For week four of WeeklyBeats I have gone back to upbeat dance music.
It was really fun to work with only synthetic sounds, especially making a drum pattern that sounds quite “breaksy” but with no samples of real drums. I think my music has definitely drifted that way this decade, with the obvious exception being use of field recordings I’ve made. But even putting that aside, I often use samples of acoustic instruments like tuned percussion or cello or good old Rhodes electric piano sounds. Or maybe software instruments that have these kinds of samples as their basis.
(Hilariously, late in the piece I actually added a second drum pattern using only acoustic drum samples, and completely forgot that I had planned to only use synth noises… Oops.)
So far I’ve been knocking these tracks out really fast and have had time later in the week to think “hang on, I want to do this other thing now” … but the rules of the challenge mean I have to either park that second idea or jump into it but not submit it as part of this challenge. I’ve started two other complete tracks since submitting this one. I’m genuinely surprised it’s this way around – writing more than WeeklyBeats requires – and I doubt this will continue.