Weeklybeats is a 52 week long music project in which artists compose and publicly release 1 song a week for the entire year.
Starting January 1st 2024 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.

WeeklyBeats.com / Music / Matthew Flook's music / Exit Signs - Week #14

Exit Signs - Week #14

By Matthew Flook on April 6, 2014 9:14 pm

After a successful release of the first phase of this project I'm more than ready to move into the next chapter, which also coincides with the best season to enjoy in Portland: Spring. It seemed a suitable occasion to dust off my jangly no-name acoustic guitar and get to work; first on the couch to write some parts, and then ultimately to the dark basement to begin tracking.


I'm not going to embellish my guitar-playing skills as they are amateur at best, and this quirky guitar isn't much help in the playability or tone departments. But nevertheless, I'm a sucker for a unique sound regardless of conventions. This thing fit the bill, and a few recording sessions in front of the condenser mic followed by some liberal slicing and dicing in Cubase resulted in a very cool chord progression with a tonal quality of its own, livened up with the granular shimmer of one SaltyGrain plug-in. Time for the beats.


A simple kick and snare rhythm popped into my head, which I immediately recorded in from my Maschine controller. Another 20-minutes of adjusting, layering, and effecting the samples got me to the big, in-your-face drum sequence presented here. The bass line fell into place with recent favorite ARP Omni-emulating synth "The Chiller", and the arpeggiated sequence comes from the ever-ubiquitous V-Station.


The second segment of the song takes a softer turn, breaking down to just guitar and synth bass before building up with some grittier textures. I recorded this distorted pad sound live from my Roland V-Synth which has some great built-in overdrive and amp modeling effects. We return with a stripped down drum beat with more glitch elements coming from the Replicant buffer effect, and gently fade off into the sunset.


- No-name black & white acoustic guitar
- Studio Projects C1 condenser mic
- Novation V-Station instrument plug-in
- Roland V-Synth keyboard
- Boscomac The Chiller Reaktor instrument
- SampleSumo SaltyGrain effect plug-in
- Native Instruments Maschine MKI
- ValhallaDSP ValhallaRoom effect plug-in
- Audio Damage Eos effect plug-in


Key: A Major
BPM: 87
Time Signature: 4/4


http://blog.exitsignsmusic.com
https://www.facebook.com/exitsigns
https://twitter.com/exitsignsmusic

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

Those drums are fat.

I really like the feel of the whole song.

^totally agree. This has an amazing feel to it. All i wanted to do, was smile.

Great track, felt like the warmth of the sun getting to me. Great work!

Really appreciate the comments, everyone! The sun is getting to me, too...more beats to come soon

You need to login to leave a comment.
Login Sign-up