@“leah”#p150150 I like it. It feels very cold and lonely. Like I‘m in a place I shouldn’t be for very long.
Anybody up for another round?
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i’m down! i was just thinking about bumping this thread lol
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Nice :) Since I picked the theme last time, do you mind doing the honors this time around?
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sure!
i am currently playing through final fantasy: the 4 heroes of light, which has an evocative scene involving a rainbow. it is also spring, a time of rain and sunshine, and it is almost pride month. ergo! the prompt this time shall be rainbow(s). there’s a lot of thematic resonance in the rainbow - it contains everything, yet it is ephemeral. it only appears when there is both rain and sunshine. it is unreachable but so close. it is a symbol of queer pride and also a sweet marshmallow in a breakfast cereal. truly, it is multitudinous!
go in any direction you want with it! i was aiming for a pretty loose prompt so hopefully this sparks some ideas.
since today is saturday/about to be sunday the 19th, i say we reconvene a week from wednesday, so may 29th, if the old timetable sounds doable.
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Love it! And yes that timeframe is perfect
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okay! so rainbow made me think of arpeggios for some reason, something about the rising and falling of notes on a scale. also, it made me think of FM synthesis because you can get some very harmonically rich sounds out of that and if rainbows had a sound I think it would be a very full sounding FM Chord.
Anyways, its not exactly an arpeggio but I came up with this sequence on my fm synth:
i resampled that into my DAW and added some other sounds to it. been trying to get into more jungle/dnb drum programming so I tried experimenting with that a little. then i recorded myself saying “rainbow”, slapped some delay on it and then tried mixing it as best i could. overall i’m pretty happy with the result, if i had more time i would come up with a better outro for it, but this was a good exercise :)
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i was aiming for something ethereal - rainbows are such ephemeral things, not really rooted in the physical world. the synth sound i landed on was inspired by this song from the anodyne 2 soundtrack, i was aiming for something kind of whoosh-y. the bass line was inspired by the guitar riff from “the past is a grotesque animal,” i thought that kind of constant downward motion would contrast the synth in a cool way. i’ve been trying to incorporate more electric guitar into my songs and i like what it does here. i do not love the drum machine preset i used but eh, it kind of does the trick.
i wrote the song lyrics on the walk back to my house last week. i’ve been thinking a lot about what i searched for in a queer community (hence, rainbow) in my late teens/early 20s vs. what i actually found, and how a lot of the relationships i formed could feel really restrictive and punishing. i’ve been trying to write about it in a relatively neutral way - angry but not cruel. i think i got close to it here and i want to expand this out into a full song.
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i like this a lot! it sounds like lone, so jungle/dnb vibes achieved, and i like how the vocals are mixed in. my main thought is that i wonder if there could be, like… a moment of downshift? it feels like it stays largely at one speed the whole time. i don’t necessarily mean tempo, but i’m thinking a breakdown or a section where the bass and drums take center stage would be really cool and bring some texture.
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I like the 808-style percussion a lot actually, i live the way those open hats sound and i think it goes well with the overall vibe of the song. I particularly enjoyed the moment the bass comes in, it fits the rest of the song very well and rounds out the song’s lower frequencies pretty well.
this might be a thing of personal preference but I kind of wish the guitar sounded more textured so it matches the saw wave (?) chords from the beginning. part of me wants it to sound a bit more harsh, or more textured, i think it would add more to the track that way. maybe bitcrushing it would do the trick, but take that with a grain of salt because i like to bitcrush everything 
please do finish this song!!
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Yep you’re right! Managing energy levels in a song is something I haven’t done well in the past so I need to be more conscious of that. I think I was insecure about the drum programming or something and didnt want to give it focus. but a lot of jungle tracks have entire sections with the drums and maybe a pad/chords in the background, providing some space to chill out.
a lot of jungle tracks have very high intensity sections and i think i was just trying to match that energy, but what ended up happening is that I took the energy way up and it sort of plateaued. i need to be better about actually finishing songs so I will make it a point to improve on this one and finish it
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thank you! that’s a great idea - i spent the least amount of time messing with the guitar sound, so it makes sense that it would stick out a little bit. i played with some distortion presets just to get a feel for it, and it definitely made it sound much more of a piece with everything else!
and fwiw, i don’t think you need to be self conscious about the drum programming in yours - i really dug it! though i know saying that is way easier than taking it to heart. i think the reason why i thought about having a slightly less intense section is, counterintuitively, because i really like how all the parts in it fit together, and pulling parts back to have them come back in later always helps me (as a listener) appreciate the whole synthesis of it more.
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that’s a good way of putting it! I think I often start to work on a track from the most intense part, which means a moment where all the elements of the song are doing their thing at the same time, whereas sometimes its better to take a step back and think about how the listener gets there and how they can hang out in the song a bit more so that the “intense” part has a better payoff.
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it seems like this last round was a fun and productive one for both of us! do you wanna do another one?
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I would love to! Though I’m having a hard time coming up with a good theme for next round.
I liked the exercise of imagining what rainbows would sound like and thought why not pick something that’s also ephemeral: smoke!
It’s impossible to grasp, can be a smoke signal and/or the aftermath of a raging fire. It can also be disorienting (smoke and mirrors, etc.)… open enough for interpretation.
what do you think?
that sounds great to me! let’s do it \m/ (>.<) \m/
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We shall reconvene on the 12th, correct? 
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I just played my first live set ever!! At an ambient music event near where I live. I’ve been trying to play my music live since forever and also meet other artists doing their thing here in Miami. I was the first set of the night and I think I did pretty well for my first time. I want to do it again and improve on certain things I could have done better, but overall I’d say it was well worth the nervousness and anxiety of not doing well… I practiced like hell!
I decided I was going to put my latest EP on CDs to give out after the event. My partner made the cover art and track-list for the sleeve. It was pretty easy to put together and printed it at OfficeDepot. I was originally planning on selling it but I ended up just giving it out to some of the other artists who came up to congratulate me, some of them were impressed it was my first time which took me aback cuz I thought it was clear I was a rookie.
That being said I think I met my socialization quota for the month so I’ll be receding back to my hermitage to make more tunes (=____=)
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woah, that’s awesome. congrats!
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that’s awesome, way to go!!
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