Discfaux

I don’t know why, but I got it in my head to try and do a bit of a disco track. The track kind of has the funk a bit, but I feel like it’s missing an element or two to make it really scream disco. As it stands, it feels like it is missing half the band, but I was running out of time to put something together and just wanted to see where this could get me.

I wonder what other people think about the track 😀

Some What Funk

The picture is of a 3 string cigar box guitar my dad made for me. Something I’ve been trying to get to work better for some time. I’ll get into it in a blog post somewhere, but my dad didn’t align a few parts correctly, so it needs some love!

As for the song, I was really just trying to go for a straight up hip hop/break beat kind of sound, and keep it moving. I like the track overall, but think it could use some stripping back of a few elements, and maybe add something a little different? I don’t know, seems like something I am poking on a bit for what I’ve been putting together lately. Time for some self reflection?

Hopefully that guitar will get some love though, gotta see where things land time wise once I get through this month of tracks a day.

MPCBB309 – Say It

Yeah, an MPC Forums Beat Battle… I honed in on a section that I thought would loop well enough, chopped it up, and then focussed on the chops that sounded good enough. This track turned into three different sections that I just used song mode to string together. Was a fun track to flip, even if I didn’t exactly spend a ton of time working on it.

Friendly Faces

The picture comes from a trip to Greece I took two years ago with my family.

Was trying to put something a bit more LoFi sounding together, and I kind of feel like I failed. The mix is just off, and it doesn’t really feel dirty enough. Overall, I find the bass too loud and it probably needs some major taming. What was I thinking? Uhm… not sure lol!

Dependable Record

For this track I was trying to think about transitions between sections a bit more, and trying to see how it would come together. I kind of think the higher end synth sound is a bit distracting, and the track would probably be better without it. Maybe a few too many elements?

I am happy with the track feeling a bit more funky though, and trying to add in a few more somewhat random sounds moving in and out feels like a good effect.

Poetic Resolution

Day 8! Trying something different for a change of pace.

First, the image comes courtesy of my dogs chewing up my daughter’s homework. She had left it someplace where they could get at it, and while I was out at the recycling center they decided to have a snack apparently. It looks like she was making a song for her class as part of an assignment, but she wouldn’t tell me what it was for.

For why this track is different, well I spent some time digging into Korg Gadget to make a song. It is not my first, but I usually use Gadget as a sound source for the MPC, and this time I decided I would work with it as the main sequencer. I’m actually pretty happy with the results. It is very similar to the Ableton Live arranger style of work, and I can see how you can get something together pretty quickly.

Once I had the tracks and sequences together, I hooked my iPad up to the SP 303 for Vinyl effects, and then recorded the audio into the MPC Live. So technically I used the MPC Live here, but… also not really.

Simple Yet Effective

A simple track for a simple day.

This track is just some loops I selected and put together. Nothing crazy, but I was looking to make something with some different sounds than I usually put together and see what I could come up with.

I’m on the fence about that noise loop chopped up, it adds some interesting ambience to the track, but I think I could have done something different with it.

The track came together as another exercising of just leveraging track mutes with timing correct on. Still need to work on this more, and honestly this is where I also think I’m hitting the limit of the MPC workflow for putting songs together. I might want to go back to using song mode to string sequences together again… we’ll see.