wangus - EP41

Transcript

Speaker: and Welcome to Chasing the Beats, a show dedicated to weeklybeats.com artists, their songs and stories from the 2024 season and beyond.

Speaker: I'm your host, SQF. Our guest today is Wangus.

Speaker: All right, welcome Wangus. Thanks for joining. Thanks for having me. Yeah, and thanks for being flexible and moving our recording out a week. And yeah, we're here.

Speaker: Yeah, honestly, better happened to work better for me this week. I forgot that I had the day off yesterday at work, so I was in the office completely empty. Oh, nice. Decided I'll just all'll take today off instead.

Speaker: So just chilling. A little Veterans Day trade. Mm-hmm. Cool, man. So, i you know, was digging into your stuff and I was tipped off to your works by Ilzix and his Wangus dunk tank cover.

Speaker: And when I was making that episode, i was like, oh, yeah, I definitely need to have Wangus on the show. Tell me about your weekly beats experience, like how you got into music.

Speaker: Yeah. ah So I've been doing electronic music stuff for quite a long time now. Just yeah started off fussing around on GarageBand was the the earliest of it.

Speaker: the The first like proper music making was on a this tracker called Sunvox. in it's a It's a tracker, so it's got that sort of interface, but also has this almost like a, this modular synth setup where, you know, it's what captured me with that was like, you could just make these horrible, just meshes of oscillators and filters and whatever. And i just like these infinite little twiddling of stuff going on. So yeah that, that definitely is like the origins of getting into like hardware stuff. Just there's something tactile about like moving those, moving these blocks around, connecting them and,

Speaker: Super cheap modular. Yeah, super cheap modular and just like just inherently no rules, no no restrictions on what you could do. Like, hey, yeah, let's feed this oscillator into i modulating some filter and then that's feeding back into whatever, you know. ah Just like the stuff that I find easier to do with hardware when you can just like take some cables and plug them around.

Speaker: The first piece of hardware I picked up was an MPC 1000. Nice. Haven't used that much ah since the M8 and some later, later pieces of gear, but that like definitely settled me for for a good while as like the centerpiece of my, my setup.

Speaker: The next sort of big step in my music making electronic music making was when I got an OP1. Nice. so that's that's That's definitely saying something I'm going to want to say. I think would' be fun to chat about. was like It's like a it's that ah little surprising that i that I, it's little surprising to me, like how well I can just gel and flow with both the OP1 and the M8, because they're kind of almost like polar opposites, like work workflows and just, you know, the fundamentals, ah fundamental interaction with the device.

Speaker: I also started out with an OP1, so yes, we should definitely chat about that. Yeah. I did get got by TE with their that whole pay your own price for the field.

Speaker: I was like, man, I i was like, i don't need I don't need the field. I have the original one. like If the original one died, i would i yeah, sure, I would get a field. But then they had this discount. like, okay, fine.

Speaker: I'm never going to get one for this price in the future again. Yeah, yeah so the OP1, just a ah scattering of some other bits of hardware. But then...

Speaker: Uh, we get to the M8, which forget exactly how I found it. Probably on, I assume on Instagram. Um, but that caught my attention in like mid to late, uh, 2021, I guess it was.

Speaker: Got that, like got on some pre-order wave and got that in like, in towards the end of that year. was vibing with that. Joined the Discord. And of course, the MA Discord pointed me pointing me to the to the Weekly Beats Discord. The gateway to Weekly Beats. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker: um Yeah, it's like there's there's obviously tons of overlap in those two communities, you know, with the same dude behind both of them. But like, I do like how Weekly Beats does feel like this separate little circle of insane people.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah. It's not, even though it's very much connected to the M8, it's not, you know, so tied on it that it's only m a users. Yeah.

Speaker: And it's also like a very special subset of M8 uses, I feel like. Yes. like Yes. yeah Not everyone's that silly to try to do something like making a whole track every week for the year.

Speaker: And so that was the, you got your M8 right before 2022 when you did your first weekly beats. Yeah, I had it for like a had it for like a month or two. And I think I oh actually i had a headless setup going before that. Gotcha, yeah.

Speaker: So I was, you getting some of the ropes. um But yeah, like weekly beats was Kind of a crazy thing in because prior to that, like I wasn't really finishing music ever. So that, you know, immediately that was like a huge change and just felt like the, the right thing, the right challenge to to take up. Yeah. 2020 had,

Speaker: hopped on the, the January train, you know, doing like something every day for the month, which is ah bit of a different energy, but still like I came out of that being like, wow, I made more music in this month than I had in like the five years prior whatever. whatever Yeah. So like that, that was the, that that's, that was the, you know, the, the, the origin of,

Speaker: The confidence to say like, oh, I can do this every week if I didn't. The confidence to say that and like the realization that like this schedule actually like works really well to yeah to get me to to make things to make stuff.

Speaker: Yeah, it does. It's, you know, what what keeps you motivated during the weekly beats here? I really don't know what I wish I did. I mean, I i kind of asked myself this as well, like.

Speaker: And I'm always curious what other people say, because it's like this weird accountability thing where no one's going to get mad at you for not submitting.

Speaker: Yeah. But it's enough motivation to be like, I'm doing it. Yeah. Like, to some extent, it's... similar to but looking back on weekly beats is similar to like looking back at college years where it's like none of the stuff actually really matters like you just need to pass like you don't need to all these all-nighters and everything that everyone does like you don't need to do that i just need to submit yeah you just need to submit of course i'm gonna go to jail if i don't if i don't submit this paper on time yeah it's

Speaker: I've thought about it and I just don't, I don't have a good answer for why stuff like that motivates me, but yeah, it's, there's, there's a point, there's some points after college where I look back and i'm like, wow, I was like doing a whole lot more, doing a whole lot more than like, you know, staying up to, to whatever stupid hour working on like problem sets or projects or whatever. And yeah,

Speaker: and It was fun hat finding that weekly beats could get me that same sort of drive, except for this like creative hundred percent, just doing, making stuff that I like listening to.

Speaker: Yeah. You know, grinding at some. And then when you look back, you're like, I'm, I made all this stuff. Yeah. And that was kind of my motivation. Like, you know, halfway through the year when you're like,

Speaker: All right, this is this is kind of becoming a little bit of a drag to continue doing this. But then you're like, but look at all the stuff that I made already. And if I keep doing this, I'm going to have double the amount.

Speaker: Mm-hmm. I think so one of the things I did and I can't remember, i can't remember anymore, whether this is like an idea I had from the start of saying something that i formed after like 10 weeks or so in, but I ended up splitting the year into like five chunks of about 10 or 11 weeks.

Speaker: yeah So most, most of them having some, some common tying together theme to them.

Speaker: So like, and I came out of the air with like these five albums that all had some, some cohesiveness to them. So like the first 10 weeks was all the M8.

Speaker: Um, second 10 weeks was all the OP p one. The middle 10 were kind of a hodgepodge of stuff, but, ah being predictably not just one piece of gear. So I guess that's like the, the underlying thing is this is just the mishmash of everything. Yeah.

Speaker: Mainly M8, but like pulled in a lot of other stuff. So the that's the segment that Dunk Tank and Clown Car Trolley Problem were from. Okay. the fourth set was all LSDJ.

Speaker: And the fifth set was... Also a mishmash, but i had picked up an analog heat, so that was sort of the you know, not like, it's not the centerpiece like, you know, the Animate or OP1 or Game Boy can be, but it's like definitely directed like the the tone and the kind of, the just the energy of other the tracks in that last segment of the year.

Speaker: Do you have a favorite chunk? I think it's, So I think the

Speaker: the middle chunk, I probably have to say, is is my favorite. Just the way that, like, the the the more focused first and second chunks with the just M8 and just OP1, like, those honed in, like, just how to approach each week and how to just get in the chops of...

Speaker: ah building up stuff quickly from, from, you know, whatever nebulous ideas are floating around and the fundamentals of operating on a weekly creativity basis. Yeah.

Speaker: You know, I had that, had those fundamentals and I could bring in, start to bring in like these more experimental bits. Like here's this piece of gear that I've had for a bit and haven't really, you know, have not been using to the depth of like the OP1 or the M8. Yeah.

Speaker: And like, you know, things that I couldn't, I wouldn't feel as inclined to like dedicate 10 weeks to them or something, but instead like, yeah, the 10 weeks can be spotlighting different things.

Speaker: I think it was, I was very satisfied with like, ah With all five chunks, I was satisfied with how cohesive I felt each was. Like the the album I made out of each chunk, I did reorder the tracks, just whatever order flowed better versus the chronological.

Speaker: And I was like very satisfied with like how cohesive the stuff felt. And that's especially notable for like the third and fifth weeks where like pulling in a bunch of different pieces of hardware and like, you know, the...

Speaker: three of the tracks in the middle chunk were highlighting the, uh, make noise zero coast. Yeah. It was very satisfying. Like how that just kind of seamlessly gelled with like M8 FM gnarliness and like analog for, grit and yeah, just, and, you know, by like 20 weeks or so, you're like a little bit,

Speaker: you care a little bit less about what other people might think about what you're putting out. You're like you a little bit like freer to just do what comes at you. Yeah. Like I'm of course, like am, of course I am thinking about like what other people think of the music I'm putting out. it's like, but not as much as like week one. want to see that comment counter yeah tally up.

Speaker: I forget who it was that shared like, some like ah some meme that was, um, it was like my parents and grandparents is like, my parents are grandparents at 25 or whatever. Yeah.

Speaker: Honey, let's go have a, like buy a house and have, have five children or whatever. it was like me at 25, honey, my weekly beats got 14 comments. so ah so photo shop on it It was just like, that's very, so accurate.

Speaker: I love a a niche weekly beat M8 meme. It's, it's great. what I saying? What was saying before that? Do you still care about?

Speaker: Yeah. So people, yeah, I still care about what people are doing, but I feel more so i am just like making music that I like listening to. Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah. I do listen to my, the, the five 2022 weekly beats albums. I like, keep, I keep, what i keep wanting to, and just haven't found the time or energy to yet, uh, revisit the, the few, um, 2024 ones and make, you know, maybe at least at least like an EP out of it.

Speaker: If for no other reason, then just like have it nicely alongside the other ones on my, on the music app. on Um, but yeah, I think. Uh, uh, what are some of the fundamentals that you learned in those like first two blocks that you like carry forward till now?

Speaker: I think like the, the two highlight things are sort of like two sides, like complimentary, skills, which are one getting better at turning like vague ideas into concrete stuff, you know, sequences, patterns, patches, whatever that gets better, but complimentary you are also getting better at deciding that something is finished.

Speaker: So it's like you're, you are getting better. Like that's a harder to measure skill, but like it's, that's a skill like, like being able to call when something is done. So you can, you can twi tweak and twiddle something forever, but oh yeah you know, you gotta decide something's done, but at the same time, you're also getting better at getting it to that point faster.

Speaker: So yeah, complimentary, but they hit the same goal of like, yeah, letting you, letting you make a track every week. Yeah. And what is your process like of, you know, how a song comes together?

Speaker: It's definitely super case by case. So definitely saying we should chat. We should talk about once we get into the the tracks themselves, but I don't think there's really much of a, much of a pattern I could identify. Yeah.

Speaker: But like some people are like, oh, i have i have a vision of the song that I'm trying to make. Whereas i I'm just like, oh, let me make a drum beat that sounds kind of good. And then, oh, I kind of like this bass line or I like this bass sound or...

Speaker: You know, I'll do some sound design and find a sound that sort of interests me. And maybe that's a lead or maybe that's a baseline. or And then I just keep like adding layers and maybe deleting stuff, adding stuff until I'm like, okay, this seems like it could be a part. And then this ah other experiment could match up with it if I maybe change a couple things.

Speaker: Yeah. I think that, the best I could reduce it down is sort of like two core pieces in the workflow. Like one is just

Speaker: having at it with sound design and, you know, like designing interesting, interesting bass patch or interesting percussion or whatever, like taking some little thread that comes to mind and putting that into designing some, some patches or whatever.

Speaker: Something I, Almost everything in and my weekly meat stuff is synthesized. um like I don't have a you know bank of go-to samples. just this got That's just how I work. i don't know.

Speaker: Aside from like the built-in sample kits in the OP1 instance. But... So there's definitely the early element of just like digging into sound design, starting to lay down patterns there, like to get a feel for, for some grooves. But the other core thing is putting that aside for a moment and stepping over to a keyboard.

Speaker: Yeah. Like I can't play piano, but I can use the piano as a tool for like, yeah, it like the piano keyboard is how I think about harmonies and, that sort of compositional aspect.

Speaker: Yeah. And it yeah it's for me like a different way of generating a melody than just like typing on the m a Yeah. Yeah. So like ah through school, I was along so alongside, alongside electrical engineering and my, my major, uh, and stuff. I was also doing a lot of music composition, music theory sort of stuff.

Speaker: And,

Speaker: Most of that was like classical Western tonal music stuff that the kind of stuff that like a lot of modern musicians might look back on and be like, this is whack. There's like all these stupid rules about like how different voices interact and how,

Speaker: how you know you're not allowed to have these voices do this parallel motion, whatever, and all these different things. That's kind of we learn about when analyzing the theory of it, but the way that's like settled in my head is just like, no, this is these aren't like rules. These are just like observations, really, on like what tends to sound good. so like When I'm writing stuff, the classical Western tonal music theory is constantly spinning, but...

Speaker: I find it like really interesting to see where that leads to stuff that doesn't sound like your Baroque Renaissance sort of music, whatever. yeah just a different direction.

Speaker: Yeah. i I do use an actual music pad with paper. Okay, a physical notebook. So I do tend to I notate... Physically notate the the stuff that I'm doodling on the on the keyboard.

Speaker: okay. Before that eventually yeah translates into m eight patterns or whatever. Again, it's just like habit to me and part of just the... Part of the like tactile level to the whole thing is just writing writing the stuff out. and It's another thing that just helps me...

Speaker: it's like a visual compliment to like the, you know, the more abstract, like audio side figuring out like harmonies and melodies and whatever. Yeah. Cause there, there's a lot of non melodic elements to your music.

Speaker: Yeah. The, I say that's like probably the biggest, uh, the biggest influence from like the, all the music study that I did, which is when I'm writing harmonies, I am most often thinking of it as like, you know, every, if every chord has four notes in it, I'm thinking of about though that as like four distinct voices because that's ah how you'd compose for like a, you know, a choir of,

Speaker: soprano, alto, tenor, bass, whatever, or like a string quartet or stuff like that. Like, I'm not, ah I'm not instrumenting like that, but I'm applying those same like composition principles to the stuff I'm doing. And like, it ends up giving like a really,

Speaker: ah gives like harmonies a distinct interest and a distinct motion to them. I feel like,

Speaker: that to my ear, you don't get as much with just, you know, blocking out chords, picking out like, i you know, just a progression of chords and just doing the basic ah voicings of those chords.

Speaker: You got some continuity through them, some, ah some distinct motion, but you also get some

Speaker: some influence into, okay like what might, ah you know, at an actual distinct single melody on top of this look like. Yeah. Those, those voices that make up the harmonies can sort of give hints at like, what, what could a melody do on top of that?

Speaker: Does that lead you to kind of take a chord and maybe split out some of the notes to different sounds? Sometimes, yeah, that might be, that's something I could do some, uh, in some cases. So like the easiest example of that, um, that is going to happen and almost everything is but the base note, like the base note in how I'm thinking about it is part of the cord, but you know, it's a base patch versus the core. Yeah. and Some got it, some pad or whatever. Yeah. It's like, Oh, go ahead.

Speaker: Um, I can't remember the exact term, but there's there's a term I learned ah in when I was learning about this theory stuff, that's something like ah eye music or something like eye, like visual music. as Visual.

Speaker: Stuff that like you wouldn't notice just listening to it. The stuff that you would notice just like looking at it on a page, noted. To see like, oh wait, these two, this this note and this chord and this note in the bass are like doing this complimentary thing. Stuff you'd never pick up pick up on, but just these little like Easter eggs in the music. And I feel like that's the kind That's something that definitely resonates with me. And so like, ah there's a lot of how I approach harmony and melody and stuff that is a bit puzzle-like in nature of like, how can I make this work?

Speaker: You know, how can I solve getting it from like this chord to this other chord? okay As if there is like an objective solution, which obviously there isn't, but yeah.

Speaker: But you kind of have a vision of like, I want to move from this chord to this chord. How can I get there in an interesting way? Yeah, yeah, there's definitely, ah you know, this happens on like a micro level, just tons of times through the the creative process.

Speaker: So it can happen in a micro level or can happen at a macro level where I'll, uh, maybe in some week I have two different grooves that I've been toying with that are kind of unrelated. And now challenge the creative challenges. Like how can i transition one into the other or, and back or whatever? Yeah.

Speaker: And I imagine that comes into play when you are, you know, trying to add like a B section or a bridge or. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There, there's definitely gonna be some examples I could point out in the,

Speaker: The tracks you're going to listen to. but yeah so yeah I'm also curious always of what people do when you get stuck or when you are like, I need a different section here.

Speaker: What do you do to get out of that?

Speaker: Again, it's super case by case, but I think the... ah Something and that's come up a number of times in some of the tracks that we'll listen to is ah like the like the deepest, i when I'm the most stuck ah in a weekly beats thing, other than just like ending the track and calling it finished there.

Speaker: So yeah, that's something that happens. the most stuck points I've dug back into like, you know, my huge backlog of like sketches and unfinished stuff and see like, what could I like, what can I pull back here? And yeah repurpose for, for this one. So clown car, clown car trolley problem was one of those of like this, this jam I'd done, i don't know how many years prior and then always felt like i wanted to do something more with it. And then,

Speaker: It definitely wasn't like the initial intent, but some point in creating that track, I realized, oh shit, this is the, this is the one to to bring that back. Nice. So yeah. And the other dilemma that I'm always faced with is like how to keep things fresh, how to move in a different direction and not make the same things over and over again. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker: I think that the, know, the five chunk, approach that i that I set out with the with the year, that definitely helped because it was like however much and kind of a rut i was I felt like I was in, you know, it's up to 10 weeks before something breaks that automatically. Yeah.

Speaker: You know, realistically, I'll get through at least like five weeks out of one of those chunks before I start to before i start to to falter some. and then it's like, yeah, I can get through. I can power through five weeks before getting to switch it up.

Speaker: So to keep things fresh, you kind of put these, I don't know that I would call these chunks like limitations. I guess they are kind of limiting in some sort of ways, but like some guidelines.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah. I think that definitely approaching with some guidelines from the start, like before you start writing stuff, definitely helps me and I think is just a generally useful practice when you're, you know,

Speaker: trying to figure struggling with like creative inspirations. It reminds me of, ah it reminds me of, um, something i actually did do towards the end of each one of these chunks, um, which is by like the sixth or seventh, eighth, whatever week in one of those chunks, I would look back at the, the previous ones for that chunk and be like, and plot out like what different tempos and what different keys had I, had I covered and that, that would help.

Speaker: I would use that and be like, you know, i haven't covered yeah around 110 BPM and like b flat minor or something like that. And that would, that would help me initiate yeah and one of the later weeks.

Speaker: That's actually a really good and simple idea to just look back at the last five weeks and be like, okay, I can't do any of these tempos and I can't do any of these keys.

Speaker: Yeah, like, there's no reason for it. There's absolutely no reason. It's like objectively, you can make slang more cohesive by not doing that. But yeah, I don't know just arbitrary rules are what makes it fun. Yeah.

Speaker: Well, and you know it's funny to hear you talk about that and still talk about are still consider these blocks being cohesive albums, but you know changing it up enough where they still work together, but you're keeping it fresh. Yeah. like I was not writing these albums.

Speaker: intending to be like a cohesive album. like The only thing tying them together week by week was like the devices I was using or you know those those sorts of high-level. I was not writing albums. I just wrote a bunch of tracks and you know just the forced continuity of like doing it every single week happened to make stuff that could reasonably, yeah at least with some rearrangement, kind of flow as one listen.

Speaker: Got it. So you didn't set out to say like, all right, these... you know, 10 or 11 weeks are going to be an album. I mean, not any more than, you know, just saying that and like, just saying like, yeah Hey, I'm going to have 10 tracks.

Speaker: Might as well be an album by the end of it. Yeah. That was, that was the, that was the, the end of the, the the extent of the, uh, intent of album, albumifying them.

Speaker: And 2024, you you only released, what was it? Eight or 10, something. Yeah. Are you planning on doing 2026?

Speaker: For sure. Nice. Definitely doing 2026. I think that 2024, just like for whatever reason, from the start, it was just not quite the vibe. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker: I think that for 2026, I'm going to have lay out for myself some some nice chunks to beforehand to like actually like give me so give me a launch point into stuff.

Speaker: yeah I feel like 2024, week one was already... Week one, I had already resorted to digging up some old stuff in the graveyard. was like already not a great start.

Speaker: So yeah you felt like you started off on like, you know shaky ground by digging in the boneyard so early. Yeah. I mean, like, not necessarily because of that, but, you know, is I was starting off on shaky ground. And as a result, I dug into the boneyard and, you know, I don't know what factors it was exactly that like led into that. But, you know, I'm feeling 2026.

Speaker: get on it yeah i mean it's uh i'm excited for 2026 but you know there's also like uh it feels like my life has been getting busier on the way to 2026 um so i do like your chunking idea though of like giving yourself some like motivational periods of like, okay, I just got to make it this 10 weeks.

Speaker: Yeah. And then maybe I'll do something else to like switch it up, keep it interesting. And like the, another general thought I had in my head for 2022 was like, right, I got these chunks, uh,

Speaker: I kind of had in my head like, yeah, my goal is five chunks of 10, at least two bonus weeks. And, you know, I had in my head like, yeah, sure. If I need to, I can take a break during one, like between two of these chunks.

Speaker: Yeah. Didn't end up doing that, of course, but. Gotta get that streak. Chunking it, chunking it. Yeah. Chunking it beforehand though is like, gives you better opportunities to to do that. You're like, you'll feel less bad about skipping a week after you've done, after you've like finished chunk.

Speaker: For sure. For sure. ah What other advice would you give someone that's never done weekly beats?

Speaker: Don't try to make a video every week. ah there There were a few of that. There were scarce few of us who did that in, uh, in 2022 and all of us were just a little insane for it.

Speaker: Yeah. That's a lot. Yeah. Don't, don't do that. That's, that's one suggestion for sanity and sleep. Yeah. I think, yeah, i I think that my biggest advice comes comes back to like the same idea as separate into chunks. Like you got to put some, you got to fence yourself in a little bit every week.

Speaker: Like you can't just sit yourself down in front of all your gear or all your plugins or whatever and yeah just hit go. Like, you know, you got to either put some constraint around yourself to start or start with like a really narrow idea and just kind of see where that forks into.

Speaker: Cause like otherwise starting out so broad, it's sort of like, where do I begin? But the limitations kind of give you a place to start.

Speaker: Yeah. Like, don't know for me, it's only fun with the limitations. Like, i the the best pieces of the best pieces of gear. And, you know, you could make the same comment about like software stuff. The best pieces of gear are like the things that someone has clearly thought a lot into and made this just like curated list of restrictions of like what this synthesizer does or whatever and what it can't do.

Speaker: Exactly. Yeah. Like, you know, i I'm less interested by, you know, some analog polysynth that has like three oscillators and then, you know, those square sawtooth, whatever, and three filters on each one and three envelopes is like, that's less interesting to me than something like the zero coast, which is just like, Hey, here's like this one really wacky thing feeding another yeah weird wacky thing that you don't know how to deal with. And, uh,

Speaker: but have fun. Yeah. OP1 prime example of that. Of like, Hey, here's this, here's like ah cow and four knobs. but yeah What do you want?

Speaker: Yeah, definitely. in Limitations. Limitations, but like curated limitations. Yes. Like you said, thought out, well thought out and intentional limitations.

Speaker: I guess I should say though, like it's also fun. The not curated limitations, like all the stuff that making music on a game boy makes you do. It's like, yeah.

Speaker: Taking some very not curated limitations and bending them to do stuff. They weren't just to do stuff that is in spirit beyond those limitations. Mm-hmm.

Speaker: So I think those are the... Worse you to think outside the box. Yeah. So like, I think, yeah, my my top advice for Weekly Beats would just be set limitations, but that's a very broad comment.

Speaker: That's definitely choose-your-own-adventure. Yeah. Choose-your-own-adventure, but do choose an adventure. you know? Yeah. You can't just sit down and expect something to happen. no you're right.

Speaker: Because... And maybe... I've had these limitations, but didn't realize how helpful they were, you know, cause, uh, I started out with a sinstrom deluge, but then quickly moved to an M eight. Once I got one, is it deluge the one with the the grid of the, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which I loved it, but i didn't realize how much I, how much more I would love them. Uh, uh,

Speaker: so It kind of fell to the wayside and then, i mean, they keep adding all these great features to it now that the software is open source. But then every time I go back to it, I'm like, oh, how do I use this again?

Speaker: But it is an amazing device, but there's just something nice about the M8 that maybe these limitations helped me.

Speaker: you know I wasn't great at sound design when I first started using the M8, so had to use some pre-made patches, and maybe these limitations were part of the formula that helped me create every week.

Speaker: Yeah. I think there's also just, there's going to be a lot of ah stuff that you can carry over between tools between. oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like,

Speaker: I've had a Game Boy and LSDJ for a good while before the m a and it just never clicked. But then started using the M8. Then I went back to the Game Boy. I'm like, okay, cool. i know I know this UI. I can like dive straight in just into the gritty sound design stuff on the that makes the it's interesting Game Boy fascinating to me.

Speaker: That is fascinating that you learned how to use LSDJ from the M8, essentially. Yeah, basically.

Speaker: So then I could get yeah straight to the stuff that makes LSDJ unique. Right. Like M8's Wave Synth, it overlaps with like the stuff you could do on the Game Boy Wave channel, but like there's no there's no substitute.

Speaker: Yeah, and i don't think we're listening to one today, an LSDJ song from you, but I would encourage everyone to check out your LSDJ era on ah Weekly Beats 2022, because you've got some... Like, I don't know how to use LSDJ, and I've heard lots of chiptune songs, and you do some crazy stuff.

Speaker: Yeah, like, I think one of the biggest... One of the biggest draws for me on.

Speaker: To like a piece of a piece of gear or whatever is when I see like what other people are doing and you know, the the more vain side of me would would put it like I can do better than that. But you know, the more reasonable side is like I can do something different. I can do something that people haven't heard from this.

Speaker: Yeah. yeah make it I wouldn't say that about LSD Day, but like certainly some of the synths I have, I i got thinking, like I see what people are doing on on YouTube, but like you know what these synth fluencers are doing, but I can do better.

Speaker: I mean... you We should probably start listening to some of the music yeah because yeah your sound design chops are crazy.

Speaker: ah So let's dive right in and start out with 2024 week one sausage catastrophe. All right. Here we go.

Speaker: a

Speaker: right, that was Sausage Catastrophe. Tell me about this one. I love it. This was i this was getting some of the music-making rust off from 2023. don't think I made any music in 2023, which is kind of reasonable. That's why Weekly Beats happens every other year. but Yeah, yeah.

Speaker: Definitely was feeling a little rusty. But knew like, yeah, the M8 was going to be the way to break out of that just because M8's like, in a lot of ways, the fastest way for me to make music.

Speaker: Yeah. This one definitely started with the ah with the bass line.

Speaker: It's some FM synth stuff.

Speaker: I'm just poking into it to remind myself what this might have looked like. Yeah, so it's like, oh wait, no, was about to say this is like a pretty simple FM patch, but it's not. There's a lot going on here.

Speaker: Yeah, I feel I've gotten I've seen, you know, the vibes from people that like the FM engine is like one of the hardest to to work around on the M8.

Speaker: And that's probably true because like FM synth FM synthesis is just like you know, Yamaha back in the 80s with like the DX7 or whatever. They just decided that, hey, this method of synthesis is going to be obtuse.

Speaker: but Yeah, yeah. It's not a great reason that it has to be. And I think like

Speaker: Some of the stuff ah Electron has done, for instance, has been like really defying that and like, Hey, here's a full FM synth and like eight parameters instead of like a hundred. With, with some guardrails, you know? Yeah, exactly.

Speaker: But you know, the M8's FM engine is going more towards towards theha the Yamaha side of things, which is no guardrails. You got to do everything yourself. And yeah. It's a lot to dive into. ah At first, um I had been coming into it with ah coming into the M8 FM engine with some experience from the Yamaha TX81Z, which is in a lot of ways very similar to the M8's engine. It's a four operator FM synth.

Speaker: So, you know, same as M8, you have four of these oscillators to deal with. I think the... there's obviously navigating FM synth is just a lot of experience and learning generally like the vibe of like how this parameter, how this sort of modulation affects the sound, you know, right.

Speaker: Qualitatively. But I think the, an easy thing to skip past when you're trying to first dive into it is, you're given these four oscillators or four or more oscillators and whatever envelopes and and stuff.

Speaker: You don't have to use them all at once. And like, yeah, that's tough because the default by default, the, you know, the, yeah the default patch has them all enabled and all modulating each other. And that's like incomprehensible. It's like, what you have to do is start from, start from one and build up from that. And it's a little, know,

Speaker: maybe unintuitive at first because you kind of work backwards. Like the first one you start with is the last in the chain of, you know, all your modulations and whatever. got it. But like,

Speaker: like So is that kind of how you learned? Because what you're saying is like, I'm connecting the sound that I'm trying to get to with the parameters that I'm tweaking.

Speaker: And also true, when you've when you're starting out with four of these that are all sort of like compounding on each other, it's hard to understand like, what the parameter on carrier three is changing versus carrier two.

Speaker: yeah you're saying take it down to like two oscillators. Yeah, obviously, you know, one oscillator is just an oscillator. Like you yeah yeah probably know how that works already, but yeah, drill it down to just two.

Speaker: Something the that Yamaha synth has ah that kind of wish the M8 had is couple button clicks away, you can mute or unmute any of the oscillators, which is super important. Like, you know, if you're...

Speaker: trying to figure out you know you've you've lost your way, and or either like picking up a patch that you found from somewhere, or you've been doing a bunch of tweaking and just suddenly found yourself like, I don't know where I am anymore.

Speaker: yeah Just mute some of the oscillators. Figure out like one by one what each one is contributing to the sound. like That's huge. It's a little annoying on M8, because the only way to do that is to bring the the level of the oscillator down.

Speaker: And then you have to remember remember what you had it at before. right Or I don't know, go by ear and just wing it. But yeah, like you have to reduce it down to two operators. Cause like once with enough experience, you can realize that like, yeah, these kind of do at just, they're kind of, they are kind of additive, even though like this, they have a compounding effect. You can get an intuition for like what each one does on its own.

Speaker: Yeah, totally. And I mean, I'm still blownner blown away by IPA Ghost FM design stuff. I don't know if you've listened to that episode yet.

Speaker: feel like I started it, but I don't think I finished it. So but but she's on it's on my list. Yeah. Yeah. She's making, you know, dove sounds and water splashing and trying to emulate all these real life sounds with fm which is just insane.

Speaker: Yeah. before Before seeing like the, the chat, the chatter about it in the discord, like I didn't realize that he stuff was like, oh, yeah, that's crazy. yeah I do. So i definitely do need to listen to that app.

Speaker: ah But i I have been trying to learn more FM stuff on the M8 and definitely taking ah removing multiple oscillators yeah helps.

Speaker: Like you can do a ton with just two oscillators, especially on the M8 where you don't just have, you're not limited to like the traditional Yamaha FM style of like, yeah, okay. You have these oscillators and you have an envelope on their levels.

Speaker: Like the M8, you can do crazy stuff with their, with their pitch or ratio or crazy stuff with the table and throw on a traditional low pass or high pass filter or saturation onto it or whatever. like Or do a wavetable as one of the oscillators.

Speaker: Yeah, like, oh, wow. I actually have not used the M8 since that was added. Oh, no way! That's a bit crazy to me. Like, I need to actually just see what that looks like on here.

Speaker: I also like just going into the... That's unreal. Going into FM and hitting random and just randomizing everything and seeing what happens. I need to use the random function more.

Speaker: I get a lot of ah like diesel trucks idling noises. It's really not a good engine to to randomize.

Speaker: But you sometimes you stumble on some like interesting things, you know? Mm-hmm. But yeah, is I just scrolled through and saw the list. the Horrifying to me at a glance list of the w number number options. I'm like, oh my God, this is too much.

Speaker: oh But yeah, sausage back to Sausage Catastrophe. I love like even a lot of the melodic elements like the bass line is kind of a rhythm in itself. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Speaker: And I feel like you do that a lot. Yeah, like, I think that ah that's especially true with ah with the bass.

Speaker: Part of that is definitely and influenced by the the little nugget of not classical Western tonal music stuff that I studied. I took like one class on jazz harmony and in jazz, like.

Speaker: drums and bass are just considered the rhythm the rhythm section. Yeah. yeah So like they are super tied together and like you could, you could think of it from the other direction from like the electronic music or in just the music production side of like,

Speaker: You know, your drums, obviously rhythm stuff, but they fill a lot of the same, know, your bass drum is the same frequency range as your baseline. So like, you have to think about how those two are interacting. You have to think of them as think of them as unit.

Speaker: Yeah. Therefore you're thinking of the baseline as being the rhythm as well. Yeah, for sure. I think, uh,

Speaker: yeah, there's some, Just glancing at the the sequence here. and I think a big part of what makes this, what gives us like the rhythmic ah effect to it, like the the effectiveness is something that you can easily overlook, which is not just you know, thinking of the the dimensions of a note, you have obviously the pitch, you have the volume, you have the instrument, but one that's like, that can be overlooked is the duration. So there's like, there's a very syncopated baseline.

Speaker: like it's not syncopated because like the notes are all on the 16th notes, but like some notes are very short, like very short punchy. Some are held out more. Some are like held just, just short of the next note. And that means like that gives the next note a little more punch, even though, even if the next note isn't, you know, louder or anything. So like almost every line in this has a kill command on it with a different number.

Speaker: And it's like, yeah, it's very easy to overlook that and very easy to just to like dial in, you know, an envelope on your, on your synth patch that sets everything to the same length.

Speaker: But, uh, even just like cutting one note short can just completely change a groove. Yeah. And when you're building a groove, are you just playing around with those durations to get it to feel like that?

Speaker: I think so. Like with the part of the flow, I guess. Yeah. With enough experience, you get to the point where like, you're not consciously thinking about all those things. And yeah the same sort of goes with sound design side of side of things. Like and with enough experience, you're not just thinking about like, okay, I'm looking at this parameter, this knob and yeah seeing how that affects the sound. Like you start being able to just intuitively go at it multidimensionally.

Speaker: like But at some point, consciously, you're like, i'm going to put kill commands on every one of these. Yeah. At some point, you're like, wait, that sounds pretty good on that step. What if I just add it to all the other steps?

Speaker: And one thing that I also wanted to talk about with you is, since you mentioned the visual aspect of like looking at notes, I find the M8 very visual device.

Speaker: you know like You're working on a project and you start to see these like blocks of numbers and letters. And I have to force myself to like close my eyes and listen to a song when I think it's like getting done because you start to anticipate when it's going to go to like the next row. and like Interesting.

Speaker: listening to it without seeing the sequence run is like a different experience to me yeah I don't think i don't think that's something I thought about that's that's different than looking at like a doll run through a bunch of waves you know yeah yeah like yeah I think that i can definitely vibe with that it's like

Speaker: I can see something happening. I can see it happening that, you know, you're watching what's happening on the screen and that can make you overlook something like you're looking at what's on the screen and missing like, Hey, there's a hole here that you could probably hear if you were just listening to the pattern, but you're not seeing cause you're watching like the cursor go through. It's like, I'm anticipating the, the road change, but the music making me anticipate, you know?

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, I always like to talk about, since you mentioned the visual thing and you're an M8 guy, wanted to ask you that. It's definitely super visual. And like, I'm like, it's the kind of thing where I don't really want to look at other people's M8 projects, nor have them look at mine, because I'm sure everyone has their own completely polarized, like practice of like, all the kill commands go in this column and all the delays go in this one. And, you know, like the whole, i don't know if you've,

Speaker: heard any i don't know if you've seen any discussions of like well what is your empty pattern what number is your empty pattern on the m8 my empty pattern is what is my empty pattern i think it's just ff oh i hate that no i can't i could i could never i could never do that ah It's, there's so many things that are just like second nature to me that like, I just don't even think about them anymore. yeah yeah If you ask me like what key commands to do to get to somewhere, I'm like, I don't know. Just like, yes you know, but yeah no I could never do FF for empty.

Speaker: do you Do four? i always mix this up four phrases or eight phrases. Yeah. uh mostly eight

Speaker: yeah most of the time eight uh i was a four guy and then i recently switched to eight and it's i like it i like it it's like not more effort and now you can just like you can add little you can add more no and your variations it's not more effort and i don't know why i started with four it's just habit yeah Let's keep it rolling and listen to 2024 week two.

Speaker: ah Let me get the name of this song right. Dreaming that I'm falling only to find that I am falling. My girlfriend rolled onto to my side of the bed and pushed me out of the bed. and Push me out the push me out of the way. Push me out way. No, it's just a W. ah push me out of the hidden word. There is a window.

Speaker: Okay, nice, nice i was I was reading from the the song, the file name. It's too All right, here we go.

Speaker: ah here we go

Speaker: oop

Speaker: to

Speaker: to

Speaker: so are

Speaker: um

Speaker: um

Speaker: are um but Bye.

Speaker: um um

Speaker: to are

Speaker: That was dreaming something. Dreaming that I'm falling only to find that I'm falling. My girlfriend rolled over to my side of the bed and kicked me out of that.

Speaker: Dreaming that I'm falling. Dreaming that I'm falling, et cetera. Yeah. i the The short title. Yeah. This one. It just, it just came together for me. Like I really liked the whole trajectory of this.

Speaker: this kind of, for me, three pieces, three parts of it. And there's the intro section, just this, uh, but this Austin, don't know this just like steady pulsing chord rhythm and like a heartbeat with like a clock. Yeah. It's like the heartbeat was like, so this, the origin of this track was like that sort of heartbeat and,

Speaker: ah rim shot, I guess you'd call it sound, which is just like something like in the shower something. I was just like beatboxing this to myself. And like just that that groove is in my head of like this weird pulsing kind of soft kick drum.

Speaker: And then you know once i once I made that, I amplified it into like that heartbeat yeah kind of thing. That and this sort of hollow, blocky rim shot kind of sound.

Speaker: Just this like steady, ah nonstop pulse. So like that was laid down and then I think the, you know, for this intro of the track, was sort of contrasting this like steady pulse is this like still pulsing, but like more kind of washing over chords and, um, some stuff that I generally find more difficult on the AM8, which is like longer term, like swells and mo modulation of filters and whatnot, like,

Speaker: It's harder on the M8 than like, you know, just turning a knob as a track is playing. Right. Yeah. I was yeah definitely satisfied with how I was able to land that here with just this like these long swells and washes of of these cords.

Speaker: And then everything explodes. That's that. There's that's this is when you fell out of the bed. That's when I fell out of the window or out of the window. Yeah. The like.

Speaker: The moment right before that drop, I just really like the the way that happened was I forget it was the kick drum or the or the rim shot where if I just accidentally discovered that if I didn't cut that note early early enough, one of the LFOs just like came back and kept cycling and giving like a weird yes after the note that I didn't mean for.

Speaker: But that's just like, that's this ah these like last two kind of leaking over hits before everything explodes.

Speaker: So, you know, important part of the creative process is accidents. So like, yes, you notice something like that and it's like, oh I can use that. Everything drops and i don't know, my idea was just like, let's just make it loud and just.

Speaker: Brash and stressful, like there's like a weird siren kind of tone under like layered in that alongside just like the big bright, loud bass hit with a bunch of reverb and whatever. Just like that impact us was like the whole idea of that section.

Speaker: Then some like particularly rhythmic bass trail off of that. But you know the main idea was that that impact.

Speaker: Then that sort of

Speaker: calms down some and the last part of the track and in my in my head is like just this melody that comes out of nowhere in the end of it. And the like, aside from just how unexpected it is from like just the general ambience of this track, and I think a thing that sets it out, it sets it apart is specifically playing around with the the scale tuning table on the m eight My thinking, so like, i just hand tuned like every step of the scale that that melody was playing in to not normal equal temperament tuning.

Speaker: Got Because you can do that. There's no rules. Like when i when i was doing that, I was thinking back to, i think it was an Adam Neely video um that I'd watched at some point.

Speaker: Really good channel if you haven't you haven't seen for just nitty gritty music theory stuff. Check it out. But i forget what the video was, but he made a point of as he was like analyzing the the main focus of the video, talking about how like, you know, you get all this sort of expression in melody and harmony and dynamics. Like you see it all the time. Like using using those aspects to ah

Speaker: express a certain emotion or and or vibe or whatever, but you see much less often ah using intonation. Like, a lot of time you're just, you know changing...

Speaker: Like there's more dimensions to what you can play than just like what note are you playing and how loud are you playing it? Like, is this note like being pushed a little sharp or a little flat or stuff will like, yeah, it's not the default on plenty instruments. Like you can't do anything like that on a piano.

Speaker: Right. But. But a violin, yes. Violin, you can do that. In this case, like i had the melody mostly sketched out and then was just listening to it and just like tweaking each note one at a time, just figuring out like what sounded the way I wanted to, wanted to, i don't know. Like, i think the best case of this is like the final note of the melody that like lands on it's landing on a note that ah kind of implies like a much less dark tone than like the overall vibe of the track.

Speaker: except it's like still over this kind of subdued, but still like there and kind of aggressive base pattern.

Speaker: And it's like weirdly out of tune. So it's just like this broken, like light in the, in the overall atmosphere of this thing. So it's like, it's, it's just like barely hanging on like it's hidden. No, but not really. And yeah, it's just,

Speaker: I don't know. It just it hits. Very cool. and this And you said this is one of your favorites from 2024? Yeah. yeah And like what about it makes it like your top song?

Speaker: I think it's... I think in this case, it is all about just the trajectory that it hits. Like how it goes through all how goes through all these different modes throughout. And somehow you can still hang on along the course of it, even though it's going everywhere and just like trying to throw you out the window in the middle it.

Speaker: trying to throw you out the window in the middle of it

Speaker: I think that it's that and it's in the general ambience, the general ah just aesthetic of it. Like, i don't know, theres there's some, there's some sort of like imagery that it's, that it's, it brings up to me like this, ah you know, dreamlike something dark, but like I'm picturing sort of like a an empty city at night or something like it's dark, but there's lots of lights, but there's not, there's like not life behind it. You know, it's yeah something, something mysterious, something foreboding.

Speaker: ah yeah, just a lot of little details that liminal space. Yeah. yeah Yeah. Yeah. One little detail that was happy about that.

Speaker: I don't think you can really hear, but I think it definitely does add to this ambience is, um, I discovered that like if you just slowly modulate the reverb size on that mate, if you like ping pong modulate it slowly, you get this weird, like drift it sounds like a pitch drifting up and down. like There's something like unsettling about that. It's like an unnatural state.

Speaker: That's cool. I'm going to have to try that. Yeah, it's like because like, yeah, you have a reverb. Reverb tends to give like kind of a space to the sound you're doing. But like what if that whole space is just like warping underneath everything? Like, yeah.

Speaker: So it it just all comes together into this like. Very cool. Yeah, very effective. Peace. don't know. Awesome. Thanks for.

Speaker: diving into all the intricacies of that that i need to go back and listen to it after hearing all these intricacies so uh yeah everyone rewind and listen to it again ah we're gonna keep it moving uh 2024 week four banana in ah Which I saw, I was reading the comments and you clarified that you were like, this means, it means to me like bananas are in, like they're popular or yeah ah other people in the comments had some different interpretations, but these dirty, dirty bastards. All right, here we go.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: like to

Speaker: The

Speaker: jump

Speaker: like judgment judgment

Speaker: jump jump

Speaker: you

Speaker: are

Speaker: and That was Banana N. And this was one that I picked that you admitted that you're actually not a huge fan of. Yeah, like it was my least favorite of 2024. think that that by i think that that was that reaction for me was like a bit too much like calibrated on you know, some particular snags or yeah blocks that I had making this. And even though they're like, there's some really good elements to it. Some, some elements of it. I really like, I think part, one of the things that frustrated me the most about this was there was something about the, the wubs and like the eight away kind of bass drum and the, uh,

Speaker: the more that one aggressive bass hit that happens, uh, that happened repeatedly. Something about those, something about the, the sound design there, just like, they just did not sound in tune with each other. And like, it was just frustrating to me, like figuring out how to, how to resolve that. Cause like,

Speaker: I'm looking at it like the, all the modulators are set to normal pitches. Like I'm not detuning anything. Something about these like super deep bass sounds though that yeah certain notes just don't like, you're like, Oh, there's something just not in tune about this because I'm actually, i have a digitone too.

Speaker: And I have been dealing with a similar problem in a song that I'm working on right now where it's like a really deep bass that I'm just like, is that out of tune? Or, you know...

Speaker: Yeah, it's it was especially frustrating me because like i was in a groove. I was like having some good patterns going and then i listened to it on like other on not my headphones on speakers. and I was like, yeah, that sounds horrible.

Speaker: So it's like, yeah, it was a setback. And it's like then I had to figure out how to make everything not sound bad. And that kind of killed the momentum of it. Got it.

Speaker: It also hit a point towards the end of it was just like not quite hitting, getting inspired to for the last elements to like really finish it. So it's kind of just like ah bit of a slog at the end. So that I think that's why it wasn't my favorite.

Speaker: But but I really like it. i I think the sound design is amazing. And I would love to see this patch because you call it out that.

Speaker: that it's like some sort of crazy patch with all sorts of table action going on. And the, for me, the, like the B section bridge, whatever you want to call it, just like really does it for me.

Speaker: You know, I feel like you talking about the, the bit with like the the lead melody or the, yeah. break Yeah. Yeah, the lead, well, the lead melody into the breakdown, because like it kind of starts out with that bass, what, what for a while and you got kind of get settled in and then like the song sort of like shifts and changes and like it's got like a nice groove to it with a good melody.

Speaker: so i think it's got the the whole the whole package. Yeah, I think it could definitely be. It just wants some more work like I ran out of time in the end. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker: <unk> I'm digging, I'm digging in to see if I can remind myself of what some of these patches we're doing. Um, I was pretty happy with the like, kind of sort of like Tom Tom sort of fill that was going that's going on throughout like, a like, yeah, that's like a cool FM patch that I then doubled and tweaked a bunch onto a second channel. It just gives it some more dimension to it.

Speaker: Um, i don't even remember what that sn x I don't even remember what the SMX command is, but there's a lot of that. i don't even know. um he mod ethics Yeah, no, this this is the one of the dangers of getting this deep into M8 sound design stuff. is just like You look back and it's like, I can't read any of this.

Speaker: What was I even doing here? Who knows? Oh, this was also kind of broken. i think that some updates. Yeah. Some updates screwed some modulators or something.

Speaker: Well, I like it. Hopefully other people like it. I think that, think that really the thing here with all the FN synths, synth stuff again is like, yeah, break it down, start from two oscillators, build up from that, get a sense of like,

Speaker: what ah Build small. Don't start with all four oscillators at once. so I'm just curious about this. I'm not even finding it.

Speaker: Well, I think we should go to one of my favorites next. All right. Which is 2022 week 21 dunk tank. Let's go.

Speaker: We heard the Elzix cover of this on his episode. So let's go.

Speaker: All right, that was Dunk Tank, one of my absolute favorites. And definitely check out the Ilzix episode that plays the cover of this.

Speaker: Man, there's... ah So the very beginning, there's like... sort of almost like chopped up bits of the main melody that when it comes in that like real s slidey portamento, ah just like grooving from the start.

Speaker: And then these, like, I really want to talk about these, like, I call them like train horn chords. This, like these massive chords that are sort of like,

Speaker: out of tune. i don't know. Tell me about how you made this. Cause it's fucking awesome. Yeah. This one also one of my favorites, this one, this was actually, i think the, I think the initial nuggets of it was one of the early things I did on the inmate. Maybe even when I was using the headless setup, but it was like,

Speaker: not more than just like the, you know, the, the bass, the bass drum and the, that main melody, you know, six note melody.

Speaker: So like, I really just had that, that one, like four bar loop or whatever. And it was stuck on that for a long time.

Speaker: Revisited here, built it out into more, but like still kept that, nonstop just repeating over and over but vibe to it. Like it's very simple. The, at least the start of it, like it's just six notes that, that, that, I guess five notes maybe if you call it, but like that very simple melody, um, it grooves. So you can, you can listen on repeat and that's perfectly satisfying, but right away, there's a lot of, there is a lot of opportunity to just add these little micro variations throughout it.

Speaker: to see like how many different ways can I, can I express this same simple pattern? Well, and it's like towards the, like the second half, it's sort of like just messes with your expectations a bit.

Speaker: Yeah. like You're so used to hearing the main melody for a while. And then like the places that it doesn't repeat and like yeah other elements come in as sort of like, Oh yeah. It's like,

Speaker: It is,

Speaker: but i remember this is another random thing that comes to mind and probably came to mind when I was making this of like, was some forum thread about someone asking like, what are your, what are your, what are the best like one bar beats?

Speaker: Just thinking to like classic hip hop stuff like,

Speaker: It's like it takes a lot of skill to make something that's like to make something such a short unit that you can just listen on. loop Yeah, definitely. Everybody's real or skill or just like inspiration.

Speaker: Yeah. Like for me, one of the ways to do that is, you know, once you have something that you can groove with, like it's just these micro adjustments like ah one of my favorite tracks of all time is ah Deadmau5's Cthulhu Sleeps, which is, again, like a really simple loop, but it's just like these micro variations and progressive, like, evolutions through this, like, eight-minute track.

Speaker: So you have that side of it, and then you have the other side of, like, well, I can't keep this going forever, so I just have to throw everything out and like, completely change it up. So the chords coming in and are coming in are a bit of a change-up,

Speaker: just because they're such a, like the the train corps, such a brash new layer yeah yeah to the groove. To your point, yeah, they are. They are just like, it's the drunken modulator, I think, that's just slowly noodling their pitch around.

Speaker: so yeah, they are very out of tune. i think that, I never looked back and confirmed this for sure, but I think I intended that they're like there are three, there three voice chords.

Speaker: And this is

Speaker: three voice chords and on the M8, not having like, really a proper polyphonic instrument, they have the there's a macro synth and macrosynth engines, you could do stuff with FM, you could do stuff with a hypersynth, whatever.

Speaker: But it's not like a proper way to sequence polyphonically. So like, the way I approached this was like, There's a single phrase for all of those chords. And then I'm basically composing the chords in the, ah in the chain screen, not in the pattern screen. Right. Yeah.

Speaker: So I think my intent was like these three channels would all be independently noodling around randomly just for even more chaos. But I think what happened in the original, in the final track is like, when I use the M8 internal render mode, it like, I don't know, started them all with like the same random seed and they all did the same random, ah okay which it works out in the end. And maybe, and I don't know, maybe it works better than if it had been the other way. um I'm not going to look back and figure it out.

Speaker: That was one of my, one of my ah self-imposed constraints in 2022 like, was like At the end of the week, that's it.

Speaker: The song's done. I'm not touching it. Like, yeah, I, ah when I released the albums of, of the stuff, I didn't actually re-export any of the things. Like I just took these stereo mixes from every week and put whatever EQ compression, whatever to yeah polish it up. But like, that was part of my philosophy of it is like, I'm making something every week, but it is just that week. Like the result of this is a snapshot of every week. Not.

Speaker: Yeah. yes I have a hard time going back and revisiting songs to like make them better because I've just heard it so many times in that version.

Speaker: That never seems worth it. Like, I'm like, what am I perfecting here? I kind of like it the way it is. Yeah. I think that, ah we'll get to this with, um, when we get to trolley problem, but I think that like the way I'm more often, instead of doing that, like I'll just act really rehash something, like take the ideas, but make it something really remake it.

Speaker: Yeah. Um, well, should we listen to a clown car and trolley problem now? Sure. Let's do it. All right. 2022 week 24 clown car trolley problem. clown car trolley problem

Speaker: um

Speaker: a are are

Speaker: i

Speaker: All right, that was Clown Car Trolley Problem. Man, that is crazy track. like the From that thwack sound towards the beginning and that descending chord progression right before it just like is like liftoff.

Speaker: Tell me more about this one. Yeah, I... I think i ah think I described this back in 2022 as like anxiety core.

Speaker: Like it is just so deeply anxious to me and stressful. Like i really like the, just the emotion that that that I feel this carries. And like that starts from the very beginning with that like droning wash, like,

Speaker: It has a feel to me of like, you know, some distant like siren or like industrial i foggy. Like it's just this.

Speaker: Yeah, just like like an air raid siren, but you're far away from it, but it's still like all around you. I'm also thinking of like that one video of the dude who. i found himself in the center of like three tornado sirens that hit exact harmony.

Speaker: Oh, i haven't seen that one. It's a good, it's a good, good clip, but like this is the exact opposite of like these surrounded by these sirens hitting exact dissonance. um So it's like that alone is just so ominous. So like something bad is going to happen. And then the, the baseline, the percussion starts to come in.

Speaker: So this track started with the baseline. Um, this was in a few weeks where i was focusing with the, the o coast. I feel like anyone who has the o coast can instantly recognize the sound of it in this. It's like, it's very distinctive and like it does.

Speaker: It's not the broadest synth, but like the sounds it does, it is the synth for them.

Speaker: Uh, using that synth actually like drove the creative process for this because

Speaker: i started this before i was leaving for some vacation somewhere. So I wasn't going to bring the Ocoast with me, but I could bring the M8, of course.

Speaker: so ah Oh, geez, my AirPods completely died. Hopefully you don't get feedback because you're coming out of my laptop speaker now. Should be all right.

Speaker: All right. So with that, whatever travel I was doing, it was on a train, so that that factors into the title. Can't bring Oak Coast with you on the train.

Speaker: Yeah. i had this patch going, had this groove going. M8 is, like, really fun to sequence the Oak Coast with because Oak Coast has this little bonus made to CV output, so can now, like,

Speaker: modulate some parameter like you can now use the M8 like FX lanes to modulate the oh very fun so had a jam going had some loops and I just like recorded myself for like five or ten minutes just twiddling knobs and whatever pop that into the M8 and that's how I left on this on this trial nice so like it was a good not totally intentional like creative restriction of like I only had this amount of time to use the Ocoast. Anything I did, like that's set and that that's set, and I had to work with that now. I can't go back and infinitely tweak that Ocoast patch.

Speaker: um But it had a lot of material to chop up and rearrange and form into like a structure on on the M8. um ah What I did was I cut that sample down to like a, a, an exact like sample length, multiple of the tempo or whatever.

Speaker: So that with the slice feature and I made sampler, I could just like select different chunks of it. Yeah. um I think I even had it mapped to like the note mode. So that just changing the note changed what slice it was.

Speaker: And then I can like within a phrase jump between different versions of the loop or yeah in a chain with a transpose. Oh, true. Structure in the chain. So super easy to navigate around that, but still, you know, kind of locked in on the source material of that element of the track.

Speaker: The rest of it built around there. The middle section though is a rehash of a another track I made on a train years ago in the OP1. Okay.

Speaker: okay That's where i came up with those chords because there were some chords that like they just felt really natural to play on the OP1 keyboard. Just like the the range of the keys and like the physical shape of them was natural to like play that.

Speaker: on the op1 so that's where those came from and that track was like this but dial it down like a hundred times much more chill much more uh yeah just a much more chill version but ever since i made that i kind of knew that like at this point in the end i wanted to have that sort of like build up to this this explosion of like an ah evolved version of it but i just didn't do that on the op1 like what happened on the op1 was like this just like a reverse symbol that then drops and cuts out to just the melody soloed for a moment and then everything comes back in yeah but in this one that turns into

Speaker: everything goes everything at once. Yeah. It doesn't feel overly crowded, even though there's all this stuff going on. Yeah. Like i think a piece of that is all the pieces that are going on are stuff you've heard earlier in the track.

Speaker: yeah It's not really new stuff. It's like evolved and layered differently, but it's stuff you heard before. Like, you know, you have those core, that core progression you just heard, but okay, let's play it in this really bright, uh, familiar chaos.

Speaker: It's familiar chaos. And like, you know, you have those chords, you have that melody just in these more chip to any bright, loud. Yeah. Instruments. And you have the under layers of like the base and these sort of sirenies kinds of sounds, but you've heard those and like, those have been setting the scene up to that.

Speaker: yeah, I think one of the, one of the parts of this track that hits me every time is like in that middle section, when you've got like just the melody in the chords lightly going there's as they're going like faintly in the back starts faintly in the background is like those siren hits start to come in and like, they get louder and ladder like this.

Speaker: impending doom like yeah you knew what this meant this this you know this world was and like the start of the track and you thought you're kind of escaped from it but no it's it's coming back and then everything explodes yeah it's an amazing build and i think anytime you're setting out to make an epic build like that like this is what you're trying to shoot for yeah I think I managed to, I see a lot of similarities between this and the dreaming that I'm falling in the the build and, i you know, expectations work.

Speaker: I think there's just more melodic things going on here. For sure. For sure. Yeah. This one's like more cohesive versus the kind of more meandering of the 20. Yeah.

Speaker: Which are both different. Yeah, the dreaming, etc. is like a little bit more like abstract storytelling. Because it still does tell that story.

Speaker: Yeah. loves this This has like the beginning, middle, and end. Yeah. And tons of chiptune influence at the end.

Speaker: Just a ah great track that really keeps you interested and just like blows the roof off at the end. Stressed.

Speaker: Like the too fast bass drum that's through the whole thing is, uh, part of the anxiety. yeah Part of the anxiety. The, the idea for that came from an, it was extract the week before.

Speaker: Sweet. Like he had some also similarly nonstop kick drum. And I think I made this one like twice as fast.

Speaker: Awesome. It all forms into this this immense story. Yeah. I mean, well done. And you said this is one of your favorites from 2022? Yeah.

Speaker: yeah Also, happens to be one of the earliest I've ever uploaded weekly. Something to be said for that. Days early on this one.

Speaker: All right. Let's play an OP1 track next 2022 week tacos, nachos, which I can definitely behind. Let's tacos nachos tacos which i can definitely get behind let's go

Speaker: Thank you.

Speaker: you

Speaker: All right, that was TNT all made on an OP-1, which I owned an OP-1 for a bit, and I'm just amazed that you got this out of an OP-1.

Speaker: Although we were chatting ah while the music was going that you had an OP-1 way longer than me. So you had some practice. Yeah, i got the OP-1 in 2015. So...

Speaker: ah so Plenty of hours on it. um Until the M8, like, it was my most used piece of gear. Man. and Four tracks.

Speaker: Four tracks. Six minutes. Both of those are real limits. um Yeah, like, it's just... I think I said this at the start of the episode. It surprises me that I can flow with both the M8 and the OP1 just because they are so very different. Me too. How I approach them. It's not even like I'm figuring out how to use each one in my own common way. It's like, no, I hope you want it. just different how it.

Speaker: How I write stuff on it. Yeah, and i I originally picked the OP-1 as one of my like first hardware devices after you know kind of leaving music- for a bit started out on guitar and you know made music on dolls for a bit and then just like put music down for way too long and then i was like oh i'm kind of getting into this again turns out i don't like making music on a computer this op1 looks pretty cool and i like that it's like i've got four tracks that i can record to that eventually was like i'm so tired of these four tracks and like uh you know just

Speaker: making mistakes like copying things and like the the workflow the things that i would mess up really got to me but it's still an amazing piece of kit and uh i'm sure the field is also a a level up as far as like workflow oh creature features but i really like the how you kind of like push the boundaries of the op1 on this by i think you put in the comments that you were you know changing the tempo on the fly as you were recording and then it also sounds like you were like

Speaker: manipulating envelopes while you're recording as well. So you get this like, real dynamic recording from a machine that doesn't have a lot of that, those dynamic elements built in that you can just like, you program in, you know?

Speaker: Yeah, I was about to say like, it's, it was definitely something that's like a little unnatural to do. And Yeah, it's kind of like a performance. know Exactly. Yeah, that's that's a huge part of ah the op one. That's a huge part of the oppi one to me and a reason I wanted to look at this track in particular, like the op one I've seen people online look at the oppi one and see like, oh, it has sequencers and then be like, what the heck? These sequencers are garbage. It's like, well, it's not about the sequencer. Like

Speaker: they they made the OPXY for that now. Yeah. Yeah. But the OP one, like you're supposed to record stuff live. The sequencers are just like little tools to help you record. Record live.

Speaker: Like, you know, the, the intro there, those arpeggiated chords, like I can't play those reliably. Like, yeah, I can't, I could not get that whole take through playing those, all those different chords without messing up some notes, like in a way that doesn't sound good. And uh also you know the kind of mechanical regular the the tempo's drifting but like it's still very mechanical that's another good aspect of it like that's using the sequencer as a tool and then yeah figuring out some way to also put in this this like continuous variation to it so it feels live even though it's sequenced but it's you know this blend yeah definitely took a couple takes to

Speaker: get that nice one where I got the tempo going nice and then the that dynamics is the it's the decent engine and then the the red knob that makes that weird like change in the timbre towards the end of it mm-hmm

Speaker: so yeah it was like built out with that and then there's a couple other just recorded live layers of like the bell like sounds on top of that yeah um you know you have that and then it's just yeah you're hitting a button Every so often. So I can do that. it life Like shifts into this like bop groove.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah, it's the it's that groove. You know, we're getting more sequence drum and bass kinds of sounds, but you still have that top layer like, I guess, kind of marimba ish. don't know what you call it that the main melody, but that I'm playing fully live. And part of the character of this for me is the crappiness that I'm playing some of it live. it's like, I'm playing some notes and I'm like going group up the keyboard or whatever. And there are bits where I'm just like not hitting the notes. Right. And like the rhythm is totally whack, but like that's part of the character of this. stream Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah. And like something you do on the OP1, you're not going to do that on the M8. You're going to have a bad time if you're going to have to do that on the M8, on the M8, but like the OP1, cool. I can do that instantly. Yeah, a super fun track, and i wanted i also wanted to play it because, you know, like just to hear what you can do on the OP1 versus the M8, super cool.

Speaker: Yeah. The OP1 definitely did take longer than the M8 to get to, like, this level, if you will, of complexity, of, you know, cohesiveness, of polish. Yeah.

Speaker: But don't know. there's there's There's just some stuff in the OP1 that's more rewarding on the OP1. Like, yeah yeah you mentioned the, you know, messing up a take and then, you know, now you've ruined that recording. You got to re-record it. Like, you get used to, it's not totally you have to get it right in the first try. You have the one layer of undo where you can... yeah you can like, okay, rewind and drop back the track that you lifted beforehand. And it's like, you have the tiniest of safety nets and like, you just have to get in the groove where that's enough.

Speaker: And you figure out how to navigate your tracks and what you're overdubbing where to make that net enough for you to, so not definitely quirky destroy. Yeah.

Speaker: But like nothing else you going to be that instant of like, okay, just record play, do a thing. I mean, if the OP1 was like a quarter of the price, I would totally have one. Yeah, it's not cheap. The field version.

Speaker: It's not cheap, but unfortunately, it is one of a kind. It is one of kind. There's nothing else quite like the OP1. There's devices that try to get similar vibe, but nothing is quite the also really, really want the little TX6 mixer, but damn, I can't bring myself to buy that either.

Speaker: Cause I'm like, no one else makes like a small mixer with all these features. I got the TP seven and o yeah, you know, was using it a bunch. When I first got, I was using it for, uh, actually mostly voice memos.

Speaker: was carrying it around, just recording voice memos. I stopped doing that after I dropped it and broke it and had to send it back to Sweden to get it fixed and then dropped and broke it again. I had to send it back again to Sweden, but I'm finding good news for it now as just like a,

Speaker: thing to quickly record sketches I'm doing. So I expect to use that in 2026 more. I want to bring in more hardware more, more stuff that's just going to bring in more sources of inspiration than just being on the op one or just the M8. Yeah, and get more of that workflow like I did with clown car trolley problem of like, record some stuff so like set that in stone and then see what I can do with that.

Speaker: Yeah, these are the samples that I have to work with and I'm going to make the best of it. Yeah, and you know set that in stone and then transition over to the easier to control things of the maid and the OP1 or whatever.

Speaker: Very cool. Well, I hope to hear more of your songs in 2026.

Speaker: Hopefully you can get the chunks the right size to keep you moving forward. And we are at the end of our episode.

Speaker: I did burst the song bubble by already playing six. I'm going to play one more on the way out um because, you know, sometimes that happens. um But on the way out, we're going to play...

Speaker: duck eight to six which i thought was a really really cool song another o coast song with the ma this is the one with like the actual like train whistle sounding chords right i believe so which it's crazy yeah hearing yeah i was like he likes to use these uh train horns a lot uh This is also one of the hardest to to mix in and integrate with the others in the album because whatever it happened this week, this one was mixed so loud. i don't know how I did it.

Speaker: But thanks for being on and um sharing your tunes and your process. And yeah, we look forward to hearing more from you. Yeah. Thanks for having me And thanks for doing this podcast in general.

Speaker: Like, yeah, man, certainly a dimension of weekly beaters that, um, not the, not the right word. Weekly beats people. It has been used before. maybe not the most flattering term, but, uh, but yeah, that dimension across us that we, we haven't gotten to see. So thank you.

Speaker: Yeah, you're welcome. And thanks again to everyone who continues to listen. it is... i was thinking about this this week. I was like... man, the the year is winding down and I feel like the holiday crunch is among us.

Speaker: And I also am feeling like, okay, 2026 is coming and I kind of need to like decompress a little bit. So there might only be a couple more episodes before the end of the year. I'm still trying to capture orange drink, ah but he's, surprised that he's elusive. he He's elusive. He's also doing so much. he's just so busy busy he's he's the busiest guy he's even super busy during weekly beats because he's making videos and performing and he's probably got like two or three bands and yeah so but yeah uh and thanks again to everyone who has continued to suggest people to be on here and flag people down and

Speaker: And then, you know, other guest referrals like Ilzik's recommending you from one of your covers. So, yeah, the community continues to deliver. And thanks, everyone.

Speaker: All right, we're out.

Speaker: We're going to play out Duck 826 and catch you all later.