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WeeklyBeats.com / Music / MRDRCAT's music / Dark Christmas

Dark Christmas

By MRDRCAT on December 22, 2024 4:35 pm

Another quickie - 2 hours to sketch out the track as a whole, followed by another hour of fiddling & messing with the mix. The mix is still messy (and the snare is too reverb-y) but I have to visit relatives and bake cookies today so that's all I got.

Percussion is from that same jazz kit in last week's Numan experiment, and apart from Tobokegao's "a guitar 05" patch that I love so much, the rest of the synths are original patches. The opening drone is the lovely Hypersynth. The overdramatic vocal sample is from a public domain newsreel about mental hospitals that I've been sitting on for a while, and it's only pure luck that it mentions Christmas. I figured why not roll with the serendipity.

Also, sorry for the bleak holiday track. Apart from unnecessarily stressful work upsets, I'm overall in a good mood. That's just what happens when you prefer minor keys I guess.

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

yessss. I downloaded that jazz kit, can't wait to use it for the final WB. That guitar patch is great, along with many other Tobokegao patches. You've done it justice here. The mental hospital sample was a bit hard to make out in the mix. No apology necessary, I thought it had some hopeful moments despite being in a minor key smile
Good luck with the cookies!

SQF wrote:

yessss. I downloaded that jazz kit, can't wait to use it for the final WB. That guitar patch is great, along with many other Tobokegao patches. You've done it justice here. The mental hospital sample was a bit hard to make out in the mix. No apology necessary, I thought it had some hopeful moments despite being in a minor key smile
Good luck with the cookies!

Cookies turned out great! I'm glad you nabbed that sample pack. It's ridiculously good, and for free makes it mind bogglingly excellent! It's a small battle getting the mental hospital sample (and the guitar patch) to work. Everything is a bit hot, so "loud enough" is too loud. I need to dial in the filter and manually adjust its volume as the other instruments eat up space or disappear. Just no time to get it right so I settled on "meh - it's in there" ;p

this Dark Christmas sounds fantastic, and sadly appropriate considering... gestures wildly at the world

now i want cookies!

This sounds like it could be a counterpart to Napear's track this week. Dungeonsynth with a menacing backdrop and leads. Yours is more dynamic with the drums, there's even a guitar! A good listen, if somewhat disturbing due to the voice samples big_smile

Man, this goes so hard. It probably goes pretty well next to mine, and this one's new, both just run on dark vibes for some reason.
It's a pretty stressful time, this definitely represents it well.

jwh wrote:

this Dark Christmas sounds fantastic, and sadly appropriate considering... gestures wildly at the world

now i want cookies!

Yeah, I sound like my granddad when I complain about where the world's headed, but: we do still have cookies. TREAT YO SELF because we've gotta have SOMETHING positive going on. Oh, also there are dogs & cats and both are more delightful than we deserve.

rplktr wrote:

This sounds like it could be a counterpart to Napear's track this week. Dungeonsynth with a menacing backdrop and leads. Yours is more dynamic with the drums, there's even a guitar! A good listen, if somewhat disturbing due to the voice samples big_smile

Oooo thank you! I still need to fix the voice samples (and might add something a little more hopeful at the end if I can find something that works). I tend to go ham with drums, but I liked how these turned out kinda military-march sounding. Napear's track flew under my radar this week but I just listened and holy cats what an honour to be associated with their track!

Devieus wrote:

Man, this goes so hard. It probably goes pretty well next to mine, and this one's new, both just run on dark vibes for some reason.
It's a pretty stressful time, this definitely represents it well.

I would be stoked to share space with your X-treme Power of the Bells! Yours is borderline demented in all the right ways! I'm not a big celebration person, so I always think I'm going to dodge the holiday stress and that never happens. Might as well pour that anxiety into our music!

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