February Composition Challenge - GET WRITING

[christofloffer]

well, it seems that the picture was a good one. it must have struck a chord somehow to spawn such an eclectic mix of styles. its really quite fascinating watching all the different tunes pop up with absolutely no idea what might come out of the speakers. its rather refreshing.

[Leonard Smalls]

Indeed! Nice variety and excellent work so far by all!

[RockfordStone]

i started a bass line but it only lasted 60 seconds..... i think i'm in the wrong thread

[Rikki1984]

[quote name='RockfordStone' timestamp='1455274849' post='2977636']
i started a bass line but it only lasted 60 seconds..... i think i'm in the wrong thread
[/quote]

Haha!!!

[Bleat]

My entry for this month....

Lyrics and vox by my mate Rach, everything else by me.

She only had last Saturday evening to come up with words, a melody between us and then record it over some crappy chords through a knackered £20 drum mic !!

Please forgive the inconsistent sonic quality and levels etc

At least it's another potential demo to work on at a later date if nothing else!

[url="https://soundcloud.com/foolsjourney/sacred-places"]https://soundcloud.com/foolsjourney/sacred-places[/url]

James

[Mornats]

I've just recorded after spending most of the weekend procrastinating and browsing online for yet more virtual instruments! (I was good, I didn't buy any.) I need a few subjective listens, a fair bit of mixing and it'll be ready to go up on Soundcloud.

[xgsjx]

[quote name='Mornats' timestamp='1455476704' post='2979453']
I've just recorded after spending most of the weekend procrastinating and browsing online for yet more virtual instruments! (I was good, I didn't buy any.) I need a few subjective listens, a fair bit of mixing and it'll be ready to go up on Soundcloud.
[/quote]
You've got Komplete 10 & you're looking for more instruments! Have a look at the u-he Tyrell N6 (if you haven't already), it's a fantastic synth & it's free!

[Mornats]

Got it now, cheers! I also grabbed ProtoVerb as you can't have enough reverbs plugins.

Incidentally what I was looking at was a few sounds from Soundiron. http://soundiron.com/products/voice-of-gaia-bryn in particular as I'm always looking for some sort of vocal VI and http://soundiron.com/products/apocalypse-elements-kontakt-player-edition which I may have bought if I hadn't have recently bought Evolve Mutations 2. http://soundiron.com/products/ironpack looks quite nice too. Lots of cut down versions of some of their bigger products and a good way to try out their sound libraries I reckon.

[Dapper Bandit]

My entry for the month;

[url="https://soundcloud.com/user-145360766/divingdive-in-bathysphere-dub"]https://soundcloud.c...bathysphere-dub[/url]

Think I've managed a bit of a personal record in terms of speed of completion (I partly attribute this to listening to a couple of versions on my iPod while walking home from work. Pros; I can make notes away from the PC. Cons; I feel a bit like a tit listening to my own stuff outside the house.

This one's got extra instruments so it sounds like a real band now. It still has no vocals so it sounds like a real band that not many people will go and see.

[Bleat]

I have re-uploaded my entry for this month..... adjusted and balanced the levels a little bit now... so you can actually hear it or not be deafened by it!


[url="https://soundcloud.com/foolsjourney/sacred-places"]https://soundcloud.com/foolsjourney/sacred-places[/url]

Cheers,
James

[Skol303]

Good work guys! A fine crop this month

I'm hoping to get mine finished over the weekend.

For any other latecomers... don't forget the deadline for entries is Monday night.

[NickD]

[quote name='Skol303' timestamp='1455737776' post='2982010']

For any other latecomers... don't forget the deadline for entries is Monday night.
[/quote]

A cracking start from me... I think I'm not going to make it!

Since starting, the twins have gone down with chickenpox, which pretty much blew most evenings from a getting things done point of view. If I knew my kit I'd have maybe just scraped it, but the learning curve combined with the lack of time so far, compounded by us leaving for Blackpool in the morning, has pretty much buried it for this month. I had some (IMO) half decent ideas, but they can always be recycled... bring on March!

Some really nice work has gone in this month, it's gonna be a hard vote!

[Mornats]

I've got my rendered wav file now. I'm going to give it a subjective listen or two tomorrow before uploading it. I'm not entirely thrilled by my composition but it's got a load of new cinematic instruments in there which I'm still getting to grips with. Also I'm on track for my (new) goal of entering this comp every month of this year. Actually, I'm way ahead in terms of knocking them out as I've done 3 tracks separate from the comp So that's 5 this year already - more than my entire output from last year!

[the boy]

[quote name='NickD' timestamp='1455741066' post='2982065']


A cracking start from me... I think I'm not going to make it!

Since starting, the twins have gone down with chickenpox, which pretty much blew most evenings from a getting things done point of view. If I knew my kit I'd have maybe just scraped it, but the learning curve combined with the lack of time so far, compounded by us leaving for Blackpool in the morning, has pretty much buried it for this month. I had some (IMO) half decent ideas, but they can always be recycled... bring on March!

Some really nice work has gone in this month, it's gonna be a hard vote!
[/quote]
Roll on March. It's awful when you are up for it but the world conspires against you and despite your best efforts you can't get the thing finished. Better luck next month mate.

[Skol303]

Ok I'm done.

I've been listening to and playing a lot of disco recently; so this is a sort of 'nu-disco', summery number with perhaps a wee tinge of melancholy [i](that's what happens when I try to write a happy song when it's pishing down with rain outside!). [/i]Lots of layering on everything: drums, vocals, synths. But also very simple and repetitive.

Chorus vocals are lifted from a track I'm working on with Mike Flynn ('urb' of this Parish) and sung by a London lass called Noemi Nuti, who's just great. They've been re-pitched and royaly fecked around with; as have my own vocals during the chorus (vocoder mixed with layers of 'dry' audio).

Bass is a Fender Jazz, for anyone who may care about such matters.

http://soundcloud.com/skollob/dive-dive-dive

Had great fun with this and thanks to Doug for choosing such a cool pic. Love it.

I'll be back on Tuesday morning to post up the voting thread...

[Rikki1984]

[quote name='Rikki1984' timestamp='1455230986' post='2977403']
Well here's mine - [url="https://soundcloud.com/rikki-boyes/take-the-jump"]https://soundcloud.c...s/take-the-jump[/url]

Apologies as usual for asking you to sit though my vocals again! The lyrics came off a bit more pretentious than I intended - sorry!
[/quote]

I've tried remixing mine as the fuzz bass was dominating the mix. I'm not sure if I've improved things or just made things worse but I promise I'm going to resist the temptation to fiddle any more!

Edited February 19, 2016 by Rikki1984

[Mornats]

Finally, after much tweaking and some subtle additions to break some monotony that was building up I have my track

I wanted a movie trailer type track that built up suspense and then dropped back to let the vocals from Vocalise weave in and out. I layered 18 tracks in total, adding in various fun and unusual instruments to add to the overall sound.

I wanting to do something cinematic so I looked for some water related movie samples to base it on.

[url="https://soundcloud.com/mornats/dive"]https://soundcloud.com/mornats/dive[/url]

Here's the mammoth list of instruments used:[list]
[*]Movie Dialogue Volume 6
[*]Heavyocity Evolve Mutations 2
[*]Frozen Plain Victorian Music Box
[*]Spitfire Labs Scary Strings
[*]Spitfire Labs Frozen Strings
[*]Native Instruments Kontakt Factory Library Orchestral Timpanis and cymbals
[*]Native Instruments Session Strings
[*]Heavyocity Vocalise
[*]Native Instruments Supercharger compressor
[*]Melda Productions MStereo EXpander
[*]TDR Kotelnikov compressor
[*]Native Instruments Driver
[*]Native Instruments Reflektor
[*]Cockos ReaEQ
[*]Native Instruments Solid EQ
[*]IK Multimedia T-racks mastering
[*]Izotope Dynamic Delay
[/list]
Recorded in Cockos Reaper using:[list]
[*]Native Instruments Komplete Kontrol S61
[*]Focusrite Forte interface
[/list]
Edit: Aaaaand I've just ran out of space on Soundcloud. Bah!

Edited February 20, 2016 by Mornats

[xgsjx]

[quote name='Mornats' timestamp='1455925388' post='2983803']
Edit: Aaaaand I've just ran out of space on Soundcloud. Bah!
[/quote]

Haha. I know the feeling well. I made up a new email address just to open another soundcloud account (hence GXmix).

[Skol303]

Just has a listen through all of the entries so far. Wow! I know we tend to say this each month, but that's because it's true: [i]really[/i] interesting and imaginative stuff. Well done all.

I've left some comments on SoundCloud, but mostly of the "ooh, wow, great, like!" variety. I just wrote what I thought in the moment

[quote name='Mornats' timestamp='1455925388' post='2983803']
Here's the mammoth list of instruments used... [/quote]

Haha! That's always been why I've shied away from Kontakt... fear of 'option paralysis' from having [i]sooo[/i] many great instruments and pre-sets to choose from. I sometimes use Maschine for drum tracks and the library sounds are just superb - really good quality. I might have to bite the bullet sometime and expand my Native Instruments toolset... Great track by the way!

[Mornats]

Thanks

It definitely slowed me down having so many options and I'm slightly hesitate to get more (not that I need more but they're offering 50% off Heavyocity's instruments at the moment so I probably will). The upshot is that I *know* I have the sound I want somewhere and it's just a matter of finding it now. The Komplete Kontrol interface helps massively with this.

[Bilbo]

I am in. My idea was based on the fact that the image was seven sections of the same event. So my piece is written in 7:4. There are loads of tricks and musical sleight of hand things going on the fool the ear and, just like the image, it is tripping over itself a little. I tried some new recording procedures as well which got me a better overall sound, I think. Still not at the level of Skol et al but it's fun to learn.

[url="https://soundcloud.com/robert-palmer-1/motion-capture"]https://soundcloud.c.../motion-capture[/url]

[Doctor J]

I wasn't sure I was going to make the deadline, but I'm in, just. Another journey through the rock thing, starting with a beautiful sunny day and ending in a wall of fuzz as our protagonist goads them-self into being less conservative and trying new and possibly dangerous things.

https://soundcloud.com/doctor_j_bass/the-first-time-you-jump

[Skol303]

Yeah I'm working late, my head aches, my eyes are pied and...

[url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/279691-february-composition-challenge-voting/"][b][size=5]THE VOTING THREAD IS NOW UP[/size][/b][/url]

Get to it.

[Dad3353]

[color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]For anyone interested, here's my 'Play of the Day' topic for this month's Challenge [/font][/color] [color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif] ...[/font][/color]

[url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/279730-play-of-the-day-basschat-composition-challenge-february/"]Play of the Day, February ...[/url][url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/279730-play-of-the-day-basschat-composition-challenge-february/"][color=#282828] [/color][/url]

Edited February 23, 2016 by Dad3353