grunge buster interlude

By wangus on November 28, 2022 12:01 am

garbage disposal kind of beat. m8 all synth no samples, with some analog heat "Saturation" on mids-highs.

probably the least-time track all year. """speedtrash""" in a relative sense. not focused today.

i wanted something more lowkey this week. something more melody/harmony driven, mellow but the Heat to bring back some subtle brightness in the upper end.

I spent a while noodling at the piano writing the middle section. if I had more time, this track would be about twice as long, with more harmonic exploration, and a few more modulations. (another fifth down to Eb, then to Gb, then ending in Db probably).

I liked the lopsided groove here. see if you heard the barlines "correctly" on first listen. realizing now it's echoes of mesadata, week 2. :shrug:

With the musical ideas settled, I started in the M8 with an FM bass patch. I liked the sound of a 3.0 > 2.0 sin modulation (the 3:2 ratio brings out the fundamental, even though the carrier is an octave up), but it didn't hold much of the bass, so I highpass filtered it and layered with a slightly-WARPed wavesynth sine. I found a SIZE value that gave a nice bitcrushed tone, and then went back and modified the FM patch to have a light high-ratio modulation (giving it too some high-end sparkle like a downsampling). These patches were modified a bit for the end section, just harsher. (so much for lowkey...)

Had a hard time instrumenting the middle bit. Really only happy with the lead; got a nice bell-like FM patch going. The bass is nearly the same patches as the first section, and the chords are just a [A>B]+[C>D] 2-poly patch.

The last section percussion was super rushed. Quick FM kick drum, quick macrosynth snare and ride.

The Heat is running the Saturation circuit with heavy drive, but a mid-range highpass filter and a near-dry mix, so it just crams out the upper end. Would have sounded nice with some more dynamic control, but I didn't have time to tweak.

----------- edit 2022-12-10

video