ponytail shades purple blades
By wangus on August 28, 2022 11:56 pm
another LSDJ
spoiler: i didn't break my streak of starting WB on the deadline day
the origin of this one is hard to trace.
original thought that came to mind was something in the vibe of joe ford "off centre" (which i didn't know the title of till shazaming it just now; i had heard it from a mix). so that's what landed it around this tempo. (that track is 170, but my memory/imagination hit 160BPM)
then i was playing around with pulse channels on a sharp-decay then slow-re-attack envelope, something i toyed with briefly last week. changing notes between the sharp transient and the longer re-entrance gives an illusion of polyphony. Channeled a bit of the energy of this 2019 post with the on-off rhythm. But that didn't end up going much of anywhere, except establishing the D#, E-F-G#, C-C#-D# bass cycle, and hinting toward a half-time vibe.
oh and i did some wave channel twiddling, playing with the filter to get a prominent overtone. That made its way into the harmonies i build around the bass (and it's a weird overtone, an out-of-tune fourth-plus-octaves). Found it tough to get exactly the sound i wanted (maybe would have been faster to hand-edit the waves, idk). But the "vocal" qualities you get out of the lo-fi DMG wave channel are cool.
I thought that would be the core of the track, but i simplified it to just the tonic, and threw in some off-beat arp strums (a la ultrasyd "chip rasta" [rest in peace]). It grooves.
Then went back to the intro, without any real ideas, and laid down a lead noodle. Kinda cool, and I liked the rhythmic buildup (reeling back in some of the 160BPM slow-DNB feel).
The rest of the track structure was hacked up from there. I wanted to explore some more harmonies off the bass cycle, but all I had time for (all u get to hear) is a couple spiced up moments.
SPOILER ALERT:
fav moment is 1:25 . i really dig the thumpy kick/snare/hats in general here, and that goofy-groove fill lets them shine. a bit of tempo fudging completes it.
edit 2022-09-19 oh also i made a video at some point
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the bass sounds so fat