Weekly Update #22 - Finding Sunrise

Hey Everyone,

This week I have a brand new WIP as well as a final update on Oath! As per usual - I'll provide a summary at the end if you don't want to read a whole lot.

The first song you hear this week is "Finding Sunrise" (placeholder name) and I wrote this by accident. Early in the week, I was spending a morning experimenting with Reaktor - it's a modular synth software and I've had it forever but I've never really delved too deep into it. The main synth you hear in this song is a pluck that I made from scratch in Reaktor. If you don't know what modular stuff is, you're basically building a synth from scratch from individual elements like individual oscillators, envelopes, VCA's (amplifiers), and many other things. Without getting too deep into it, you're basically patching together a synth piece by piece and there's a lot of customization you can have by doing this that can result in some really unique sounds.

Anyhow, the synth I built was relatively simple but I patched in several FX to fill it out. In the end the whole sound isn't very complex but it was just messing around. I wrote a super simple line to just throw some automation on it and came up with the main theme you hear throughout the song.

I wasn't planning on developing this idea but the theme I wrote played off some cool polyrhythms that sounded pretty unique and it really piqued my interest. Before I ended my initial session, I added some pads, a piano, the arp, and a bit of arrangement. I figured this was a good place to stop.

I did a bunch of other stuff throughout the week but I couldn't get this song out of my head so I sat down Friday morning for another session. I started with percussion and built each layer from scratch. I wanted to play off 1/4 note dotted polyrhythm feel - you can hear that in the hat pattern. I added a bit of groove in to humanize things as well as a kick, snare/clap (layered), and a few other bits and bobs.

After adding percussion, this is when I decided to finish the song. I replaced the pads with something I liked better, added 2 bass layers (sub and mid-bass), and arranged it into a full song. I don't think this will be a vocal song so I focused on adding interest in each section with some additions here and there. I then went through the entire arrangement and added basic FX to flesh everything out and help the pacing. 

That brings us to the current version you hear today. I'm really happy with it so far, but I have a lot to do. The mixing is pretty bad and there are some parts I'm not totally sure about (the piano patch, the little arp fill in the second half, among others). I also think I'd add a few more little things (more automation and extra FX) to keep interest in the background throughout. But so far, I'm really liking this song. Next month, I'm really focusing on finishing all the WIPs that are "almost done" and I think I can throw this one in that pile.

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Oath is basically finished. I spent a lot of time on the mix and I'm very happy with how everything sounds. I focused on making the drop feel bigger than the rest of the song and really fleshed out the builds. Speaking of builds, I wanted build 2 to start out feeling smaller and more intimate (more serious?) than build 1 to really accentuate that theme has matured  throughout the song. But as build 2 went on, I wanted it to be bigger than build 1 making for a more epic drop.

I switched a few things up after that and spent a bit of time on an initial master. The last thing I have left before release is reference mastering on different systems (in the car, on $10 earbuds, $100 earbuds, my DJ setup, laptop speakers, my phone speakers, etc) and making any final adjustments after. I'm going to do that early next week so you should expect a download link mid-next week! I think I'll release this song mid or late September.

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As I mentioned above, I want to spend most of September actually finishing all the projects that I have in progress so expect updates to focus heavily on that. And as I finish them, expect download links for each release :)

Summary: I wrote a new song accidentally when I was messing around and it sounds cool & Oath is basically done.

Thanks for reading and thanks as always for your support. Have a great weekend!

- Andrew

PS: Chill song is super chill: https://open.spotify.com/track/6NLd7wuYEBrTEJkqPbjv4C?si=3ZRaCSo4SheKGqrnItqq3A