sketchandjam

Look how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold: There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins; Such harmony is in immortal souls; But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it. Just a little tribute to the concept of Harmonices Mundi but with a #synthwave vibe to it. Music was composed in #MPC and mastered in #cakewalk with the 3d visuals created in #3dsmax and rendering in #vray Thanks for looking :-)

Emotions are swelling over a disagreement. Both sides say no in various ways and will not budge on their points of contention. As the debate rages on various forms of debate are thrown at one another with wildly spiraling out of control illogical conclusions. As the flame war of words gets more intense the world begins collapsing in on itself and there is a complete meltdown between both parties. This is the soundtrack of the impartial observer of these two forces meeting each other. Music was composed in MPC and Cakewalk. Visuals were created in 3ds Max and Vray with Tyflow particles. Thanks for watching :-)

Here is an improvisation on my G&L ASAT 30th anniversary edition guitar. For this one I just set a metronome to 114bpm and played whatever came to mind. It ended up kind of structured with a rhythm interlude that I was able to remember a few times throughout the song. Once the clean guitar signal was recorded I added a few different effects via bias fx 2 and guitar rig 6. I did a bit of signal stacking and blending to get a wall of sound during the rhythm portions. For the imrovisation portions I had a dotted eight delay with another reverb signal blended together to get a big ambient sound. I used a couple different drum sets from ez drummer including a wood hut action drum set and a big rock drum set for the majority of the song. After tapping in the different drum beats in midi on my akai mpk mini I combined the different drum patterns to make the rhythm. Overall it came out pretty ambient and sort of grungy. I imagined this is what talking plasma might sound like if they tried beaming lasers together to make music. That's all for now, thanks for listening :-) #midimonday #teletuesday #glguitars

My tennis elbow has finally healed and I am able to play my guitar again. Time to wipe the dust and grime off my partsocaster and do a jam. For this one I just made a simple midi drum pattern in ezdrummer then played whatever came to mind directly into my audio interface. Later I sliced up the guitar into different tracks with some step sequencer and envelope effects to create more of a rhythm to the song. I also refined the drum beats to match the guitar parts better. Overall this jam is somewhat experimental but it turned out pretty good for not having played guitar for the past few months. Thanks for listening :-) #partsocaster #midimonday #improvisation

People are feeling green around the gills everywhere. They have a sense of deja vu and feel like their lives are repeating endlessly. Meanwhile a visitor from another dimension has paused the space time continuum to experiment on a set of biological organisms over and over again to see what they are made out of... Thanks for listening :-) Original music created in MPC and Cakewalk 3d graphics made in 3ds max and vray #midimonday

There is a whispering in your ear and you turn around and see something starting to manifest in the darkness. You try and move but are completely paralyzed. Transfixed you can only stare into the darkness as an entity appears with huge eyes. Suddenly you are getting all sorts of telepathic messages inside your head. There is no way your conscious mind can take this and you pass out leaving only your subconscious mind to absorb the huge data download. Eventually as you go on through life the reptoid spirit guide will manifest again and reveal the meaning of the content download as you need to use it. #reptoid #trance #synthwave

A strange ancient lamp has been discovered in an underground warehouse. You won this thing in a blind auction now do you give it a rub and see if a genie comes out to grant wishes? You do and a horrific looking demonic djinn appears to grant you four wishes. Your subconscious tells you its a trap but your conscious mind is greedy for all the things you might wish for. You decide to wish for unlimited wealth and suddenly find yourself turned into a set of lasers that create cold fusion.... Womp that was a poor choice, didn't even get past the first wish. The Djinn now returns to rest in his everlasting sarcophagus of the golden lamp.

You are shuffling through an old cardboard box in the attic and find some VHS tapes that the leak in the ceiling damaged. For nostalgia's sake you take one of the VHS tapes and unravel the tape and rewind it inside the casing. Next you borrow your neighbor's VHS player and see what was on the tape. The water has damaged the color and there are some noise artifacts in the footage but you can barely make out a sunset on a California beach in the early 80s. Now you remember the surfing road trip you took when you were much younger and all the great times you had camping next to your old VW bus. Though the footage is damaged it has awakened the memory and the images are clear in your mind. Happy #synthsaturday

Monday is just around the corner and all I have to look forward to is another commute into work. At least I get to compose another #synthwave song on my laptop via my Akai MPK Mini on the way into work. This one has a sort of atmospheric trance feel to it with elements of trap in the drums. For the video I just held my phone against the window of the train to catch Chicago covered in snow in the early morning. That's all for now, thanks for watching :-) #originalmusic

I was playing around with the OPx4 synth and found a preset that sounds quite a bit like a voice mumbling random things in a sort of mysterious way. I built off the sound of this synth to make a sort of dark industrial trance style song. It turned out kind of spooky sounding so I named it incantation and combined it with some of my ball point pen drawings of eyes. Perhaps this could go well as a soundtrack to a movie where some kind of incantation is taking place that calls in creatures from another dimension... That's all for now, thanks for listening :-)

There is an object up in the sky guided by a sentient being. It is doing weird things and acting strange. Is it friend or foe? Perhaps if you step into the light beam underneath it you can find out more.... Whiirrrr bleeep beam now you've been teleported onto the strange object in the sky. Huge eyes are looking at you and approaching with various metallic tools. You find yourself unable to move as something is being implanted underneath your skin... Hours later you wake up in a field next to a mutilated cow with no memory of where the time went... Years later hypnosis will uncover what really happened on the strange object in the sky.

This is the soundtrack to the Lemon Racer, the story about an aspiring race car driver in the 80s saving up all his money to buy a fast car so he can enter into competitions. The lemon racer is on the auction block and it is being sold for a bargain price. Lights, sounds and the auctioneer's voice are hyping this thing as the next winner, will you place your bid on this lemon racer? Will FOMO get the best of you? Boom you place your bid and win. Now you can start taking this thing out on the track to see it work. But wait on starting it up there is a slight knock in the engine... Oh well maybe it will be fine, probably just a new car sound right? Then on acceleration the wheels are out of alignment and lock every few seconds... Maybe its just a glitch that will go away. The race is in five minutes anyway... The race has started and you hit the pedal hard but instead crawl at a medium speed... Meanwhile all the other cars are zooming past you in a blur. After a while the engine starts smoking and sparks start flying. Perhaps now the goal is to at least make one lap around the track without getting hit by other cars.... From here on out you will be nicknamed the Lemon Racer even if you are driving the best car. Should have bought that old tractor instead and became a farmer. #synthwave

Here is another original synthwave instrumental I made in MPC and Cakewalk. This one has quite a few different synths including Opx-4, Hype, Stratum, Loom, Mellotron, Tuebsynth and some others. Drums are a mix of an 80s sample kit and a lofi glitch kit. The feel of this composition has some late 80s era retro vibes to it so I called it the Neon Aeon when everything futuristic had to have neon in it. Think of the first Tron movie and the bulky old fashioned synth keyboards they had back then. Now its super easy to modify synth sounds and make something unique quickly vs trying to record to tape and do effects via a mixing board. That's all for now, thanks for listening :-) #synthwave #vaporwave #mpc

Here is a little song I put together to help put my baby to sleep at night. She seems to like lofi music and the Hypha plugin is perfect for adding some textural sounds to lull the baby to sleep. I composed the majority of the song in mpc 2 using instruments like Stratum, Hype and Tubesynth. Drums are some lofi samples by AIr and the lead and rhythm synths are via Hypha. I may do a series of lofi lullabies to keep this baby asleep at night using Hypha. Thanks for listening :-) #lofi #mpc #hypha

Here is another composition I made on my Akai mini keyboard on my commute into work. This one kind of has elements of trap, trance, synthwave and electronica in general with a long meandering mood to it hence the name Endless Cycles. Some of the plugins I used are Air Bassline for bass, Hype for the large ambient wash and Eighty Eight for the piano. Thanks for listening :-) #electronica #synthwave #trance

Here is a synthwave instrumental I made in MPC 2 via some samples and tube synths. The bass is done via a plugin called Stratum and the leads are various permutations of the Hybrid synth and a Tubesynth. The mood of the song is somewhat gloomy and dark that matched a video I took out the window of my train on my way home. Thanks for listening :-) #synthwave #retrosynth #mpc #trap

Here is a little instrumental synthwave composition I made on my Akai MPK Mini in MPC 2 on my commute to work. It sort of has an 80s mood to it that reminded me of driving around at night in the city. Thanks for listening :-)

Here is a little frantic synth composition I created while commuting on the train this week. I made it just in time for the holidays where everyone is encouraged to rack up as much credit card debt as possible. We all get bombarded by ads and sales this time of year, just remember the original holidays we are trying to celebrate rather than the incorporated ones lol. Thanks for listening :-)

Here is a bit of footage and a soundtrack for an office drone heading back home from work. I composed the song via my Akai MPK Mini and MPC 2 while commuting on the train to work. After speeding up my walking to the train video it seemed to match the beat of this song well. This one sort of has an 80s vibe to it with some vintage sounding synths as the rhythm and lead along with the drums. The bass is a bit more modern sounding. Thanks for listening :-)

Here is a little instrumental darkwave song I composed on my commute into work on the train. I used my akai mpk mini midi controller with MPC 2 to compose the beats. Later I mixed it with some additional effects in cakewalk to space out the tracks and master the overall song a bit. It has a gloomy mood to it so I named it gloam and place some cloud footage to go along with it. That's all for now, thanks for watching and listening :-)

Here's a weird one for you. This is a combination of a gopro timelapse of my guppy tank with some strange blue, orange and purple tail guppies that kind of remind me of late 90s era goths. Once I took the video I decided to whip up a little gothic sounding song on my akai mpk mini and mpc 2 to go along with their sort of frantic nature in the video. You can see the guppies swarming around looking for food along with the blue beta fish and some snails. Sadly the loaches in the tank didn't make an appearance as they usually just hide under the moss until feeding time. Maybe next time I'll submerge the whole gopro and see if I can see them from that angle. That's all for now, thanks for looking :-)

Here's a little akai mpk mini jam I made in MPC 2 on my commute to work. I also took a little gopro footage of my walk around downtown to go along with the tempo of the song. In the end all the industrious office drones are busy speeding off to be the engine of the economy. Thanks for listening :-) #industrial #trance #mpc

Here is a trance style song I composed on my commute into the city via MPC 2 and my Akai MPK Mini midi controller. I combined a few different drum samples with a few synths and piano and did the overall mix in cakewalk and adobe audition. The video footage is from my commute on the Chicago water taxi. In the big city you feel like an ant in an ant farm rushing off to do your next task. That's all for this #synthsaturday thanks for listening :-) #mpc #trancemusic

Here is another song I composed on my commutes into the city. I use my akai mpk III as the midi controller and mpc 2.0 as the daw. After about a week its easy to get a song put together with various drums and synths. Later on I export each track to master it in cakewalk with better plugins. This one had a sort of sunset feel to it so I put it over some video I took in the upper peninsula off of lake Michigan. Thanks for listening and happy #synthsaturday #mpc

This jam started out as an experiment on my akai mpk mini where I was playing around with the Xpand!2 synth plugin. Xpand!2 is pretty fun as you can stack various synths over each other and create an interesting dimensional sound. Once I got the synth stack right I just riffed out a few phrases on the keyboard then started adding in tracks on top. The first layer was the bass and then I added in the drums via the dreampop ezx plugin by toontrack. From there I added in the guitars and used a mixture of bias fx 2 and guitar rig 6 to get the various tones. That's all for now thanks for watching :-) #synthrock #mpc