Sly / Ukulele
By jetjaguar on January 29, 2026 5:47 am
The first thing you hear in this track is a ukulele, believe it or not...
Aims for this week
Use my ukulele, which I can hardly play at all
Build a live looping setup and record something with no edits or additional processing
Make it dubby, acknowledging Sly Dunbar who died in the week I was making this
Process
I configured something in the software I use, Bitwig, to allow me to record a loop and sync its playback to tempo. This runs into effects that I can play with live, including a second looper.
I just played one chord on the ukulele and looped that at half speed, so it's down an octave from what I played. This is the first thing you hear and carries on for most of the track with live tweaks to the effects.
I repeated this process with a single note, which I bent quite out of tune for better or worse. I made one edit this time around - I turned down the volume of one point where I turned up the resonance on a filter so high it made a feedback squeal.
After this jamming, I assembled the rhythm section: a simple synth bass line, one bass drum, one rim shot (with some vinyl crackle pasted on top). I mirrored the ukulele chord on two synth patches, one playing short stabs into some echoes, one holding down the notes to create a quiet bed of sound that shows up in the second half of the track. That second patch really is quiet and is also down an octave so it's a bit lurky (technical term). I like there being something in the mix you might not even notice.
And that's it!
Audio works licensed by author under:
CC Attribution Noncommercial No Derivative Works (BY-NC-ND)