Jamuary 2026

morning empty jam for jam 21

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Analog Four MkII, Digitakt II and the Octatrack with A4 performance macro shenanigans targeting its delay parameters on the FX track.

If you’re a skip through type, after 1:46 >> before 1:46

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Oh thank you!

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lots of fun pieces today!

some comments

love the bounce on this! And the breakdown moments are really nice too. I especially enjoy that sax sample. The drums put the listener into a nice zone, and the background elements are like images flashing by outside of the car window

kickin bass line! Very groovy tune with a solid low end. I like how spread out the hi hats are too. It lets the piece really focus on the low end without sacrificing space

that chair sample is genius! And the strings give a beautifully, icy feeling to this piece as well. Beautiful, but also hostile. Like a frozen lake high up in the mountains

the pads are so lovely! Like a beautiful corona around the whole piece. And that bass is dope too! I love how textured you got with it

love the use of tracks 9 and 10 for that kick and unz call and response thing! This piece is bustling like a busy market, but everything is still organized and methodical in its placement in the mix

this has a lush nocturnal quality to it! Like listing along the beach under the light of the moon; wallowing in another half remembered daydream; long after the word “day” could be used to describe the world around you

like a club beast waiting to be let out of its cage! I kept waiting for some massive kicks to come in, but I respect the restraint! This has a brilliant energy to it, and I like how it’s all wrapped up in resonance

such summery vibes! I love how melty the synths sound at the end of the piece. And the main melodic motif has a nice rising feeling to it

Side note: the background game stays on point!

there’s a nice dark, almost, but not quite, haunting vibe to this! The broken up vocals mixed with the ethereal pads creates a wonderfully unsettling soundscape, but the bass and the melody keep everything else focused and moving forward. It’s like you’re being guided through the strange things (afoot at the Circle K)

anacrusis (or, more like a really extended anacrusis)! The intro to your song doesn’t feature the kick for a bit, and that makes the listener latch onto something else as the downbeat of the piece, only for the kick to come in and shift where the downbeat is! I love this kinda weird rhythmic stuff

wild! A really interesting take on the drumless hip hop trend for sure! I like how present the groove is still despite the lack of drums, and I thought the rawness of the vocals fit well with the grittiness of the rest of the piece

such a soothing piece! The loops and layers wash over the listener like warm solar rays, and the ambiences put them, eyes closed, right on the beach. A red light seeping through. A warmth of sand around you

Side note: I think you could add drums to this and give it a whole new vibe if you felt so inclined

the breakdown around 2m30s in is awesome! Great sounds too, especially the bass sounds. I love the way this piece grooves, and your little solo at the end was a nice surprise

love how wild the breaks get in this piece! And the bass has this futuristic laser sound that is super cool too. It feels like escaping from some insane space battle in a tiny, beat up dingy of a ship (and, against all odds, managing to do it)

I’m loving these dnb style pieces! The breaks feel really fresh without going too far into the experimental side of things (not that there’s anything wrong with that!), and the synths you use have this deprecated quality to them like their grains are unstable

Side note: gold is up, urging all thugs…

love the use of that opening line! And the way you chop it up sounds excellent! I like how this piece feels like it’s something in between dnb and hip hop without feeling confused about what it is trying to do

like venturing far too deep into an alien swamp! A world teeming with untold varieties of fauna, but you can only ever make out the movements left behind from where these creatures have been. A collective consciousness watching and avoiding you, but still so present. So there

I love the splashy metal feel of your jan20th piece! It has a wonderfully cleansing sound to it. Like a palette cleanser for the ears

the mid frequency static sounds towards the beginning of the london_v2 piece sound great! In fact, all of the higher frequency percussion elements you add to this piece have this buoyant feeling to them that gives the rest of the piece an effervescent vibe

I love how this piece just builds and builds with those ramped cymbal rushes! I, personally, get a bit more of a sci-fi show vibe than a horror vibe, but I can absolutely see the influences (and you can almost certainly chalk this up to my unfamiliarity with a lot of horror media)

I love how the beginning feels like it’s trying to hold back the synth from shredding too hard, but the tension eventually gets too high, and the synth breaks out from its confines. Then, after it’s had its outburst, everything settles back down into this post industrial plain

an interesting concept: “least” musical. I don’t think there is such a thing. My taxonomical anarchism aside, I think you ended up with something really interesting, even if this started as a technical exercise. The timbre of the synth with the modulated lfo is nice and rough, and it contrasted well with the synth you made and played on the Zoia

love that transition from the looser drum groove to that four on the floor pulse! The sonar sounding pings over the sweeping noise bit gives a kind of spy thriller vibe

sounds massive! And such a bright timbre on that top lead line. It really cuts through the mix brilliantly

spacious! Like sneaking around a museum level in a stealth game. Avoiding the lasers and sight lines while you meticulously maneuver towards that pièce de résistance so gratuitously displayed and ripe for the taking

this is incredible! A banger all the way through, and that intro section gives so much context to that big drop moment that skipping right to it is a disservice to this piece! Excellent job, and well worth listening all the way through (multiple times even!)

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Thanks! Most of those synth sounds are the stock single-cycle waveforms in the Digitakt’s “Utilities” folder, especially the “organ” and “acid” ones but also just the straight triangles, copied across several tracks (usually 5-8, with 1-4 devoted to drums and everything else).

One of my favorite things about the digitakt is the way you can use it to make an almost accordion-like or melodica-like sound by copying the same sound & track info across a bunch of sample tracks and then adjusting the waveform and tuning on each.

It creates this very full sound that you can then break down in all sorts of ways (bitcrush+overdrive+filter+whatever the weird noisy control on the second filter is). It also meshes really well with the Monologue’s dual VCO voicing structure.

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Last night’s entry

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Tasty tone here – what are you using? I really like the restraint and spaciousness. I’d definitely listen to an extended cut of this that subtly evolves over time (maybe some modulation on the synth release)

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Thank you for the kind words!! :pray:

I did my best not to have too many elements and yet I feel like there was still too much going on freq-wise and more attention could have been devoted to sound design, to make it more immersive.

But then again, the whole point of jamuary for me at least is to have fun and to explore things I have overlooked in this instrument before, while maintaining immediacy and avoiding any kind of perfectionism.

It’s the AR mk2, a Verde tube mixer and the Erica Synths Nightverb.
In this jam I was driving the mixer quite hard to get that saturation from the tubes.

To avoid cluttering my computer with random sessions I have made a decision to just delete everything after bouncing it, same goes with the projects on the AR. :slight_smile:

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Number 21. Syntakt progressive breaks or something? 2 patterns for a change.

@tovia Very perceptive picking out which track does what :sweat_smile:

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Really liked this! Such a nice vibe!!

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Thanks! I wasn’t too sure about it really… Bit euphoric for my tastes :sweat_smile:

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Day 21: fun, groovy jam

@Oxenholme I look, and I perceive (and I’m very familiar with the Syntakt lol)

@KingDuppy I always love the sound of detuned oscillators stacked on top of each other. I’ve enjoyed doing a similar thing with the SP, but for more ambient purposes. Things can get especially fun when you start to incorporate panning as well!

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Really enjoyed this one! Sounded great and everything was in it’s right place.
Could have easily listened more of it. :slight_smile:

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This was good both raw and coming in over the Tonverk effects I’d used last.

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Trying something new - sequencing a VST in Ableton via the Tonverk, then recording via onboard effects. Part of my vow to explore all those plugins this year… Quite mellow, mostly.

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Despite a day with all-company meeting the whole day, then pizzas with work, then climbing with friends, I was able to put together something before midnight!

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Love this! Phat, smooth, groovy and vocal samples are cool.

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