The AABA Challenge: Let’s Make Bad Music!

I had this issue back in 2012. Spent a year recording an EP that I put a lot of work into. Released it. I still consider it my masterpiece.

Then, on a wild hair, I compiled a release of the weirdest stuff I ever recorded(and in some cases being purposely obnoxious.)

My friends were excited about the album saying it’s the best thing I’ve ever done.

And then I got sad

5 Likes

added a playlist for quickly thrown together stuff, which is maybe everything of mine. haha…

3 Likes

Finally sat down to make a new track this weekend. I wanted to try making hip-hop by sampling one of my favorite punk bands. :grimacing:

Well, I did that.

4 Likes

I’ve no idea what that is but I like it.

Only managed one track this week, pretty soulless attempt at early rephlex that can’t even sustain my interest for 5 minutes, so good luck to the rest of you.

6 Likes

came across this video which reminded me of an annual music festival where brass bands from all over play music in my city all weekend, usually in the fall. it’s a good time… lots of good energy.

here’s the source and my remix:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDfjAYRGrko

6 Likes

I have some more output to share. Most definitely in the spirit of publishing the aforemetioned “careless” music. It’s a mix of more beat driven techno and some ambient asides, created using Polyend Tracker and mostly Elektron machines (Octatrack, Digitone, Model:Cycles). If nothing else, putting this stuff out there will allow me to see whether I’m making any progress. I can say I’m defintely learning a lot.

5 Likes

Pretty inspiring, all that bad music in here. Bad music, good vibes.

If I can somehow make it, I’m in. Will see, where this week brings me to - with my wife, baby-daughter and a tough job-deadline…

I post this to have some weight on that side as well. Feel free to push me, if you want :smiley:

4 Likes

doo eet. see if you can just carve a half hour to bust out something. it could be fun.

pretty sweet! i like that it’s short, too. there’s something both refreshing and challenging to trying to structure a song while keeping it short. but it’s also not too short. the trend these days with young producers is 1-1:30 minute long compositions made for social media. they’re good, and i’m usually impressed they can fit fully developed ideas in such a short amount of time, but it also feels like something’s missing for me. maybe i’m just old. anyway, good job!

2 Likes

Thank you for the kind words! I actually struggle to make longer tunes, as I feel like I don’t have enough elements to bring in to keep the tune interesting. To me, it also makes sense to keep things short to help encourage completing more. Editing, too, I think is important. For example, the 2-ish minute interlude was cut out of a 6+ minute jam. There was an abrupt transition in that take shortly after 2 minutes that I didn’t like, and rather than bore everyone with 4 more minutes of drone, I thought the first two minutes accomplished the spirit of the jam. Thanks for listening :slight_smile:

As a native producer of bad music, Im offended by the cultural appropriation. /s

I … wait … what … oh :rofl:

1 Like

Just added another one.

This one came from a bunch of different places. I was trying to work on “bounce” by using my M:S to not-exactly-copy from Common’s “The Light.” The chords came from fooling around on my OP-Z with totally different drums, but I liked the way it fit this song better, and the rest came together when I moved over to Ableton. I’m not sure it worked, but in the spirit of this thread when I got frustrated, I called it good enough and posted it.

5 Likes

At some point last year when I decided I was going to finally learn these machines better I was searching around a lot and came across this post while trying to understand how parts work on the OT. It’s a great post, I copied that right into my OT notes doc, and then I proceeded to make many songs.

So, thank you for the reminder. I’m gonna see if I can get back into that sort of mindset, because it was a lot of fun, very productive, and I like what you all are doing here.

1 Like

Oooh, I missed this thread! I need to do another “bad” music track. Could be so much fun!

This one is a fairly blatant rip of Black Box’s “Everybody Everybody”, done on Korg M01D (Nintendo DS). Named it after Frankie Knuckles who had just passed away before I was ready to upload the track to SC. I normally don’t compose music like this, however derivative it may be, but it was a song stuck in my head that wanted to come out… so I did…

3 Likes

Some quick homeshopping tv mangling on ot. Will have to cut away the end with the hihat, really bad. I like many abba songs a lot btw.

2 Likes

Dancing Queen? Mamma Mia? Super Trouper?

Or did you mean aaba-songs?
:grinning:

Yes, sorry first I misread it, then i had no clue what it means, looked up, learned something, when posting meant both abba and the aaba
Acording to wiki its:
alpha-Aminobutyric acid
From abba probably voulez vous? and chiquitita
Again sorry also to myself, i‘m not able to prepare something structured or record live without annoying parts in general.
Prepare and record one simple trance track is a life goal, but probably will never happen.

1 Like

@samglover

Enjoying your tracks so far. Sure you might have a simple template, but each track is pleasing to listen to, well mixed, good sounds.

I cant "hear the template ", unless I count, which means I’m not listening.
Anyway, nice work.

Here’s a song I just finished today. I created it in FL Studio. This track doesn’t completely follow the AABA form, but it’s close. I also posted this as my contribution to the Movie Trailer/Soundtrack Transmission Challenge #1.

1 Like