Post your songs!

[rio]

hey ToyKeeper,

after I could hear the songs in peace at home - here are some thoughts about it:

easy does it draft 1:  these are really nice lead sounds and melodies that you created there. The recording sounds a bit overdriven, but maybe it was your intention. Personally, I think it would sound better, if not so distorted - especially in the bass area, there is a lot lost by that. You can certainly rasp at one point or another, otherwise thats quite passable... I would cut it a bit more. The combination of the bass melody with the lead sounds is really cool ...

digitest 1: is the arpeggio sound by atmegatron? it sounds nice melodic ... although the part is quite strong. the other sounds in the background are not bad either;)

...do not misunderstand me - I really like both tunes;)

[ToyKeeper]

hey ToyKeeper,

after I could hear the songs in peace at home - here are some thoughts about it:

easy does it draft 1:  these are really nice lead sounds and melodies that you created there. The recording sounds a bit overdriven, but maybe it was your intention. Personally, I think it would sound better, if not so distorted - especially in the bass area, there is a lot lost by that. You can certainly rasp at one point or another, otherwise thats quite passable... I would cut it a bit more. The combination of the bass melody with the lead sounds is really cool ...

digitest 1: is the arpeggio sound by atmegatron? it sounds nice melodic ... although the part is quite strong. the other sounds in the background are not bad either;)

...do not misunderstand me - I really like both tunes;)

Thanks for listening!  It really does mean a lot.  Also, sorry for the delay...

Let's see...  the main instrument in both songs is the "atmegabrute", which is two synths going through a delay effect.  The Atmegatron provides a chiptune sound, which is routed into a Microbrute as an external oscillator.  The Microbrute mixes this with a folded triangle wave, a PWM'd square wave, and an octave-lower sub-oscillator.  The mix goes through a variable resonant filter, then to a beat-matched delay effect.

To shape the sound, I only modified three parameters while recording:
* Atmegatron volume (from zero to massively overdriven)
* Sub-oscillator volume (from zero to massively overdriven)
* Filter base frequency (on mod wheel)

This provided three dimensions worth of expressive space to explore.  Most of it relied heavily on overdriven waveforms with the edge taken off by a filter...  because overdriven distorted basslines are what the Microbrute really excels at.  That's why all its knobs go up to 200%, and why it has a "brute factor" knob to feed the signal into itself.  I have the line in adjusted similarly, so the Atmegatron hits full volume a bit less than halfway up, and then gets distorted as I turn it up further.

As long as I'm using an intentionally-dirty analog subtractive synth, I'm making its spectrum very messy and cutting or emphasizing the relevant frequencies pretty heavily.

[ToyKeeper]

Much of the reason for the delay earlier is because I wanted to finish the song.  So earlier this week I decided to give it another try, using the Digitakt to do drums and MIDI sequencing.  This time things went much better.  The Atmegatron still helped make a nice dirty growling bassline, but I ended up using other instruments for the other parts because I only have one Atmegatron and it's all played realtime.

So here is "Easy Does It", finally finished:

https://youtu.be/9uHgZqewFFE

I would love to hear what people think of this.  It's my first attempt at making an actual song on a hardware sequencer, driving other synths in real time.

[rio]

OK - Great. I'll listen to it in my studio this evening ... cool that you always technically explain your stuff

I now use various delays in my setup too (uploading a picture of my setup would probably not a bad idea - even composing a new song ) ... One of the delay is analogue - others are emulating the analog sound. Thus I have a delay behind each of atmegatron and odytron ... but these are used wisely;)

Greetings,
rio

[rio]

Great tune

...you can also push it up on soundcloud - if you like.

PS: the credits are !

Greetings, rio

[ToyKeeper]

I made another thing.  Just a quick sketch, really, but it's a NES-styled 8-bit tune so it's kind of relevant.

https://youtu.be/Bn-9-TCXg7M

I mostly made it to get the idea written down, so I can go back and finish it later.  But then the Smash Ultimate trailer came out, so I tried their thing with my thing...  and it fits!

Nothing fancy, no effects -- just square waves, some vibrato, and drums.  I find I really like prototyping songs that way.  It keeps the emphasis on melodic composition instead of patch design, and a square wave has a rich set of harmonics so I can really hear which notes fit together and which don't.

[beyondch]

thanks for sharing songs here, I play guitar but I do not sing.

[Antron4.2.0]

Here's a silly little sequence i did with the oscitron and an arturia microbrute. also featuring Boss DR-202 and my Korg prologue 

https://soundcloud.com/antron420/the-north-02

[ToyKeeper]

Here's a silly little sequence i did with the oscitron and an arturia microbrute. also featuring Boss DR-202 and my Korg prologue 

https://soundcloud.com/antron420/the-north-02

That's a really relaxing tune to listen to on repeat.  It's simple, but has a good ebb and flow which makes it nice in the background without making the ears tired.

[paulsoulsby]

really nice!

[ToyKeeper]

I haven't been around much lately...  was procrastinating about music because I was frustrated with my process.  Doing all the sequencing with hardware is a nice idea, but in practice I've found it really limits what I can do.  So I finally broke down and tried a DAW seriously for the first time.  I'm basically just using it to record and arrange clips from hardware... no VSTs or effects or anything.

This is my first song in Reaper.  It uses my "Atmegabrute" thing for the bass and guitar parts, which are literally all the melodic parts except for some backing chords.  And I had the Atmegatron turned up relatively high (to put it mildly), so it's contributing most of the sound in this particular mix.

It's not a pure Atmegetron sound, since I put it through a resonant filter and four different stages of overdrive... once on the Microbrute's input level, once with the "brute" knob, and at two gain stages on my cheap analog mixer.  But still.  Most of this song is technically coming from a Soulsby synth.  The 'brute doesn't sound anywhere near as nice without the Atmegatron screaming into it. 

"Four Chords Explored"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1oG4doeghA