I’ve finally uploaded my first EP. It’s the first creative sparks ignited when I bought my Digitone two years ago. I would call it electronic synth pop that’s rather melancholic:
Tried to polish these first ideas this year and know it still has many issues, but it feels good to finally share something that has a set of songs, names and artwork to it. I’ve become better at almost every aspect since I came up with these songs, but feel like they have that beginners curiosity to them that you probably only get once.
Thanks all of you for helping me learn along the way - really appreciate it if anyone at least gives the last track a chance. It’s a big deal to me, before buying that Digitone I’ve always just been singing in bands and occasionally hitting a few keys.
It’s half an hour long and the best way to listen to it is in one go - the way it was recorded. I‘ve recorded all the synths and drums live in one take, almost a year ago. Vocals and some sounds built from vocals were added later. As well as the guitars by @Python, which are the star of the show for me.
It’s an Elektronauts collaboration in some ways. I‘m proud to say that mixing was done by @maymind_trax. @Python, @m0ld and @Tchu provided some feedback that helped making this more streamlined and interesting. The whole community has also helped me become a better musician, so really many of you had some influence on it.
Being a live recording, it’s far from perfect. There are several mistakes in the recording and options for changing the mix were limited after it was recorded. In exchange, it hopefully sounds more coherent and of a piece than a classical studio recording. It also just was a joy for me to do this! I hope this comes across.
I will share some info about the setup later for those of you who are interested. For now, let’s leave it at: this is 90% Syntakt with a bit of Digitone (1).
Hey @Azzarole ! Congrats for the release. I’m happy that I could help you in any ways. I just woke up so I didn’t listen to the Album yet. The Album cover is very nice, I really like it. I will do a proper listen later today, I’m looking forward to it.
That’s the appeal for me.
Embrace the imperfections. Imperfect is the new perfect.
Great effort Azzarole! By misstake I started two instances of the player at the same time and though it was a bit to messy before i realized Now it sounds much more pleasant.
This was a joy to mix, as I really dug the music from the start—raw, sinewy jams with some powerful vocals on top to spice things up. Give it a listen if you haven’t already!
@Azzarole, very happy this is finally out and glad I could contribute a few guitar bits here and there!
The whole thing flows really nicely from start to finish, but Suitcase Placeholder is probably my favorite bit. @maymind_trax, I really like what you did with the mix, as well. Great work!
I initially started to record some tracks I made on my Syntakt and the patterns that make up the final release were supposed to be one five minute song. That was in January 2024. The patterns that make up “Unmade Decisions” are from April 2022 and are one of the first patterns I made with my new Syntakt. I always had a kind of special relationship to them and I felt this when I tried to make a short track out of them. I quickly felt like I could make more of them. So I took another approach: what if I tried to make a seamless live performance with just these patterns?
I did just do that and applied a new method I had developed at the time: using Faderfoxes to control performance macros and Ableton FX. One of the Faderfoxes was mapped to Syntakt, with the knobs mapped to performance macros on tracks 1-4 and 9-12, the faders to amp volume of these same tracks for fading in and out. Another Faderfox was mapped to Ableton, where I built two groups of Syntakt OB tracks for drums and melodic things. Each of these busses had dedicated performance FX that were mapped to four knobs and sliders each. The third Faderfox was mapped to Digitone, which only played two tracks in the beginning and end. Digitone also ran into Starlight Echo, Chromaconsole and Gen Loss for performance effects.
After I had recorded the live take and the vocals, I sent some of the vocals into CBA Onward to see what textures I could get from that. I was surprised by how much useful things I got out of this. There’s several elements that do sound like synths or strings that are actually made from vocals. I can highly recommend Onward for this.
Doing all of this was extremely fun. It channeled the “what if I could do this” energy that sometimes is spent on GAS into coming up with an individual approach to a performance. Arranging these patterns and how I’d play them live, then rehearsing it and performing it live was probably the most fun I had with making my own music so far. When I eventually nailed the set, it was really fulfilling. Listening back to it, I can hear moments where I’m not confident yet and afraid to mess up things. But I can also hear when everything clicked for me and I became one with the machines. And after all, isn’t this the exact thing we’re after with our boxes?
Hello @Azzarole
I really like to learn how basic the idea started out and grew over time into something rather complex. If I’d just seen that picture of the few Elektrons with the foxes, I would have thought: … well this is just me playing around as usual. (minus the ).
I also can relate very much with this dwelling on sketches from the past, that you somehow love dearly and whenever you come back to them there’s an inner urge to turn them into something “real”.
So congrats to a beautiful release (and a successful remote collaboration) that is layering old and new, turning past and present into here and now.
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Now it sounds much more pleasant.
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