I really struggled with inspo this week, wasn't feeling the music at all, so I don't feel particularly accomplished in this one. I'm noticing more and more that I have a distinct 'left it til the last minute again' style, so I feel like I'm producing variants of the same song whenever I do these synthstrumentals.

While musically I feel this is a bit of a dud in terms of creativity (I love step sequencers, but they feel like cheating), I did try to at least learn a little. I know very little about how modular synths work, so rather than just loading a Voltage Modular preset and using it as is, for this song I tinkered a bit to understand them a bit better. For example, the step sequencer was constantly looping (even with no playback), so it would always be at a different step whenever I pressed play. I learned how to patch the start and stop controls with play and stop in the daw so the pattern worked as it should each time (very basic, but learning is learning).

A limitation I've found on my previous experimenting with step sequencers is the pattern is what it is, it doesn't adapt to major or minor depending on which note in the key/scale you're playing (at least not to my knowledge), so I made two identical tracks, only changing one note in the patterns so I had a major track and a minor track, allowing a diatonic build. So even though it sounds like one consistent step sequencer track, it's two switching depending on whether it's a major or minor chord. There is probably a simpler way to achieve this, but that's the idea that came to mind.

Tags: week 11 2024, View by:Jai Cafarella