Seven Dualisms
By RPLKTR on February 15, 2026 11:49 pm
I welcome all critical feedback. Can relicense if you're interested, just ask.
Seventh week, so the track's 7/4. It is composed of seven phrases of seven bars each. I'm strongly partial to the TR-707 drum sounds and that would fit the "seven" theme perfectly as well, but no! This time I remembered about the first digitally-programmable drum machine in history, the Roland CR-78 and decided to do something with that. It also happens that the Disquiet Junto ran the 737th prompt this week as well and the theme was "filling the listener with anticipation" through percussion. So now this song is my entry there, too. Lucky coincidence!
› Lyrics
‹ Lyrics
better good than evil
better evil than afraid
better safe than sorry
better sorry than dead
better calm than worried
better worried than caught unprepared
better restrained than paranoid
better paranoid than naive
when they come to take you
they won't care what you believe
better evil than dead
better sorry than dead
better worried than dead
better paranoid than dead
› Technical musings
‹ Technical musings
While I don't have access to a CR-78, I thought surely my desert-island worthy Analog Rytm must be able to replicate those sorts of sounds convincingly, right? So this week's wild card was sitting with Ableton Live and creating a kit inspired by TR-78 using Analog Rytm's analog engines. No samples!
For reference I used Ableton's bundled CR78 samples and I got pretty close with every sound in isolation... but when I listened to the kit playing actual sequences, I decided to tweak things a bit to sit better as a cohesive sound. In the end I can't say we're in clone territory, but neither is my Analog Rytm-powered TR-707 kit, and I honestly believe that one sounds better than the original. Jury's out on whether my CR-78 kit will need further tweaks, but I like the end result, and despite differences the feel of the original machine is definitely still there. And yes, I'm fully aware of the irony of tuning my analog machine to sound like digital samples found in a DAW. But the result is that I now have a new tweakable analog drum kit.
···
120 BPM 7/4, E-major. Subharmonicon bass. Osmose pads. Yamaha Revstar rhythm guitar. Analog Rytm drums. No AI used in any part of the process. For this year every cover art is a photo I took.