protocol 6744
By wangus on March 8, 2026 11:59 pm
based on a dream last night.
the short of it: i'm watching a movie where matt damon is on a mission in space (naturally) and like his ship crashes on a cliff or something. some woman (colleague? idk) finds the ship and rushes up to the airlock damon is trapped in. she's yelling "we'll get you out of there, just stay calm, yadda yadda". damon looks back somberly, holds a gun to his head stating "sorry; protocol 6744" and fires.
this track is from that movie. not that scene. from another sequence that isn't worth explaining. but the hardpanned-right distorted explosion sound is from that scene.
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so the main percussion/bass is essentially Scrooge through Analog Heat. there's some other nuance like panning, EQ, Quadrantid Swarm spring reverb, shitty behringer delay pedal. but the character is mostly scrooge + heat. heat is envelope triggered for the woOww on the bass. Round Fuzz circuit of course, the most transformative one in the Heat. recorded some noodling for like 10min.
then I had some noodling with OP-1f through Mood mkii to build a bit of a soundscape. sawtooth strings-type patch, plucky FM patch, the chopped sample kit from WB26 week 1 for some glitchyness.
trimmed both noodling sessions and popped them into the M8, and arranged the track from there. i reused the break from week 8 because why not. also grabbed a quick sample from OP-1f FM radio. it was tuned slightly off from a country station, so it came out with sick distortion.
so overall, i think this was a good exercise in having a vague atmospheric idea to begin with, and quickly forming that into something that remotely matched? it wasn't what i initially concretely imaginined, but still v good.
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more thots
The Scrooge beat has 15, 16, and 17-step tracks. so it’s a long polymeter. I think? I forget how it treats overall pattern length.
Also I had a better groove going but I lost it when I bumped the power adapter accidentally. Recreated from memory, but didn’t get the step parameters dialed in quite as good.
Sound-design-wise, my only gripe is the muddiness. didn’t have time to sculpt or retake samples.
But I wish I got a bit more in musically. the intro is a bit directionless (in a meh way), and it would have been cool to expand those surprise chords. Probably would want to extend the track significantly tho (keep that nice surprise intact). oh well, that’s how WB goes.
Ok the part of the dream this actually corresponds to (still abridged): Damon is running from some bad guy whos trying to kill him. Bad guy is on horseback; Damon is on bike/foot. It works out for him because there’s a lot of forested terrain and downhill roads. He gets to the back of some house. There’s a dog, but that has zero relevance past its brief appearance. Damon expects to have some time to think, but the bad guy is closer than he thought, so he bolts out the front. Bad guy enters the house, searches around, realizes he’s gone, leaves the front door too. Click, he’s stepped on a landmine. Bomb squad shows up and disarms and bad guy continues on. Back to Damon on bike; he’s like “I planted a billion landmines” and awaits the boom. The movie plays this distorted explosion sound hardpanned right as it transitions into the closing scene, Damon running away indefinitely, like his life is gone, just forever on the run, since he doesn’t know for sure the bad guy is gone. No sound, just the music as it wraps up to credits.
Reminder im just describing a dream i had.
Post-credits scene: back at the airlock where Damon offs himself, the scene I first described. All the chase/escape scenes weren’t real??? The explosion sound wasn’t a landmine but a gunshot???? oh shiiiit
Audio works licensed by author under:
CC Attribution Noncommercial No Derivative Works (BY-NC-ND)
