Metronomica.blog
jamuary 24, 2025
Even in the dog days of jamuary, interesting noises can be made:
The initial idea here was simple. When I’ve played a piano through Fugue Machine, the sequencer usually gives the instrument a basic, slow motif. What if the motif was faster?
It came together quickly, a stray thought built into something like music. I reached for my old bag of tricks. The pianos bounced off each other asynchronously, and that was cool, but what if I added… microloopers… granular effects… enormous reverbs! It’s easy to create a soundscape, even if it’s uninspired. We’re 24 days into this challenge. Sometimes we need to reach for the tried-and-true stuff.
When I threw the mix into Bitwig to master1, without thinking, I turned on the repitch algorithm and turned the tempo up, thereby pitching everything down. I started by turning the whole thing into a low muck, but then brought it back above ground, where it was itself again, but a little slower and unsure of itself. Wobbly. It was just a little bit better than it was before, and all I had to do was consider the entire piece as clay to be molded.
So was this the best Jamuary entry of all time? Yes! (No.) But I’m continually picking off little pieces of techniques and ideas this month, no matter the quality of output. Why not take an entire song and viciously maul it until it’s a new source of inspiration? So often, for me, a song is a song and it’s done. What if it’s not the end of the road, but a fork in the path?
Put through Ozone. It’s Jamuary.↩︎
// tags: making music jamuary