Week in Review: November 28-December 4, 2024

Image by Fabian Dück on Pixabay is a closeup of a piano keyboard in black and white

Each week, I have been summarizing my adventures in making music - except last week I completely forgot! Lately, I have been busy and devoting most of my scarce music-making time to writing music with Coral Ghost and finishing up the 52-week music-making project, Weekly Beats. This blog primarily contains slightly annotated posts originally found on Mastodon. 


This track started off with a sample hunt. I did a quick internet search on what the most popular key is for electronic music - not thinking there is such a thing - and went with one of the first results I saw: A minor. I then went on all of the sample platforms I have used before and looked for what I could find in that key, starting with vocals. I use one group of vocal samples that were already pitched down and a group of higher ones that came dry. I have been making pads using pad or stab samples I drag into Granulator III and I do very little processing on the other stab samples I find. Even though I found plenty of samples that sounded good, I wasn't sure how I would make any of them work together.

When it came time compose something, I chose the time signature of 11/4 because I haven't worked in it yet, but I have worked in 7 and 4, and 6 and 5, so I thought I could come up with something. The 11 beats give the rhythm enough time to groove so that it doesn't feel like an odd time signature. Even the "four-on-the-floor" kick drum sounds natural to me.

 

John Wright

John Wright is an independent music artist. A rock drummer and electronic music producer, his solo project is inspired by the driving beats of Detroit-area dance music clubs with organic textures honoring his rock band roots.

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