Yep, here’s a free track I wrote within a week, for the 35th week in a row.
The track is named after Garuda1982 on Freesound, who uploaded the acoustic guitar melody I chopped up. Thank you! And this image is my photo from Chicago, but tipped, after someone I forget on Instagram. Thank you too!
Aims this week
The two things I tried for that are different to what I usually do as Jet Jaguar were:
- Use acoustic guitar
- Use, uh, rock drum machine kind of drum sounds?
Reckons
Well, it sounds a lot different to what I normally do, IMO. More kind of synthwave? I dunno, just sort of like a retro, idealised 80s soundtrack kind of thing. Even with the chopped up guitar licks.
The original guitar melody is very pleasant and much more, I dunno, pastoral? I kind of wish I’d found something better to do with it. I could always go again, I guess. The sound file still exists. 😉
It’s the nature of the WeeklyBeats challenge that it rewards just following through, calling something done, and uploading it.
17 more weeks both feels like no time and a lot. Nothing new really in this regard.
Process
I downloaded the acoustic guitar melody and dumped it into a sampler in my DAW. I slowed it down a fair amount, sliced it, and made a 4-bar loop playing back the slices. I found a tempo, pitched the sample down 3 semitones and liked the results. I made 2 more variations on the first 4-bar loop, just duplicating the first loop and dragging the notes to different pitches on screen, where each pitch triggers a different slice.
I figured out the key and played a simple bass part on a software synth. I just used a preset on a synth in my DAW. I ended up duplicating the idea and making it into a 16-bar phrase.
I decided to clone the acoustic guitar melody at different octaves. I duplicated the sampler part, pitched it up an octave, panned it to one side. I duplicated that, pitched it up a second octave, panned it to the other side. I turned the higher ones down a lot.
I added some fx to the guitar part – an EQ to brighten it up further, some compression, and a diffuse delay (a reverb, basically) that is ducking under the dry signal.
I found a doofy drum kit and sequenced a drum part. An 8-bar loop, with a crash on the first bar and a bit of a tom fill on the last – much more rock moves than I would normally go for. I pitched the drum sounds down for a more mashed sound.
I decided to slow the tempo of the guitar chops to half-time. I did this with all 3 variations, and preferred the results.
I moved from loops to arranging the track at this point, just dragging blocks around and switching between the 3 variations of the acoustic guitar chops.
I was pretty happy with the short arrangement, but decided to add a little arpeggio. Another preset synth with a bunch of bit reduction noisiness. I based the arpeggio on what to me sounds like the root chord, but with a couple of variations jumping to other notes in the major scale. I put this in the middle of the track as a kind of bridge. I washed the ending out in a really, really big reverb (Valhalla VintageVerb) and let that fade away across the last third of the track.
Lucky last, I added an off-beat “tambourine” (a very old drum machine version of one) which I put on every 2nd bar, and added to the track only sometimes – before the arpeggio and in the closing bars.
I compressed the final mix pretty heavily – squashed the drums, then squashed the entire track. It felt like that kind of a sound was the right one.