Bout to try update the firmware on my sampler. It's old(ish.) but still dope.

I had a beat going that I was gonna probably post but the machine locked up and I guess it's time to see if the latest JJOS does what I need.

Made this patch yesterday, working with That's No Moon from DanT, Glass Shard from Path Set, the Ochd expander from Instruo, and Fate from Geodesics. Really liking how combining quantized 16th triggers and unquantized triggers for the Hi Hats worked out, think this is my new favorite Hi Hat routing.

https://youtu.be/HgAieuDRnSAsi=j4ArbMbO4FQJEf

I've been practicing daily for a couple of years now.

This year I had a pretty big break-thru in terms of coming up with my own music. A big issue i've had is a distaste for learning other people's music. A good guitar song makes me want to play, but not play the song. It's someone else's song! It's one hell of a mindset, but I only look up published songs when I want to know how they created a specific music phrase, and I generally avoid it. I feel strongly about this for some reason.

But I am kind of stuck. I have some chord progressions I play in, and I have a handful of snippets that I always repeat and lean on to give the stuff i'm playing a loose structure, but turning these progressions and "pieces" of song into a proper song is driving me insane because it's not clicking in my head.

I thought maybe I need to find some folks to play with, and yeah, I do, and I've put out feelers locally for people to play with, especially other trans women, but I've also been searching for advice on songwriting.

What I find really isn't helpful. For one, I am not starting with a melody; a ton of this content assumes you are.

Two, a lot of it just really doesn't discuss the- I guess philosophy and approach? Mechanically i'm already at a point where I can play a song, but I haven't been able to self-discover a process for taking my own material and whipping it into shape, and focusing it up?

I have very little formal music education, i've just been playing every day, pick up a chord or two as I experiment, and stringing together sounds that I like, but I'm really keen to find somebody or someone that can help me develop a more functional creative process, and I'm wondering if this comm might have anybody willing/able to help me work through this stuff?

video about how to microtune different synths

Been spending some time working on microtonal music; my next major release is going to be in 31-EDO, and this is the first single I've released in the tuning system. It's basically an étude composed exclusively around the Cmin7 chord in 31-EDO with some cloud generator shenanigans going on in the top-end. I've got some random chords playing periodically from a microtonal Hammond organ module, and a distorted bass drone under everything.

I feel like it strikes the right balance between serene and ominous; calm and disturbing

thelarchmage.bandcamp.com/track/float

To those who like dark ambient, I hope you enjoy!

thingy i made tonight. playing around with bit redux and mp3 compression to make things extra crunchy

edit: added bassline, original (harmony & drums) can be found here

I mean obviously there's Serum, Vital, and Phase Plant and all the popular ones, but what do you find yourself using?

My current rotation is:

• Phonec by Psychic Modulation. Really dreamy synth meant to sound like a nature documentary from 1984. Very Boards of Canada.

• Repro-5 by u-he. Really nifty emulation of the Prophet 5.

• VCV Rack. The best software version of a modular synthesizer rack around. You can get lost for hours in sound design. Also it's free!

• Dawesome Abyss. Honestly a little finicky and difficult to use but can make some super thick pads.

• QasarBeach by Adam Strange - It's free! Super crunchy recreation of a Fairlight CMI IIx. Probably the most impressive free softsynth I've ever used, and it's more than that! It has a tracker, waveform editor, sampler, a ton of stuff. The GUI is just beautiful. It's really really hard to use and clunky, but it's just got so much soul and love put into it that I can't help but poke around in it sometimes.

What do y'all enjoy using? Also this is a great comm idea and I hope we have lots of cool threads!