Metronomica.blog
jamuary 15, 2025
I am someone who releases music occasionally at best, and so Jamuary and its unceasing demand for stuff has put me in a pretty vulnerable place. It takes apart the idea that music-making has to be a precious process, only worth doing when divine inspiration strikes. It also requires you to share music with the world that just doesn’t feel right.
Does this feel right? Or does it feel like someone grasping around a new piece of software? Is the mix bad, or at least worse than published music should be? Is there something here?1
The new piece of software is Patterning 3, a circular drum sequencer that is so fun to use but actively works against the best moments of my personal Jamuary — the sudden, strange noises and movements borne of generative sequencing and effects let loose. Patterning 3 locks me to the grid, and casts a stark light on the mundanity of a looping drum pattern. Yeah, there’s a fill, but when there’s drums there’s simple little melodies and there’s song structure and there’s the assumption that more stuff will happen.
In this piece, the more stuff doesn’t happen. When the drums come in, I’m waiting for another melody to take us home or harmony that stretches beyond four notes, repeating until the heat death of the universe. In the ambient pieces I’ve written throughout this month, there is no such expectation. In those, we live in space. In this, we’re fighting to get out.
The texture that leads us off, though, is really neat — three instances of the same sample in Samplr playing in different modes and different notes, all playing with a Fugue Machine line sent to a Decent Sampler piano.2
Then the drums come in, and they’re fine, and then the low piano comes in with that silly little melody. Maybe that’s where it goes wrong. Or maybe the clap/snare on 2 and 4 locks me in. Maybe who cares? I’ll probably resample the texture when this month is all done. Starting with nothing and coming out with a piece of inspiration isn’t all bad.
// tags: making music jamuary