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.

ΔΣM

By rplktr on November 3, 2024 7:41 pm

I welcome all critical feedback. Can relicense if needed, just ask.

This is a pretty experimental track. It attempts to make chiptune glitch music with only analog sound sources. The file is also encoded with an experimental codec that is very space-efficient. It's definitely lossy but it fits the genre. Let me know if you have trouble hearing it or it's not in stereo.

126 BPM 4/4, F-minor. Pure analog drums from Analog Rytm mimicking Microtonic. Subharmonicon plays the stereo arp sequence. Spectravox emits strange computer voices "bitcrushed" with an analog Pittsburgh Modular Crush module. Stereo Moog Mother-32 bass. Stereo Moog Mother-32 arp chirps mimicking chiptune tracker arps. Yamaha Revstar guitar distorted with KORG Nu:tekt Nutube Overdrive.

Loving the analog-but-pseudo-digitally-degraded aesthetic! I have a Neutral Labs Scrooge in the mail and can't wait to dig in, too.
I'm really impressed by how much melody you found space for, even though you were leaning into this experimental sound. My tracks are way more focused on drums and rhythms which makes it hard to then fit in much harmonic content.

Dude, this is such a cool concept, and executed in such a great way! I really enjoyed how you made it chiptuny, but very much your own version of it. Awesome work!

Also, thanks for the constructive feedback in my last tune! I tried incorporating your suggestion in this week's submission since I once again used piano samples. I don't think I was able to really hit the mark exactly, but it definitely gave rhe song unique character. Anyways, thx again!

LeBernd wrote:

I have a Neutral Labs Scrooge in the mail and can't wait to dig in, too.

Yeah, this kit would definitely fit for this track! Let me know how you like it once you get it. I'm somewhat careful about such instruments. Many of those experimental products like Strega, Blast Beats, or Softpop 2, only have limited sweet spots and the other sounds you get tend to be less useful musically. At least for me, but YouTube demos of those products usually fail to convince me either. Scrooge included. So I'm genuinely curious if you end up liking it.

are you a Delta Epsilom Mu? very curious imagary & title...

the track is really fun - feels like forward motion

much needed in this time of suspense the US is sitting with...

emily wrote:

are you a Delta Epsilom Mu? very curious imagary & title...

It's a sigma. The title comes from analog-digital converters. The imagery was part of an idea for the track that I didn't end up having time to pursue.

rplktr wrote:

The file is also encoded with an experimental codec that is very space-efficient. It's definitely lossy but it fits the genre. Let me know if you have trouble hearing it or it's not in stereo.

...wat? I need to know more about that. I didn't know alternate encodings were possible for uploads here? I downloaded the file. 1,638 KB for a 4 minute stereo track, hella impressive. I'm listening a second time, and it does sound like maybe some info is missing, but I didn't notice during the first listen.

For the song itself, I dig it. Good progression, never gets boring.

I'm now on my fourth listen. I love this, favorited.

judy wrote:

I didn't know alternate encodings were possible for uploads here?

It's a special low-bitrate form of AAC called HE2. If you have Apple's Compressor app, you can convert ALAC files to that. It doesn't sound great on general music, but for highly digitally sounding well-separated electronic music it works well. Unless somebody here tells me they can't play it in their browser or something.

If it does work out, I plan to use it for a stupid idea soon, but let's not spoil the surprise.

I played in Firefox in Windows, Firefox on macOS, and VLC, and didn't have any issues in any of those places. I say go for it!

Wow what an interesting and well-executed experiment! This track has excellent flow and layering.

really fun composition, production sounds great.

the sound / production works so well for this tune. i feel like i can hear your joy coming through.
nice work, rplktr!

Wonderful glitchy analog. If I hadn't read what you wrote I would have called it just that. Reminds me of what Reznor did with the drum break in The Great Destroyer - analog, glitchy destruction. But this is much more melodic. I also really enjoy the stereo space here a lot but on that note:

Either the codec or the bit crushing is doing something to the most extreme stereo sounds, the hard-panned left or right, that sounds unintentional and actually painful, almost like a moment of clipping or something. I had something like this happen with a lofi plugin that was doing something bit crushing and it only came out in mastering, and was intermittent, but wow it was painful. Not as extreme here by any means but if you're experimenting this might be something to check ie codec vs bit crusher. If the codec is bit reducing it could create the same effect, and might only manifest in those hard-panned notes. Otherwise a really successful experiment, really enjoyed the listen.

Interesting approach, many good sounds to dig into here, and propulsive!

cool concept and successful results! i especially like the instruments in the high end of the frequency spectrum. lots of interesting interplay and sound design. favorited!

damn that's really nice! multi-moog what's not to love.

Fun track! Kept me interested all the way through. Some really nice sound design here and everything just fits together.

Crazy wild stuff that's all over the place. The left ear, and the right one as well.
- Raioh

I really like this. It sounds good and especially the little bird tweets. It sounds like it was fun to put together.

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