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 / MRDRCAT's music / U_Freaq_U

U_Freaq_U

By MRDRCAT on December 8, 2024 10:51 pm

Someone here (ahem cough PERMAN00B) made me promise to use the Freaq FM in a WB. Things have been Not Going Well with the whole real life thing, and this week they continue along those lines. So instead of the deep dive I had hoped, I got as far as I could on the Freaq FM and did this:

I recorded a simple percussion loop on the Volca Beats along with a 4-minute knobfest on the FreaqFM. Then I dumped both WAVs into the M8 and chopped the Freaq FM recording into 46 semi-regular-sized chunks and randomly triggered them in 8-bar windows. The drone was added because a few of the slices were just silent to add space but sounded odd dropping out with just the percussion going. The Beats part and drone are both consistent with each play/render, but the Freaq FM slices change each time with the exception of the very end (I ended the 4-minute session with a deliberate cutoff).

Why go through all the trouble of chopping and randomising? Because I wanted things to change far less gradually than the Freaq actually does. I especially love when the noise-heavy slice just shows up. It's not quite 2 minutes long because even that's twice as long as it needs to be to get the idea across.

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

December 9, 2024 2:05 am

SQF

It's got a cool groove. That FM sounds greatl. Love how you chopped up your knobfest.

Quote

December 9, 2024 4:14 am

Paisleyfrog

This is the sort of stuff that I think sounds so awesome about the M8 workflow - the idea of having a basket full of samples and having them randomly triggered sounds amazing - and yeah, I totally dig the results you got here. The Beats also holds its own! Both crispy and nice and thumpy.

Quote

December 9, 2024 2:39 pm

perman00b

Freaq and Beats?! Fantastic combo.

Love how you made the FM sit in the mix, lovely sense of space. FWIW, it doesn’t sound random to me at all.

Quote

December 9, 2024 2:39 pm

PieBaron

sweet, nice trip.

Quote

December 10, 2024 6:05 pm

neon liminal

The bass tones on this are sooo deep. Theres so much space in those lower domains. The chopping and randomizing works really well here - it still sounds musical and has intent. Really great little track!

Quote

Yesterday 10:55 pm

MRDRCAT

SQF wrote:

It's got a cool groove. That FM sounds greatl. Love how you chopped up your knobfest.

Thanks! I really had fun trying to create a mechanism that would work seamlessly as it shuffled stuff around. The Freaq has some lovely tones and is a lot of fun to play with!

Paisleyfrog wrote:

This is the sort of stuff that I think sounds so awesome about the M8 workflow - the idea of having a basket full of samples and having them randomly triggered sounds amazing - and yeah, I totally dig the results you got here. The Beats also holds its own! Both crispy and nice and thumpy.

I did the snare mod on the Beats, but honestly even without it's a great little drum machine. It gets a lot of flak but it sits so well in a lot of different mixes. The M8 has a great variety of random options - you can randomise notes/rhythms (in scale!) once to jump start an idea, or lay down notes/instruments/FX and randomly trigger/modify them on a per-step basis every time it loops, and you can even randomly generated FM synth patches (not all of them are useable, but hey it's fun). It's an amazing little friend.

perman00b wrote:

Freaq and Beats?! Fantastic combo.

Love how you made the FM sit in the mix, lovely sense of space. FWIW, it doesn’t sound random to me at all.

Thank you! And thank you for putting the Freaq on my GAS list in the first place - my first taste here made me hungry to explore even more.

PieBaron wrote:

sweet, nice trip.

Thank you! It's modest, but it was a neat experiment and I hope to get more elaborate as I learn more.

neon liminal wrote:

The bass tones on this are sooo deep. Theres so much space in those lower domains. The chopping and randomizing works really well here - it still sounds musical and has intent. Really great little track!

I really appreciate the comment, thank you! I'm VERY pleased with how the Freaq sounds, and it invites play, so that's two massive wins.

Quote

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