Life has an annoying habit of getting in the way.

Along with some personal family issues, I had two freelance clients decide that they wanted updates this week. That does put a crimp into the creativity time when it's needed to complete work for clients. I ended up completing that work early last night, and jumped back into my piece of music I've been building on with @LNADoesAudioStuff's 12 Days of Creativity Challenge. My previous blog entries were specific to the particular challenge I was working at that time, but this particular entry is going to wrap up the last few days all together. I'm writing this, having done (what I consider to be) steps 7 (vocal production), 8 (Arrangement), and 9 (Lifts, Drops, Swells, and Fills), and will publish this entry after completing 10 (Adding Life To Dry, Boring Production), 11 (Creative Automation), and 12 (How You Know When Your Track Is FINISHED!). I have to complete all of this tonight... after tending to some of the aforementioned family issues. Tomorrow is a friend's holiday party, and then it's Saturday, which is the last day of the challenge, and I need to submit my piece, for better or worse!

I feel like I was just here. And checking the date from the previous post you can see that I'm posting this on the same day.

This post should be a quickie; I'm working on Day 6, which are vocals. I started with the Emvoice One plugin, and after some trial and error, had a little vocal hook in place. It wasn't horrible... but it wasn't really doing it for me either. So I loaded Loopcloud, and after waiting for the update to install, and then having to go through and read the all the little tool tips that popped up regarding how to find and use the new features, I found a vocal track that fit in nicely (at least I think it fits in nicely) with my current little ditty.

Because I'm "behind" the challenge dates, I'm going to keep working and go right into Day 7. Which works well, as Day 7 is Vocal Processing. If I can complete Day 7's challenge, and Day 8's, I'll be caught up with the challenge. So... better get myself to it!

So, tomorrow, when Day 5 takes place, I'm going to challenge myself to complete that day's challenge. On time!!

That was written three days ago. So we can see how well that little challenge of mine went. I can make the usual excuses (work, chores around the house) and the not-so-usual excuses (holiday shopping, holiday parties), which are all true. But I could have found a half-hour here and there to complete - or at least work on - these challenges.

To that end, this morning, while still in my pajamas, I sat down with my coffee in hand, to work on the next challenge. I started working on a solo instrument, got a lick down, and then brought in the rest of the tracks to listen. And... something was off. Investigating what the discordance might be, I realized I'd recorded my lead in a different key. Whoops! Easy enough to fix. Then I took another listen, and while it was better, something was still off.

Turns out I had not one, but two other tracks in the wrong key. What the heck! So I fixed that up, made sure everything was in the right key, listened to my track and... wait. Why is the second note on my pluck bass not playing on the beat? And same with some other notes down the line?

After about 20 minutes or more, I finally realized I had STFU sitting on the Bass Group, which was ducking the pluck enough that it was very noticeable. Once that was removed and placed on the individual Glide Bass and Sub Bass tracks, everything sounded better!

Or did it? Everything sounded like it worked together, but now I didn't like my piano chords. Or my synth lead. Or... well, much of anything at all.

OK, well...

Shit.

Day four's challenge, the astute among you will notice, is Synths. And I spent a surprisingly long time on trying to get a sound that I was ok with. It didn't have to be perfect, but I wanted it to at least fit in with what I have so far. I'm a bit late in starting this challenge according to Liina's schedule: Step 4 was supposed to happen on the 6th of December, but here it is on the 7th (and, as I write this, about 8pm local time) and I'm just now finishing up. Going to have to be a bit more proactive and carve out time (instead of sitting in front of my iPad playing poker!). On her YouTube channel, Liina (LNA) wraps up this challenge's video with some thoughts about time. We're all given the exact same amount of time; do you want to spend it creating? Or yelling at the screen about why someone would call with only a pair of sixes and then winning when the last card is another six? (I may or may not be guilty of the yelling part). So, tomorrow, when Day 5 takes place, I'm going to challenge myself to complete that day's challenge. On time!!

This is my progress so far. Purple is my synth color, and Will from EDM Tips would say "it's the natural color of Synths in the wild" Not sure about that, but it's my color today. As stated, I spent a lot of the time trying to get a Polymer synth to sound right, and I just wasn't getting it to dial in like I wanted. I was loosely following along with the video tutorial LNA did, but after grouping two Polymers together, fixing each with their own EQ, Reverb, Delay, even some compression (which, honestly, is still a mystery to me), I gave up. Copied the notes to a new track and decided on a different synth. Pigments by Arturia is an all-around beast of a synth, and does wavetables as well. And after about 5 minutes, I was getting a sound much closer to what I had in my head. Sometimes you just have to pick the right tools.

Then it was a matter of picking notes that fit better, adding a few effects - I have a short reverb and a tiny bit of delay - and then messing around with the notes again. It's definitely not anywhere close to good, but you know what? I don't care at this point. It's at least not a complete train wreck and I'm building towards something. As a bonus, I'm getting some ideas of what would be a neat bit here and there when it comes to arranging.

Tomorrow's challenge is leads. I'm thinking an epic saw might do the trick. We'll have to see how it goes!

Last entry ended with me asking for some good vibes to be sent my way, as my audio had completely disappeared. Well, you all (all two of you maybe? Probably my wife and my mom) must've had the good mojo flowing, as once I came back to it, I not only managed to get by audio back, but it appears I now know what to do when I want to record audio from the computer while monitoring on headphones as well. Success! 🎉

While this entry won't have a video to go along with it, hopefully I'll manage to do that before this creativity challenge ends. Speaking of...

Day 3's challenge was chords. None of the sounds I picked resonated with me, so I followed along with Liina and loaded a piano sample to lay down the first attempt. I also used Bitwig's Polymer to load a wavetable to accompany the piano. This was supposed to be strictly chords, and for the piano, that's what I ended up with. The Polymer track turned more into a lead, or maybe something to accompany my plucky bass. Which, I discovered, isn't playing all the notes. Not exactly sure why, but I hope to come back to it. Delay offsetting, or LFO, or phasing, or...

This is the chain I have for the Polymer preset I picked, a pad called "Didgeripad". I mostly left it as is, though I did tweak a few parameters: The cutoff on the on the XP filter was raised a bit, boosted the input on the Compressor, and finally changed the delay from 4 right, 6 left, to 2 right, 6 left, and boosted the mix a bit. I have a feeling I'm going to come back to this and turn it into my lead, as opposed to accompanying chord instrument it originally set out to be. But music and creating is something that grows and flourishes and typically blossoms into more than what that seed of an idea expected to be. That's part of the beauty.