Weeklybeats is a 52 week long music project in which artists compose and publicly release 1 song a week for the entire year.
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Ionosphere

By laguna on February 2, 2020 5:26 pm

OpenMPT module featuring four tracks and an instance of SQ8L, a fantastic Ensoniq SQ80 VSTi emulation programmed by Siegfried Kullmann (Rest In Peace).

The tracker module then goes to a Yamaha MTX4 multitrack cassette recorder (a four track one), get's mangled during the dubbing process for extra "warbliness" and then goes back to the computer adding some guitar effects live in the mix.

You can have a look at snippets of the process:

It's a 3/4 simple ambient piece. Hope you enjoy it. I'd like to repeat the process with some of my old modules that never passed the "maybe a good idea" phase.

I managed to finish both my track and the video about it on time, but that didn't leave me any time to catch up with the rest of the WeeklyBeats family. Fortunately, my workflow is slowly improving.

Have a great week, wherever you are!!!

Audio works licensed by author under:
CC Attribution Share Alike (BY-SA)

Lovely progression, definitely a tune to vibe out to heart

Love the drifting atmosphere here. I own exact the same 4-track recorder and I feel inspired to use it soon again, doing experimental stuff. Well done and thank you for the video upload.

Ooo the composition on this one is really nice. Love the ambient elements and the 3/4 time too! Everything works really nicely together to make this sad, distant lonely vibe. Beautiful heart

This is great! Lovely atmosphere. Your process is really interesting and it was great seeing it in action too. My 4-track died last year and this makes me want to get another haha.

lovely track dude and great video! Really makes me want to finally get a multitrack tape machine smile

Awww man thats the same multitrack I owned up until 2006 when I had to move.  I def regret thinking I'd never find a good use for it again.  So dumb of me to get rid of it!  I was in such a digital "pro tools is good" phase then ugh!!  Now i'm on ableton and no sign of pro tools tongue  This had a really cool and relaxing ambient feel to it.  The slight warble of the tape gave it that extra oomph too.

Yeah!

Awesome seeing you in the vid!

Really enjoyed that you made a video of your creation of the song. It's really cool to see the process of music creation because there's so many different approaches and it's not nearly as glamorized as the end product. Really hope to see more vids!

Beautifully wobbly and deep! Loving the texture and the melody!

really love the vibe

Great idea, very enjoyable listening to this and really like watching the workflow in the video.  I know it's a lot of work but I hope you can continue with the vidoes.

excellent soundscape! makes me think of fireflies

First of all, thank you everybody and sorry for the very late reply. I'm still getting the whole "audio plus video" production thing and I literally dedicated all my spare time to the Youtube videos. Now I must catch up with everybody's releases!

Mortistar wrote:

Lovely progression, definitely a tune to vibe out to <3

Thanks Mortistar. I'm glad you're diggin' this piece, specially considering its humble origins, as shown in the video

Q-Rosh wrote:

Love the drifting atmosphere here. I own exact the same 4-track recorder and I feel inspired to use it soon again, doing experimental stuff. Well done and thank you for the video upload.

Thank you for watching and your kind words, Q-Rosh! I'm glad I inspired you to revisit some tape-based methods. It was a struggle to me, for sure, until I figured out that I could "multitrack a .mod", so to speak.

Looking forward for your take on the 4-Track!

Now another inspiring use of the multi-track...

hieme wrote:

Ooo the composition on this one is really nice. Love the ambient elements and the 3/4 time too! Everything works really nicely together to make this sad, distant lonely vibe. Beautiful <3

It was inspired in a long and melancholic trip under pouring rain. Roads could be lonely places, for sure.

I'm really happy you liked it, Hieme. Thanks for listening!

roboctopus wrote:

This is great! Lovely atmosphere. Your process is really interesting and it was great seeing it in action too. My 4-track died last year and this makes me want to get another haha.

As law and common sense states, Roboctopus: you can't have too much 4-track recorders!

Thanks a lot, man! It's good to hear you liked the vibe of it smile

lysdexic wrote:

lovely track dude and great video! Really makes me want to finally get a multitrack tape machine smile

I'm sure you could do some killer MaxMSP/magnetic tape hybrid, man! Thanks for both watching and listening!!!

Tone Matrix wrote:

Awww man thats the same multitrack I owned up until 2006 when I had to move.  I def regret thinking I'd never find a good use for it again.  So dumb of me to get rid of it!  I was in such a digital "pro tools is good" phase then ugh!!  Now i'm on ableton and no sign of pro tools tongue  This had a really cool and relaxing ambient feel to it.  The slight warble of the tape gave it that extra oomph too.

I feel you, man! We all had that "everything I need is in the box" phase. Although I mostly use my computer and the convenience of it is undeniable, it's really fun to "play with an actual toy" for a while.

The tape warble is artificially exagerated with the pitch control, as you can see in the video. Actually, all my tape units are behaving quite spot on when it comes to pitch stability!

Thanks a lot for listening, Eric!

I ACTUALLY SAW YOU smile

It is really cool how you are doing these videos.  great job.

love the tape warble factor here

orangedrink wrote:

I ACTUALLY SAW YOU smile

It is really cool how you are doing these videos.  great job.

love the tape warble factor here

Whoah, thank you, man!!! I now feel like a WB celebrity...

Now seriously, I am quite camera shy, so it was quite difficult for me to actually appear in these videos. I won't be appearing in all of them, but I'll be returning sooner than later.

I have o couple of them almost ready but sadly life and other real world stuff didn't allow them to happen. Hope to catch up soon!!!

And about the song, you could watch how I exaggerate that flutter effect with the pitch control. I have now another recorder I must abuse soon

Thanks for watching and listening, man. Means a lot!!!


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