Metronomica.blog
jamuary 10, 2025
I’m not a perfectionist, but I do like to tinker. I’ll decide a song is finished, but I’ll be editing midi notes up to the last minute. Jamuary curbs that impulse. I made a few sounds, really liked how they worked together, found a way to make it harmonically interesting, and hit record. Then I forgot to do the harmonically interesting stuff. That’ll be for Finish February. Here’s the ambient bed, absolutely locked in on B:
There are four sounds here, each working off a playhead in Fugue Machine:
- Rings FX, an expanded Mutable Instruments Rings port for iPad, run through Weeping Wall for microlooping loveliness and Velvet Machine for a reverb that builds from nothing to something, exponentially, over 10 seconds;
- Three Decent Sampler instruments, all run through various flavors of delay and reverb:
- A piano
- A violin
- A synth
- A piano
The harmonically interesting stuff was simply playing the transposition slider in Fugue Machine. Because all the instruments are so slathered in reverbs and delays, it takes a few seconds for the piece to shift, in unison, up or down. It felt like a glacier separating into two.
But the version above doesn’t do any of that. I don’t know if it’s better for it. It provides less of a narrative, for sure, but that’s not necessarily worse. It’s just different. I lean toward narrative in my music, but sometimes it’s fine to stay put.
When the month ends, I’m planning to head back into some of my favorite Jamuary tracks and determine whether i want to build one out further, or re-mix one, or try a new performance of another. I’m putting a pin in this one. Maybe there is something else here. If not, that’s OK; I have to make something new tomorrow, anyway.
// tags: making music jamuary