Today was all 'bout that bass (bass, bass, bass, bass), and I ended up with three different instruments filling the role. I have a glide bass utilizing Bitwig's Phase 4 instrument, a sub using Serum, and a plucky bass with some delay, also using Serum. Nothing too special here. The glide and sub are sharing the same notes, while the pluck is doing some on-and-off beat stabs. It's also sitting an octave higher (sub not shown).

I imagine I'll be working this bass pattern a bit more, but the goal of following along with this challenge is to complete a track. I'll never get anything done if I spend all my creative energy tweaking sounds and trying different patterns. Yes, that's an important part of music, but I tend to get distracted rather easily. So I need to get these ideas down to where they're good enough in an expedient manner. They don't have to be perfect, or even great.

In somewhat related news, I now have no audio coming from my speakers. 🤦‍♂️

In trying to get my Screenflow software working properly so I could record my process, I somehow managed to bork the whole setup. I'm trying to record my screen along with computer audio, while monitoring the audio on my headphones (which are connected directly to my Mac). It seems I can either get sound through the headphones, but Screenflow doesn't capture the audio in the recording, OR I don't get sound through my headphones but the screen recording DOES have audio. And then, after about an hour of fussing with it (and several reboots), I discovered I have no sound what-so-ever.

At that point I just decided to take a break, write up this blog post and tackle it again in a couple of hours. Please send me some good vibes that I'll get this sorted!

Day 1 of the 12 Days of Creativity starts off with the foundation of pretty much all EDM, drums. As I don't know what sort of piece I'm creating yet, I'm going with a typical four-on-the-floor type of beat, at 128bpm.

One of the (many) challenges I've had when creating is getting lost in the myriad of sounds I've curated over the years. I've yet to really organize my drum hits, and if you were to look in my favorites, I have all of three, and all of them are kicks. So I started there. I auditioned the three kicks (didn't take long!) and then moved on. This is going to be my kick, this is what I'm going to work with, onto the next piece of the kit.

The only real pattern I had in mind, was an off-beat hi-hat. So that went in on the "and" of the "one-e-and-a" when counting. And after the kick and hat, what would you think is typically next? If you said snare, you'd be right! (I would've accepted clap as well 😉)

After the snare, I started filling in the spaces; added a shaker, an open hat, ride cymbal, and three different congas. I don't want to overwhelm myself, and I think it's fairly busy as it is. The thought process behind this is to add bits and pieces of this kit in, one at a time, until eventually they're all a part of the song. The whole composition won't be this busy. Hopefully!

Once I had a pattern that I was OK with, I started trying to give it a bit more life, so to speak. To make it sound less robotic, I've introduced various velocity levels on the congas, shakers, ride, and snare. The kick I left as is. After velocity, I played with the panning a bit, but tried not to go too crazy. Congas are where I spent most of that effort, and the shaker received a bit of the same treatment. I also nudged the midi notes off the grid in places.

And to get a bit weird and goofy, I did one last thing: In my snare effects chain, I have a distortion device. Bitwig (my DAW of choice. For the moment.) has wonderful modulators. I attached a random modulator to the Bell Filter Frequency and have it bouncing around the spectrum and it mixes up the sound quite nicely. Definitely makes it more interesting!

That's about it. I have a nice four-bar loop, and I've completed Day 1. Huzzah! 🎉

I follow many YouTube channels from creative types, mostly in the electronic music space. Easily one of my top five favorites -- LNA Does Audio Stuff -- is holding a "Creativity Challenge" for the month of December. From the Challenge site:

12 Days of creativity is a production challenge, designed to help, guide, and inspire music makers to finish their songs. The intent is to challenge producers and musicians to finish a track in 12 - steps during December. It is based on creative workflows, proven to enhance confidence in the artists' skills and creativity, as well as limit insecurities during and after the process.

I'm going to give this a shot, and I'm going to (attempt to) track my progress here. I have too many DAWs, more VST plugins than I should, and a ton of samples along with a subscription to Loopcloud. For all that, I don't have a single complete song. I have a ton of ideas, four- and eight-bar loops, even a piece that's close to a minute long... but nothing that's actually complete.

I hope to change that with this challenge. I don't expect the finished piece I come up with to be any good. I just want something that actually sounds like a complete song: Intro, buildup, chorus, drop, outro... you get the idea.

So here we go, with fingers crossed (though that makes working the keyboard tricky). First up: Drums!

In one of my previous entries, I mentioned that I have a hard time getting better than proficient at something:

one of my bigger shortcomings -- at least in my eyes ( and if you think there are other, bigger ones, please keep it to yourself, thank you very much) -- is my lack of digging deeper and really getting to know how to work with, and learn what it is I'm tinkering with. So lately I've been trying to focus on just one Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). I've been working with Bitwig, because it's still fairly new (v3.0.3 as of this writing), and somewhere down the road I'd like to be someone other people turn to to learn this software. Then I can brag about how I've been using Bitwig since v1.0. I even have the badge to prove it. A bit childish and maybe narcissistic, sure... but it's the small things.

Like any piece of creative software, whether it be Affinity's Photo or Designer, Scrivener, or Ableton Live (Bitwig's main competitor in the DAW field), they're all easy enough to do something basic up front, but the real power comes from digging deeper, and learning the ins-and-outs of the software. And of course, the more one digs, the more complicated the software can become. Bitwig is no different, so I've been trying to break it down into smaller bits, making the knowledge easier to digest. The smaller bits also help with trying to keep focus, an issue I'm constantly struggling with.

I'm not, however, taking a very practical approach. It would make sense to start at a high level, learning the basic interface to an expert level. I know the basics well enough to feel comfortable working through the project.

For some reason, "Classical Gas", that catchy guitar piece by Mason Williams has been in my WinAmp player a lot lately. I have versions done by Chet Atkins, California Guitar Trio, and The Boston Pops. I just can't get enough of this song at the moment.

Spent the weekend either riding or cleaning. And getting my butt whooped at Starcraft. I packed the bike and did a quick 100 mile run, getting the kinks outta the packing job. Don't want to have a load shift on me as I'm doing 70mph down a freeway somewhere. That wouldn't be good!!

Countdown - 2 days, 21 hours, 35minutes.

And it'll probably seem like 2 days, 21 hours, and 350000 minutes.