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WeeklyBeats.com / Music / MRDRCAT's music / Ich Bin Ein Berliner

Ich Bin Ein Berliner

By MRDRCAT on September 29, 2024 10:57 pm

I tried my hand at a Berlin school track (and failed). I may have made it 1/4 of the way there, skating across the surface without understanding the dangers below me. Anyway, have a bucket (brigade?) of delay and reverb, plus some bips and beeps and a couple asynchronous tracks.

This one again uses just the M8's Wavesynth engine with all my own patches. I let the first lead (the 3/4 time) drift ahead or behind the rest of the tracks as it went, using the M8's "RMX" command to synchronise as needed. If I try this again, I'll do my best to let the outstanding time signatures live their best lives without conforming to the rest of the track. That seems more fair.

Anyway, not a completely failed experiment, and definitely one I'd like to try again.

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

Came for the title, stayed for the rad tune.

I’ve never quite hit Berlin school either, but I would have unquestionably accepted this as an example.

Having been deep in fake modular world lately, super reminiscent of a lot of that stuff too. VCOs as clocks where everything is playing in time to… something. I’m always fascinated how people can find a way to make that still musical.

You don’t have any of those issues here though. That ADHD clock just enhances the dreaminess. There’s this section around 2:50ish that really grabbed me.

If this was appended to Plastikman's "EX" I wouldn't even blink. A very cool track.

God damn this is amazing. There’s a sense of menace and despair to this track that is fantastic.

For the record, I didn’t know Berlin as a style, so I looked it up before listening. Based on my exhaustive 45 second googling, you hit all the descriptives that I read.  Love the melodic percussiveness you achieved, and the overall atmosphere. Really really love this. Favorited.

Holy shit, MRDRCAT, you've really outdone yourself here, hot DAYUM. I don't know what Berlin School is, but I do know that this kicks absolute and complete ass.
Up till now, my favorite tune of yours was "Ossuary", from the Dungeon Synth M8 Community Jam, but I think this now stole the throne.
There's something so damn cool about the sound design you chose here, it's impressively pleasing. For some reason, parts of this also really strongly remind me of the Terminator 2 main theme. I think it's how airy, spacey and ethereal some of the voices sound in general. And how there are some high-pitched airy synths now and then cutting through the muck to offer hope.
You want to know the other curious part? I couldn't tell this was your work throughout any of it. It seems like your experiment really did lead you to very new grounds!
Listening to it again now and I'm seriously envious of what you've done here, hahahahah... Really great job!!!

As a side note, I 100% thought your song title was alluding to this bit from Suzy Izzard, one of my favorite comedians of all time:

fantastic! not familiar with Berlin school, but i love the way your track moves and breathes.
going back in!

jegasus wrote:

As a side note, I 100% thought your song title was alluding to this bit from Suzy Izzard, one of my favorite comedians of all time:

haha, "he said he's a f*ckin' DONUT?"
Suzy is so great heart

Man those buzzy leads are phenomenal! The first brassy one that enters has a real CS80 bladerunner feel, it's fantastic. Very Berlin school, and it always makes my day to hear something from the M8 that completely surprised and delights me like this, great track!

jbarket wrote:

Came for the title, stayed for the rad tune.

I’ve never quite hit Berlin school either, but I would have unquestionably accepted this as an example.

Having been deep in fake modular world lately, super reminiscent of a lot of that stuff too. VCOs as clocks where everything is playing in time to… something. I’m always fascinated how people can find a way to make that still musical.

You don’t have any of those issues here though. That ADHD clock just enhances the dreaminess. There’s this section around 2:50ish that really grabbed me.

Thank you! The one thing I kinda got when reading up on the style was to set up a mechanism that by its nature introduces rhythmic and melodic variety that you can solo over if you want. I didn't trust myself to do that & went rogue! I imagine it's similar in modular circles - use the equipment to set up a music machine as an evolving sonic playground. I will never be that advanced!

rplktr wrote:

If this was appended to Plastikman's "EX" I wouldn't even blink. A very cool track.

Wow. Plastikman correlation is high praise for sure! Thank you!

Paisleyfrog wrote:

God damn this is amazing. There’s a sense of menace and despair to this track that is fantastic.

For the record, I didn’t know Berlin as a style, so I looked it up before listening. Based on my exhaustive 45 second googling, you hit all the descriptives that I read.  Love the melodic percussiveness you achieved, and the overall atmosphere. Really really love this. Favorited.

Oo thanks! I kinda got lost in the sound and thought this track would be too navel-gazey and not musical enough. I should learn to just roll with stuff more often instead of trying to hammer it into a shape.

jegasus wrote:

Holy shit, MRDRCAT, you've really outdone yourself here, hot DAYUM. I don't know what Berlin School is, but I do know that this kicks absolute and complete ass.
Up till now, my favorite tune of yours was "Ossuary", from the Dungeon Synth M8 Community Jam, but I think this now stole the throne.
There's something so damn cool about the sound design you chose here, it's impressively pleasing. For some reason, parts of this also really strongly remind me of the Terminator 2 main theme.

Getting the sounds to play nice and have their own place was a lot of tweaking. I wanted my two lead sounds to be similar but keep a bit of unique ground, and lucked out that they kinda overlap sonically at the high notes. I think the Terminator echo is from my first 3 lead notes when the Blade Runner synth first kicks in! I heard that right before I rendered the track and decided to let it ride smile

jwh wrote:

fantastic! not familiar with Berlin school, but i love the way your track moves and breathes.
going back in!

Wooo! Repeat customer!

jwh wrote:

haha, "he said he's a f*ckin' DONUT?"
Suzy is so great heart

For real - I cornered jegasus on the Dirtywave Discord and we geeked out about her standup for a while. I was tickled that my track triggered some Suzy love!

neon liminal wrote:

Man those buzzy leads are phenomenal! The first brassy one that enters has a real CS80 bladerunner feel, it's fantastic. Very Berlin school, and it always makes my day to hear something from the M8 that completely surprised and delights me like this, great track!

Thank you so much!! I loves me some buzzy leads, and have started finding ways to get the sound I want out of the M8's Wavesynth even though it doesn't have an extra noise oscillator I can add. Lots of clippy amp values and cutoff modulation smile

Speaking of Berlin, this has Shadowrun: Dragonfall vibes to it big_smile Nice one

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