Was going to dump this into the Share your tunes thread, but then figured maybe it was better off isolated and quarantined to the side…
Apologies in advance, a lot of what I create these days tends to be highly influenced by the “Current events getting wedged into my head” perspective. Current events seem mostly unavoidable in everything I do lately. Wish it were otherwise, but I am of my environment.
Can’t run, can’t hide. Driftwood in a dirty polluted river.
Nonetheless, the gear used is topical for the forum… Here we have some digitone ii sprinkled onto some syntakt. These are run through a chase bliss onward and then further manipulated with a meris lvx and mercury x. There are some moments facilitated by a chase bliss mood 2. These pedals are used dynamically depending on the moment.
Layered onto this are some vocal elements managed through a roland sp-404mk2 with some use of its onboard effects situationally applied. These are independently run through the same pedals above, albeit a bit more subdued. I guess. Overused? Probably. By design.
All this layered along a guitar track that is pushed into the background.
Where in sound is created using a little bit of Digitone II and a fair bit of Digitakt II while running many words into a ChaseBliss Habit presented in a video format.
This time we have some simple Syntakt and Roland SP404mk2 pushed through a lot of Meris Mercury X and LVX along with some ChaseBlss Onward and a small bit of Habit. Some transitions assisted with a Mood II.
AKA what happens when you apply your own “skills” in process design and project management onto yourself with a one week project timeline deliverable:
Something I put together using a Digitakt II, Digitone II, and an SP-404MKII. I limited the use of external FX to only subtly flavor the output this time around.
We had substantial rain yesterday and I gather that made for a productive day in my instance.
A lot of the usual suspects were used in this one: Digitakt II, Digitone II, a few bars on a Syntakt. FX were also the usual suspects: Onward, Mood II, Habit and Blooper. In most cases these were either dialed back a bit. Or a lot. (In the case of the Blooper I had to take a virtual cutting knife to that track (it got all a bit too repetitive for my preferences).
(Edit: the word salad is going through an sp404mk2.)
A lot of Digitakt II in this one.The new slice feature is super useful. I also wandered into using sample slot as a destination modulation parameter. It’s like precision speed dialing through a tuner knob on a radio. I enjoyed that.
Signal chain: DigitoneII—> DigitaktII—>Habit—>Onward—>MoodII—>LVX—>MercuryX—>Clean.
Signal path:** Digitone II—>Syntakt—>Digitakt II—>Habit—>Onward—>Mood II—>LVX—>Mercury X.
I was experimenting with samples I created on the DigitaktII that were for use on a different track. It has a fair amount of Digitone II as well as some drums off the Syntakt.
I sat on this one thinking the video needed something more. After analyzing it for the nth time and accepting that the moment has passed, I guess it is as done as it will ever get.
Slightly new approach to the structure of things. Solid, fun, learning experience. Multi tracked guitar in addition to a mixture of samples coming out of the DIgitaktII and the SP404MK2. Digitone2 for the synth parts.
This one is pretty much all Elektron boxes + the usual outboard FX.
I hadn’t planned on doing a video. Doing them can be a tedious. But yesterday I found myself wanting to see how I could use some self captured footage of the Elektron boxes and external fx in action. I liked the result well enough that I had a video 90% complete in fairly short order. Being that close to done, I had to suck up the remaining 10% of tedium and finish it.
I wasn’t going to post this piece because it doesn’t really sound Elektron relevant to my ears. But it is mostly a Syntakt track with some chopped up vocals on a 404. I’m guessing my self critique is that the layered guitar in the background makes it somehow deviant.
Anyhow.
Fun Fact: A Tonverk is in the signal path but it only plays the role of an interface to create a send for some outboard FX in this instance. (Ok, there is some minor internal Tonverk reverb in the send, so I guess that counts.) That is not an indictment of the box. I just felt the piece didn’t need “more” and I am in a hypercritical mood these days trying to wrangle myself out of abusive and abrasive audio habits.
It does have some SP-404. But it also has a lot of other stuff like Tonverk, Syntakt, some Digitakt. Some situational transactions with a myriad of outboard FX that include the usual suspects as well as a Lost and Found.
I recorded this acoustic guitar track yesterday and augmented it with a backing track that utilized some of the granular capabilities from a Tonverk. The backing track also has some minor patterns coming out of a Syntakt and Digitakt and some various FX typical to what I use.
One last piece for the year. Some folks were discussing the updates to Artruria’s Pigments software. I hadn’t updated it this year, and missed the V6 update so I figured I would update it and give V7 a spin. It was great fun.
Only a small bit of Elektron in the piece via some Tonverk drums samples in the background. Absent a bit of vocal word salad it is pretty much all variations of Pigments running through a bit of outboard FX. (My signal path is pretty convoluted at this point as I am running Pigments on an old iMac that then goes into my sp404 as an interface which then goes to the external FX, which then goes back into the Tonverk, which then makes its way to my audio interface which then goes into the laptop. It works, though latency gets a bit tricky at times).