A series of generative art experiments I’ve been iterating on over the last few weeks. These are all direct outputs from Processing, rendered at ultrawide/21:9 5120×2160. Initially I was working on some supplemental imagery to support my album release and refresh some of my music site profiles, but I ended up having a lot of fun playing with these algorithms and developing them further. They’re quite dark overall as I tend to work on them at night in fullscreen mode and don’t like blowing out my eyeballs with bright values when rendering; also the subtlety of darker tones works better as backdrops for light text on various profiles.
These are all based on a system of line segments that randomly emit tiny dots from their “normal” (which is just offset 90 degrees from the angle between their vertices). The brightness is based on the inverse square distance to a center point in the series of segments, which isn’t necessarily contiguous. Helpful to maintain the illusion if it is, but also fun to break the rule for more glitchy effects as I experimented with later on. Anyway that “brightness” value is also used to drive other parameters like hue shift, angle spread, and distance from the segment.
I was happy with this effect but also wanted to create the illusion of some areas being blurred, out of focus, or in shadow, so I also created a series of “invisible” polygons. When a dot’s position ends up within one of these polygons, some of the properties change, mainly angle, value and distance from the segment, but I experimented with many other effects in this area like hue shifts, applying perlin noise to the angle and distance, or gaussian blurring.
From here I wanted to break out of the initial grid and started experimenting with other shapes. My rough guiding principle was the idea of finding beauty at the intersection of order and chaos, so to that end I tried to include some mixture of controlled shapes and randomness, hard edges and curves, grids and noise.
Also experimented with adding a little chromatic aberration to the rendering based on distance to the center of the screen.
A vague question that kept arising for me here was where to make the division between planned composition and randomness. In my previous generative efforts I felt a stronger compulsion to aim for randomness, but pure randomness doesn’t make for great compositions without a ton of work. And even then, doesn’t that large amount of work ultimately amount to just a wider variety of planned compositions in a different way? So this time around I tried to feel less “constrained” by the idea of requiring the overall composition to result from randomness in generative techniques and just go with what I felt would look cool.
I also tried to embrace happy accidents as much as possible – for example here I did not intend for a central symmetry, but it came out that way because I’m working with (0, 0) at the center of the screen and forgot to offset the Perlin noise (which in Processing is symmetrical at the origin) to account for that.
I recently learned about OKlab color space and tried out using this implementation for these experiments. I think it does indeed provide some very nice color transitions compared to the default HSV.
Gallery of full resolution images (please zoom in for full effect!):
What started as an idea for a single or EP here ended up as a 10-track album; I suppose ultimately it felt like there was quite a bit that I wanted to express, and when inspiration is flowing I try to capture as much as I can before it inevitably dries up. The impetuses behind this release are too personal to detail in a public space such as this, but broadly it’s about love, trust, hope, connection, openness, interdependence, and acceptance, all underpinned with a futurist motif as usual.
The motivations behind my previous two albums, Metamorph and Internal Reflection, were more about introspection, breaking out of the mold, and attempting to improve upon the technical aspects of production. In contrast, this time I ended up prioritizing intuition and feeling over critical thought as guiding principles. As such I think it ended up closer to my previous work in some ways, but still also incorporating some of the vocabulary I picked up over the last few years in attempts to expand my palette and keep things fresh and interesting. Often I found myself satisfied with relatively simpler beats and slower tempos, or emphasizing a lead melody over unique sound design. Not that those elements aren’t still present, but overall I tried to incorporate them in more of a supportive or secondary role than a primary focus.
About half of these tracks started off as sketches on Elektron hardware (the Digitakt/Syntakt/Digitone combo I posted last year), and really is the first time I’ve brought such sketches to a polished, complete finish in such a workflow. I found the transition from hardware to software presented some new challenges but also new possibilities, and I ended up trying to exploit the latter as much as possible – for example, treating the FX send track as an entirely separate element, sometimes even highlighting it in solo without its contributing sources.
The process of sequencing, designing and mixing these tracks was both therapeutic and rewarding to me. Broadly speaking I wrote this as much from the heart as the mind and I hope that sense is, at least to some degree, conveyed through the album itself.
I’m planning to push the Bandcamp release in a few days on 1/23, followed by Soundcloud, Spotify and the plethora of other streaming services the following Tuesday 1/30. I always seem to forget how much peripheral effort is needed to wrap up a release and push it live; sometimes I miss the old days where all I had to do was zip up a handful of .xm files and ftp them to scene.org, or hand edit an html file and link a 192kbps mp3 on my ISP-hosted website. But I suppose that is the price of convenience and relevance in 2024!
A few months ago my old friend Astrotek offered me a chance to remix his newest track “Solar Orbit,” free from restriction to genre or even time frame to release. His Original Mix is decidedly psytrance, crafted in his meticulously layered and carefully balanced style, with a flair for space exploration motifs. Internally I was a little hesitant to accept at first – trance is a genre well outside my wheelhouse after all – but I wanted to take it on both as a personal challenge and as an opportunity to honor an old friendship that was forged through music.
Astrotek and I go way back to tracking days, trading 3.5″ floppies with S3Ms, questionably legal software (and often data errors) at school. We both looked up to the demoscene savants of the time, while also drawing inspiration from VGM, techno, jungle, drum&bass, and eventually the wider gamut of electronic music becoming available in the early Napster era. So our early years in production paralleled each other closely, but our paths in life diverged as we entered adulthood.
Still, every once in awhile he would reach out and we’d catch up, talk about music and life, maybe even do a remix once in awhile. I’ve never been great at being the friend who stays in touch so I think part of my motivation to do this project was also an expression of appreciation for that. I’ve also written previously about my reverence for the recognition of one’s origins in creative pursuits, and in a way collaborating on a project like this touched closely on that vein.
As to the remix itself – initially my instinct was to try a drum&bass flavored take on it, but my attempts felt stale and lacking a spark of inspiration. After some weeks I scrapped my first attempts and tried a shuffled, vaguely 2-step/uk garage-ish approach. To me that captured more of the fun, lighthearted EDM spirit of the original with a sufficiently open canvas to play with sound design, glitches, drum fills and other details. In the end I had a lot of fun working on it, breaking free from some of my usual conventions and trappings, and I hope that enjoyment is conveyed through the track itself.
Earlier this year my friend LayerZero, who runs local monthly IDM listening sessions through Bay Area Braindance, invited me to play a live set at a party he was hosting for us fellow electronic music enthusiasts. My perfectionist nature had me hesitant at first, but eventually I entertained the idea and started browsing sketches on my Digitakt to see if anything would work as a suitable starting point.
Initially I was thinking of putting together a relatively short set – maybe 20 minutes or so – but had so much fun exploring the possibilities of live performance on the Elektron boxes that it ended up closer to 50 minutes. I also found the process to be an effective way of bringing together half-baked tracks or ideas that I felt had potential but was struggling with arrangement on. The need to have each track flow together combined with the limitations of a dawless setup and a fixed performance date provided just enough constraints to keep myself moving forward with it at a steady pace.
My initial anxieties about performing live (what if I screw up noticeably? what if they think it’s lame, or even worse, boring?) had me concerned that more controls would mean more potential for error and confusion in a realtime setting, so I thought I’d just stick to the Digitakt for maximum flexibility in sound palette. But my starting track – the first sketch I thought would be suitable for a generally braindance-themed party – was an experiment in loading all 72 factory single-cycle waveforms and randomizing them per step, leaving me with just 56 sample slots for the remainder of my set. So eventually I brought in the Syntakt for more variation, figuring that for each track I’d favor one or the other as the primary sound source. But by the time I got to the end I found myself utilizing both of them fully, sacrificing precise memorization of which sound was on which track for more sonic variation.
Additionally, I thought it would be nice to incorporate my Korg minilogue here and there as way to break out some longer lead sequences from the limitations of the Digitakt and Syntakt’s 64-step patterns. In practice though I found it difficult to work patches into the “sweet spot,” and had some other technical issues with midi program changes. That was enough motivation for me to spring for an Arturia Minifreak, which became an essential part of the set and has thus far proven very enjoyable both to play with and program patches for.
Despite the number of times I practiced the whole thing, including a couple of dry runs, there were some unanticipated hiccups on the day of. We had some gain/clipping issues at the beginning so the first track loops much longer than intended while we sorted that out. I also didn’t account for people hanging around and talking in the room where I was performing, which was lovely for the party vibe but also resulted in me tweaking volume levels I’d carefully balanced before in order to even hear the changes and tweaks I’d planned as part of the set. And while I wasn’t too nervous at the time, I still think it wasn’t my best take overall. I’ve been mulling over the idea of doing a “studio” recording of it with all of the inputs separated and doing a proper mix with additional risers, impacts and effects, but that’s also a lot of work for something that’s essentially already there, and perhaps would detract from the spirit of a live set, mistakes and all.
So for now I’m just considering this a prototype for a new method of producing; as I mentioned the limitations were just enough to keep me motivated and moving forward at a steady pace, circumventing so many of the mental blocks that I seem to unavoidably blockade my creative process with time and time again. I think it could work well as basis for some initial constraints and framework which I’d follow up with recording everything into Live for the additional polish I generally aim for.
Also, as much fun as I had with it, I do think it also lacks cohesion, jumping sort of randomly between IDM, techno, breaks and drum&bass. Despite most of my albums being similarly stylistically diverse, I’d like for my next attempt to start with a broader idea, motif or overall arc and stick with it.
Visuals
Beyond hosting the party and contributing a mind-melting DJ set of his own, LayerZero brought the experience to the next level setting up projectors with live, interactive, synced visuals via Resolume, (not to mention recording the whole thing on multiple cameras and putting together the final video!) When I was pretty much done writing the set, we collaborated on layering some VJ loops from his library to accompany each section of it, which he tweaked in realtime while I played.
At some point I was struck by this project’s similarity to my inspirational roots, the PC demoscene, and was inspired to created some visual loops of my own that would sync tightly to elements of my set. These were all of course animated in After Effects and not generated algorithmically like a proper demo. Nevertheless an audiovisual project like this has long been a goal of mine and I’m grateful to have an encouraging friend provide me not only with motivation and encouragement but the technical means to glue it all together and make it happen.
I’m going to take a moment here to lament the fact that in 2023 there’s no straightforward way to put a series of 60fps video loops on WordPress, though I’m sure if it helped sell crap from Alibaba it’d be integrated into the next Chromium nightly build. But I digress. Here’s a series of clips in 30fps dithered GIF using decades old compression technology.
Some of these are simpler than others as they’re intended to be layered with the existing library loops that we’d selected. Overall I really enjoyed coming up with fairly abstract ideas to visualize aspects of the music I created, and if you watch the YouTube video you’ll probably see where he mixed them in. Ideally (maybe next time?) they’d be 100% original loops, but that is indeed an intimidating chunk of work.
On the fourth clip from the top, I’d be remiss not to mention that I generated those cyberpunk-headphone-girl faces using Stable Diffusion. While I certainly wouldn’t consider myself a proponent of “AI art,” I do find myself conflicted about this controversial topic. On one hand, as professional artist, the ability to effortlessly create beautiful pictures just by typing out what one wants is unnerving, especially in the hands of our consistently inhumane corporate overlords. On the other, the application of technology to art has been an inspiration for my career and something I’ve always enjoyed exploring. So in this middle position I’ve been contemplating how and if I might ever utilize this unprecedented and powerful new technology in a way that seems ethically sound. This particular application seemed fine to me – small audience, non-commercial, a supporting piece of the whole and not the end result itself, and not something I could reasonably create on my own without committing significant portions of time and money.
Anyway, all-in-all I’d say this project ended up fulfilling some creative goals I’ve had for many years, and even though it didn’t come out perfectly it was full of invaluable learning experiences. And once again I want to express gratitude to LayerZero for providing the means, venue, impetus and encouragement to explore some new creative territory.
Doing something a little different here and posting some realtime patterns I’ve been playing with, mainly centered around the Elektron Syntakt but also supported by the Digitakt/Digitone and a bit of the Analog 4. These are fairly rough and unfinished, and most of them will likely stay that way. There’s quite a bit of text and explanation of the whole thing and thoughts about each pattern in the video, so I won’t reiterate all of that here. But I thought it’d be a fun change of pace to share some explorations of in-progress stuff and do a synth fingers video.
I’d hoped to write up a post for this album on its actual release date of 6/7, but as fate would have it, Sporkii and I were vacationing in Scotland and contracted COVID a couple of days before our scheduled return flight. At the time, the CDC requirement to return to the US was either a negative test, or positive test with 10 days quarantine and doctor’s note of recovery. Fortunately we’ve both had our vaccines and boosters, so the illness itself wasn’t the worst of our problems. Anyway, I won’t go into any further detail regarding the challenges of contracting COVID abroad, but suffice to say I had to postpone blog entries and self promotion due to more pressing matters.
Anyway, now that I’m home and my ducks are all back in their respective rows, I’m happy to belatedly announce the release of Internal Reflection, the result of another couple of years of exploration, experimentation, self-expression, excessive self-criticism and efforts to overcome it. As I’ve written previously, one of my broadest metrics for self-evaluation has been my own enjoyment, i.e., I try to make stuff that I would be happy to listen to if I’d stumbled across it myself. I’ve often equated this with honesty or sincerity, but as I think about it it’s really an attempt at being honest with myself. As such, I think the end results reflect a wide gamut of mental states, and correspondingly there are sometimes large gaps in tone and energy between tracks.
Along those lines, while creating and evaluating the album I found the end result of a song might seem boring and homogenous on one day but perfectly relaxing or contemplative as intended on another. In my preview post last month I mentioned my forays into meditation, for example. I don’t feel like an equanimous, truly neutral and universally accepting state of mind could be accurately (or honestly) expressed by 180 bpm fractal breakbeat chops or sweeping emotive chord sequences. Indeed I found more success expressing this state of consciousness utilizing generative sequencing techniques – letting the computer decide the melody (to some constrained degree) while I worked my sound design and improvisation around that basis.
On the other hand, high-energy standouts like “Crystallovore” and “Disinformation Filter” arose, perhaps obviously, out of frustration and exhaustion with the sociopolitical climate, the seemingly inescapable tribalist animosity and shameless manipulation across social media as we approached the end of the previous election cycle. And while the circumstances of my life aren’t presenting me with as many frustrations in recent days, I still wanted to include these expressions as a record of the time, so that the album in its entirety forms something of an abstract journaling of my emotional and mental states over the last couple years.
I thought about going through each individual track and explaining my thoughts and inspirations behind each, but ultimately decided against it. Looking back on my history of listening to other artists’ work, I’ve generally preferred coming to my own opinions and interpretations of songs over having the meaning spelled out for me.
Anyway, now that this is out in the world, I’ve been considering what to work on next. Maybe physical plotter art, or more abstract 3D stuff with Tyflow, or perhaps taking an intentionally constrained workflow with music – limiting myself to one or two hardware synths at a time. These all sound promising to me, but to be honest I’ve been spending the bulk of my free time playing Dyson Sphere Program. Just can’t seem to get enough automation gaming lately.
It’s been a while since my last post! I’ve been busy with music and second-guessing myself (more on that later,) but I’m happy to announce the upcoming release of a new album, “Internal Reflection.”
In some ways I feel like it’s an iteration or refinement of many of the themes I began on “Metamorph,” trying to keep things fresh, unique and loose by intentionally choosing different techniques in the ideation process. Overall, it’s been an effective method for me. But I also found it leads to new decisions about where to draw the line in letting the natural strengths of the tools guide the music itself; at what point does my voice get lost in the endeavor to keep things creatively fresh? When it comes to creativity, I’m generally of the opinion that the artist should guide the tools, not the other way around. So in that regard I did try to find a balance, and I hope it comes across for my long-time listeners.
Despite my confidence in technique, I ran into a lot of hesitation and second-guessing myself with this album. Listening to tracks over and over, looking for improvements to make or trying with futility to reevaluate them with an objective ear, which ultimately only serves to entrench them further into my mind as immutable blocks.
For some time, I considered releasing two separate albums to deal with the disparity between the frustration-fueled high energy noise of tracks like “Crystallovore” and “Disinformation Filter,” and the calmer, equanimous tracks like “Decoherence” or “Chromatic Dispersion,” inspired both by the geometric and physical interactions of light and my explorations in mindfulness meditation. In between those extremes are tracks like “Five Constellations” or “Faceted Multidimensional,” which I feel ride the line between the two and are clear candidates for inclusion, but perhaps not enough on their own, or would come off as tiresome and homogenous with a similar energy level for an hour+ listening experience.
When I finished “Metamorph” I had a loose goal of forming a tighter sound for my next release – something more conceptual and unified, centered around a predefined theme. While “Internal Reflection” eventually coalesced into something vaguely representing that, it still feels more like a collage of thoughts, ideas, dreams and emotions I’ve made attempts to express musically over the last couple of years. While in a sense my personal metric for evaluating my own work is centered upon my enjoyment of it, I sincerely hope there are aspects that are effectively communicated through such an ephemeral medium and resonate with you as well.
“Internal Reflection” will release on Bandcamp, Spotify, Soundcloud and other streaming services on 6/7/22.
In the meantime, I’ll also share some other iterations of the album art I put together before arriving at the final. These were created using 3ds max, Arnold Render, TyFlow, Photoshop and Processing. I tried to find a balance between busy detailed chaos and negative space, emphasizing colorful reflections in synthetic structures, while also being mindful of the overall composition and the fact that most listeners will only see it as a tiny, compressed thumbnail.
Sometime late last spring I got completely hooked on Factorio and ended up pouring some hundreds of hours into it across several playthroughs. After launching my first rocket (i.e., beating the game,) I found myself left with a lingering desire to create complex systems that work harmoniously with one another. I ended up channeling that desire into getting reacquainted with Processing and diving back into generative art for the first time since a certain controversial entrepreneur single-handedly marked the death knell for Flash on the web.
As I continued experimenting I found a manifesto for this series loosely forming in my subconscious mind, and ultimately crystallized those thoughts into a series of guidelines:
Harness the power of the medium to automate that which would be tedious to create by hand or using traditional techniques
Celebrate the beauty of geometry
Strike a balance between sterile accuracy and natural chaos
Strike a balance between pleasant minimalism and fractal complexity
Take inspiration from nature
Playfully balance composition and repetition
Avoid simply recreating well-established looks and techniques typical of the medium
So here is a sizable dump of images from this journey:
And, as I used to do so many years ago, I ended up creating a series of desktop wallpapers as well. These are in 4k (3840×2160) and are intentionally dark and low contrast so as to be easy on the eyes during night hours.
Recently I’ve lost some steam on this project as I’ve been working on some new music, but I’m sure I’ll return to it someday.
(character art by Jen Zee, background art by Joanne Tran, animation and logo by myself)
So Hades is finished, after three years in development and two in Early Access. The response so far has been very positive and it’s been humbling and rewarding to read so many glowing comments about our work. I’ve never felt more appreciative to have had the opportunity to work with such a passionate, skilled team, and to have contributed my small part to its success.
On a personal level, working on Hades has been something of a transformative experience for me as an artist. As we came closer to the 1.0 launch I found myself looking retrospectively at my career, and moreover my experience working with Supergiant for past seven years (and man those years have gone by fast!)
When I joined in 2013, mid-production of Transistor, I found it fairly easy to hit the ground running, at least from a stylistic standpoint, as I was well familiar with the general style and execution of sci-fi/cyberpunk aesthetics. I remember feeling a bit of cognitive dissonance at the idea of working Art Nouveau elements into my very mainstream idea of what a sci-fi UI should look like, but with enough guidance from our visionary and inimitable art director Jen Zee, we found a way to make it work. But I remember it being one of my first professional experiences in a long time that required me to break the molds I’d been so comfortable and falsely confident in for years.
On Pyre, there were definitely moments where I felt out of my element, maybe even a bit of imposter syndrome. I could no longer rely on my old comfy tool-based tricks of pixel-perfect vectors, glows, Layer FX and photographic textures to produce all of my assets – it all really needed a more organic, worn, hand-drawn touch and the workflows I’d become so comfortable with were no longer quite so directly applicable. But necessity is a powerful motivator and at some point I reluctantly picked up the old Wacom pen and attempted to mimic some of Jen’s impeccable line work in a way that hopefully wouldn’t stick out like an awkward sore thumb.
While I couldn’t put a finger on it at the time, leaning too heavily on tools also presented a difficult mental barrier to overcome. Even in the weeks that we spent freely experimenting during Pyre’s pre-production, I found it hard to try to simply do something new with what I had at my disposal. The limitations of the tools I had spent so much time learning and staking my livelihood on had ironically become something of a creative block.
Of course we got the game done, and the art was well-received, but I think a subconscious part of me was left with a nagging feeling that I’d done my work despite my failings and weaknesses, rather than having overcome them.
So at the start of production on Hades I felt like I wanted to break free from that – to execute work that was immediate and impactful, visceral and satisfying, and to do so with boldness and confidence without endlessly noodling away, mentally hand-wringing over unnoticeable details. While it didn’t happen overnight, I think the subconscious idea of that motivation helped guide my work, especially as necessitated by the pace of our Early Access releases. There was no time to second guess myself, much less time to noodle and lose the forest for the trees.
Thankfully to that end I was also aided by Jen’s endless encouragement and, on the VFX side, some inspiring and badass concepts by my old friend Andre Mina. Not to mention the awesome work done by the rest of the art team, all of whom are inspiring in their passion, skill, creativity, and dedication to their craft: Joanne‘s beautiful environment art, Paige‘s meticulously detailed and faithful 3D models, and Thinh‘s stylish character animation, breathing life into the models in a way that makes each feel unique. It’s been a pleasure working and growing with this team and I hope to continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
To paraphrase the wise words of Napoleon Dynamite, “It’s pretty much the best drawing I’ve ever made.”
As I was gathering the “Metamorph” source files for backup, I started listening to some of the half finished, in-progress ideas I had rendered out for consideration, as well as a few that were completely finished but didn’t make the cut. After hearing them with fresh ears I found it a little easier to discern the elements that I’d originally been developing in them before over-listening to the point of boredom (this kills the spark of inspiration.)
I ended up re-listening a few times and, feeling fairly certain that I wouldn’t revisit them in the future, decided to upload and share some of them instead of letting them rot hidden in the cloud for eternity. And maybe share some thoughts about them and where they fit in the path to the album. I’m going to sort these more or less chronologically.
DontNeed This was started shortly after finishing “Observer” and feels to me like it would be more at home there than on “Metamorph”. Sort of a Burial x Microfunk vibe. The vocal sample seems like too much of a focal point to me, despite mixing it in at a low level, and it didn’t feel right basing the most interesting part of a track on a stock (or maybe sound pack, I forgot) Maschine sample.
Symbol Sampled some classical music here in the vein of Susumu Yokota’s lovely “Symbol” album, but ultimately felt like my sample use was a little too straightforward and not particularly creative. The vocal sample did end up granulized in “Voice of the Zodiac” though.
Monark160[Persistence] Prior to playing Celeste, it had been a long time since I’d stumbled across a game soundtrack that I not only enjoyed but also really connected with. I think Lena Raine‘s phenomenal work ended up inspiring parts of this; I was impressed with her use of the Monologue in the OST it got me inspired to have another go at Monark, which I previously hadn’t really had much luck patching myself. While I enjoyed this result, ultimately I don’t think this track particularly fit the broad picture sound and technique I wanted to pursue.
Monark170[Float] More “practice” patching and utilizing Monark without it dominating the track. Hot off Observer, sounds like I was still riding Maschine’s Grain Hold effect pretty hard here. Still too same-y.
FormUserAmb I think I was pursuing two main impulses here: focusing more on negative space and minimal use of notes, and making more use of some of the softsynths I hadn’t used much in production yet. While I had a blast exploring Native Instruments’ Form and made a decent number of my own patches/presets with it, I hadn’t really featured it on a track yet. So here I was trying to build something up using mostly my own sounds.
Blkmir Still trying to find a voice here, but too close to my old habits again. I worked on this with headphones one night while Marissa was watching Black Mirror S3E4: San Junipero, so it ended up as a weirdly muted background inspiration (or at the very least, a filename.)
Fluttr I really enjoyed the sparse piano work in the Zelda:Breath of the Wild OST, so I think that inspired me to experiment with some playful, staccato piano here. I was also listening to a lot of Frederic Robinson around this time, so there was some inspiration from his amazing work as well. Unfortunately I don’t think this hit anywhere near the mark of either of those inspirations, so I shelved it.
AndanteSine Just an experiment in “virtual modular” ambient with generative melodies, plus a couple of chords granulized through Antonio Blanca’s DRON-E. I still kind of like the minimal-ness of it, but didn’t think it was interesting enough to stand on its own.
Kontour+nod-E_Clix Another attempt at generative melodies (courtesy of NOD-E,) minimalism, and trying to utilize softsynths in my collection that hadn’t seen much use yet. As the title suggests, this was an attempt to make more use of Kontour. Despite being successful at all of these aspects, I don’t think the end result ended up all that interesting.
Dighyp Mostly an attempt at glitchy ambient IDM in Maschine. I think absent a driving emotion during production, the whole thing ended up just sounding cold and lifeless to me.
Drumsync This was part of the prototype that led to finishing “Tornadogenesis”. One sunny Saturday morning I just felt like making some crunchy, funky minimal beats. I think I knocked out like 10 or 12 a la carte drum patterns, and eventually added some of these sparse hypercompressed delayed synth lines, but wasn’t totally happy with them and how much they distracted from the drum patterns. Nevertheless I had fun recording this by shifting around the drum and synth patterns and using Maschine’s Perform FX in realtime.
Gamelan Probably one of the less melodic explorations here, but one of the early sparks of direction for “Metamorph,” utilizing more generated sequences and focusing on modulation. It also felt good to break some molds and do something a little more bold, at least at he beginning. I think the title came from the Newscool preset I started with for the initial sequence.
ToyBoxCombDrum Here I believe I had gone too far into the “make a whole song with modulation” methodology. Aside from the background ambience, it’s entirely made from my own Reaktor Blocks patches (plus one instance of TRK01 on bass duty trying to keep things orderly.) It ended up being kind of pain to control, and I think it even sounds a little out of control. By the end of it, even my OC’d 8700k was having trouble keeping up with low latency playback.
CT_Lite After spending a good few months with the Analog 4, I felt a little sorry for my dusty old minilogue and decided to use it for the main synth sequences on this one, plus some synthetic drums from the Reaktor Clonetonic ensemble. Sorry minilogue, this one didn’t make the cut (though you did get center stage in “A Growing Uncertainty”.)
MX_Simple[Empath] After buying and learning Massive X I had an initial slump of disenchantment with it; it seemed like whatever I made with sounded too complicated and demanding, and few of the factory patches were inspiring (though there are some awesome ones in there.) Here I tried to tone things down and make some more simple, useful patches. I actually like how it turned out and think I found a simplicity that worked here, but didn’t feel right selling or including it on the album with the vocal sample (and also feel like the vibe wouldn’t be the same without it).
MX_Stonewheel Speaking of Massive X, this one’s featuring an awesome Massive X patch that came in with a new set of factory presets. I felt this ended up a little too on the nose and predictable to fit on the album, and wasn’t sure where else to take it after a couple minutes.
RazorMetal This one I was working on alongside “Abiogenesis” and initially thought I might just release the two together as single. Ultimately this one felt a little too predictable and similar to warrant its own spot on the album though.
SmolReaktor[LMK] Started as another early experiment with generative melodies, this time using Reaktor’s factory Newscool ensemble (which made it into like half the tracks on the actual album). It turns out, tuning the pitches on the generators at 1px per semitone is a bit of a pain in the ass on a 4k monitor. Anyway, as the track started coming together I was happy to hear a bit of resemblance to one of my enduring favorite 90s drum&bass tracks, Technical Itch – Can’t You See (Dub Mix), and ended up intentionally taking it in that direction. But it wouldn’t be complete without a little vocal sample, would it? This one almost made it, (indeed it is finished) but again, copyright law completely aside, part of me felt wary about prominently using such a well-known vocal sample.
IRCstalker Making heavy use of the Analog Four & Rytm here, along with an instance of Reaktor Skrewell which until this I had never found a practical use for. Another one that almost made it; it is finished and fits thematically with a few of the other tracks. Ultimately though I think there’s a fine line between minimalism and boredom and this veered further than I would have liked into the latter, overstaying its welcome.
SparkOhm[Retrospective] Went hard on a couple of impulses here: utilize underused softsynths (Reaktor Spark, in this case) and channel late-90s netlabel IDM. Despite finishing it and initially thinking it had promise, I thought I fell back into too many of my standard habits here.
Josh Barnett 