variations. I love the non-repeating nature of it.

this is all over the place i always love a string bass, good clean mix, like the bleeps they push the rhythm a lot. great idea.

Lots of great textures tickling my ears.  Love how sometimes they hold back a little and at other moments they fully cut loose.  The ending feels like a total barrage.

Very cool and impressive skillz. smile

Lovely!!! Love those short blips, the contrast between the blips and the dusty bass at the end is really effective! heart

wow! the sounddesign and programming is on point, so delicate.
Love it smile

ooo! i like those chirps, some boss scratching techniques!

this is fantastic, so many great sounds!! and i love how punchy that bass is

nanoloop AND m8? ear chandy overload. bassed up. at 1:20 my head is in shakymode. bass again. constant movement. that fuzz in the bass. mad melodic climax. what a finish! boy this is a banger.

Thanks for listening!

emily wrote:

awe several species of creatures are back for some adventures i hear! 
hope to hear more from you w/ favorite person this year - this is super fun kids!!!

That’s the plan! 2022 has been pretty lonely on the SO in spite of being supportive and amazing, so I think we’re gonna make some stuff—we were going to do something for this one but the tune ended up being too childish and silly, but doing stuff together sidesteps all the issues, so… gotta!

ViridianLoom wrote:

Ooooo, the sound design is incredible. The song just keeps on giving with new little rhythmic variations. I love the non-repeating nature of it.

Too kind given what’s up there but I’ll take kindness! Thanks heart

gesceap wrote:

this is all over the place i always love a string bass, good clean mix, like the bleeps they push the rhythm a lot. great idea.

I named it pencils cuz sounded like my niece’s pencil drawing where it’s every color, but hers is prolly more tasteful than mine. Been a spell, feel like I’m relearning everything: all over the place is right! smile

Sorkfot wrote:

Very cool and impressive skillz. smile

lol, I’m stumbling on purpose!

Cosmic Cairns wrote:

Lots of great textures tickling my ears.  Love how sometimes they hold back a little and at other moments they fully cut loose.  The ending feels like a total barrage.

It’s a bit of a mess but I think the ending slapped together 20 mins before submission has the “aha” that needs to back-propagate thru the tune. Thanks for liking the detail.

Fade Runner wrote:

Lovely!!! Love those short blips, the contrast between the blips and the dusty bass at the end is really effective! heart

Aw, so good to see you back in my comments! Thanks!

RajaTheResidentAlien wrote:

ooo! i like those chirps, some boss scratching techniques!

I need to relearn how to prioritize things in WB, I’m like 4 years out of practice making stuff quickly and it’s showing…

lasko303 wrote:

wow! the sounddesign and programming is on point, so delicate.
Love it smile

Aw, too kind, thanks! heart

dreekydreeks wrote:

this is fantastic, so many great sounds!! and i love how punchy that bass is

Been a while since I did a proper M8 track from scratch, so relearning how to quickly sample on-device as quick and dirty as possible. Thanks for kind words!

jimmac wrote:

nanoloop AND m8? ear chandy overload. bassed up. at 1:20 my head is in shakymode. bass again. constant movement. that fuzz in the bass. mad melodic climax. what a finish! boy this is a banger.

Aw man too kind, given your write up this week about criticism—back at you, could have been like “bass needs to be prolonged, hits are too dry” or some such. Thanks for liking the chip stuffs, this is kinda a scary place to be posting GameBoy sounds … love your way, man!

Really enjoyed this one. The execution had me genuinely confused in the best way, great work, man. Pencils goes hard! No diddy

Ahh, great stuff. When the bass backing solidified with the synth at the end, with the lead on top... !

heart

🎆YUSSS ILZXC IS BACK!🎆  So glad to have you in for another Weeklybeats!  And, true to form, you bring the most sophisticated rhythmicosonic palette of the week (sometimes I swear I feel smarter after hearing one of your tracks).  This one is also accessible and quite catchy—I was actually singing (scatting?  [the polite kind]) along with the chorus the second time around.  Also props to the scratch intro; almost sounded like it was getting into phoneme territory a few times.

I'm on the road atm, so I've yet to experience it on properly sub-capable speakers/headphones, but from the grumble of the bass during the chorus, I have great expectations. tongue   And speaking of the bass: since getting an M8 I haven't felt like acquiring too many outboard or virtual instruments, but Fors keeps coming up on my radar in great tracks like this and it looks like some of the plugins have Linux builds, so...)

I'd like to file a complaint: this one gave me a serious case of stank face and headbob.

If Autechre made the soundtrack to Jet Set Radio :–D
Those nanoloop sounds sit so nicely in this mix, so clean. Great stuff!!

Nice drums, the scratching is on point. My kind of bounce here, great details and textures!

rhythmical

Woah - quirky energy with lots of sonic variety and a pristine mix.
Music to be weird to

delicate is right, so tasteful and restrained. pretty cool! I so don't hear a vocal sample in this, there's some movie magic going on

So good, love the sound design and all the manipulation, all the scrstches, squiggles, and squelches sound wonderful, also tastefully done, they could have sounded overdone but I never got tired of them once.

really picked up after 1min into something crazy good, so chaotic and groovy, great use of sounds and so much fun to listen to, great job

Love the main lead riff, and the introduction of the sharp sounds and metallic wubs at the beginning!

delightfully glitchy!

hell yea love the drums and the whole groove. impossible not to nod along with the sweet glitchy melody keeping ya afloat heart ooh the growly synth at the end is sweet! Excellent work!

ilxc wrote:

I need to relearn how to prioritize things in WB, I’m like 4 years out of practice making stuff quickly and it’s showing…


Nah, this was a perfect microcosm of your innovative ways in coming up with such original sounds and music. No need to worry about it too much, we just gotta do what we can whenever we can… I feel ya, tho: I’m often struggling to prioritize, often even struggling to motivate, it’s gotten to the point where I’ve decided it’s ok to just crap out whatever I can, hopefully by the end of the year, it’ll be cool to see all the glory right alongside all the flawed defeats.
You do you, we will all love you and the beauty you create no matter what heart

This one's going into the bag of reference track. Everything dances around each other seemingly chaotically, yet perfectly choreographed. Loving the chirpy, playful noises - that also end up being a hook, kinda?? Man you're good

I love how there is a melody line and chord progression RIGHT underneath surface.  hidden in plain sight.  this rocks pretty hard, put it on an album.  god the fuzzy warble at the end is my FAVORITE

ess wrote:

If Autechre made the soundtrack to Jet Set Radio :–D
Those nanoloop sounds sit so nicely in this mix, so clean. Great stuff!!

was just about to say Autechre

reminds me of how I would listen to their hip-hop DJ mixes, and then go listen to their work and I'd uncover all the milliseconds of hip-hop sprinkled in

RajaTheResidentAlien wrote:
ilxc wrote:

I need to relearn how to prioritize things in WB, I’m like 4 years out of practice making stuff quickly and it’s showing…


Nah, this was a perfect microcosm of your innovative ways in coming up with such original sounds and music. No need to worry about it too much, we just gotta do what we can whenever we can… I feel ya, tho: I’m often struggling to prioritize, often even struggling to motivate, it’s gotten to the point where I’ve decided it’s ok to just crap out whatever I can, hopefully by the end of the year, it’ll be cool to see all the glory right alongside all the flawed defeats.
You do you, we will all love you and the beauty you create no matter what heart

exactly what raja said

Don't listen to me when I claim something of yours sounds better than this. The climax of this is just mmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Love it. big_smile

ineff wrote:

I'm on the road atm, so I've yet to experience it on properly sub-capable speakers/headphones, but from the grumble of the bass during the chorus, I have great expectations. tongue

Update from home: So... the playlist shuffled this onto my speakers a little before midnight and let's just say I was not disappointed in those subs (🔥👍🔥👍🔥).  My neighbors may also have opinions on them.  Time to turn out the lights and pretend I've been asleep for hours!

Still in love with that chorus, btw—it's one of the few ilzxc tracks I can (just about) sing along to, and each time I feel like trying.   This might be my favorite track of yours.

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