The final composition became 3 minutes and 23 seconds long track pending between jungle, IDM and electronica.

Another way of stepping out of my comfort zone and pushing creative boundaries was certainly the amount of time spent creating this track. I have recorded, arranged and mixed this track over period of few days and total amount of hours spent on production is somewhere between 24 and 30. This is way less than I would usually dedicate to a track because I can easily come back and forth to a sound or music piece and work on it for months.

The deadline definitely pushed me to make sharp and quick creative decisions and not to overthink certain moves. Creating this track was very inspirational and made me to consider recording the full album leaning towards IDM glitchy compositions based on electroacoustic recording of organic sounds and field recordings.

The final mixdown has been another challenge since for that purpose I have used a different DAW than Ableton Live which I have been using for mixing as well. For mixing I have chosen Pro Tools and this track became my very first project mixed in Pro Tools.

Since I have focused on most of the sound design and recording quality samples at the very beginning mixing session happened to be rather pleasant and very subtle polishing job.

I have mostly adjusted only volume levels of tracks, added compression on the drum group and EQ on few selected track where I felt that certain frequency needs enhancement as well as maybe a bit different colour of sound and improved automation of panning on glitchy sounds.

I have left of course the head room of -6dB.

For arrangement of the composition and creating the sound design I have used Ableton Live 10. I have attempted to make the whole composition quite minimal with not too many tracks and instruments. For example I kept the drum rack as a single track and focused on levels and sound design before hand in order to leave it in the mix as a single track. I used six effects on Send/Return channels in order to enhance instruments and create the space within the track.

Creating quite fast percussion (170 BPM) together with layer of delay gave to the composition quite a jungle feel and manipulating samples from duct tape with grain delay and pitch shifting them created glitchy layers which brought the track closer to the realm of IDM.

For the melodic part I have decided to use my home made modular synthesizer connected to controller Arturia Beatstep Pro in order to create various sequences. The main theme of the track is a simple sequence originated in the single oscillator with a saw wave evolving through the low pass filter into the climax where sequence became groovy by adjusting the attack (from short to long) of ADSR envelope. Second synth layer of ‘bell’ sounds is a single oscillator this time with a triangle wave. ‘Horn’ sound is again simple saw wave recorded and pitched down enhanced by very long reverb. Envelope on filter of horn sound is manipulated manually by hand during recording.

To the start I created quite minimalistic drum kit from recorded samples of only few items which were present in my room. Kicks and toms were made from hitting empty laundry basket with mallet sticks and hats were made from ceramic tea pot.

I have recorded the sound of duct tape at the moment with no clear idea how I will use it. I simply enjoyed the sound and its texture when the tape was being stretched and peeled. I have used the tape sound later as a miscellaneous glitchy textures throughout the composition.

For recording of every single sample I have used Condenser stereo microphone sets listed below. I have compared how they sound and chosen various sample based on personal preference.

AKG C414 Condenser Stereo Microphone set generally appeared to catch more high mids and high frequencies and AKG C451 Condenser Mic Stereo set was richer in the low end.

I have uploaded selected samples into a Drum Rack in Live and added various effects in order to enhance their sound. Started with EQ, added various amounts of compression on kicks and toms by using Drum Buss compressor and added some colour by using Amp as a distortion. I also achieved interesting sounds bending the pitch of various samples either steadily or on timeline with automation (mainly with the glitch sounds).

Our collective release will consist from various sonic works summarised under common collectively agreed concept – stepping out of our comfort zone.

I have been questioning what it will means for me as a sonic artist and music producer and couldn’t find the solution for quite a while. Then I have realised that I should probably create something different than I usually tend to create whilst also use different techniques, different instruments and tools as well as divert myself from the usual sound which I naturally incline to.

My usual music production could be described as dark experimental electronics leaning into industrial with a lot of ritualistic percussion. It has usually very slow BPM, a lot of metallic sounds, deep atmospheric ambience and not really a firm structure in terms of composition.

As an example you can listen to the EP ‘Theatre of Plague’ released on The Judgement Hall Records in 2022 below:

I have decided to create something where I will do the most of steps and creative decisions in exactly opposite way than I would normally do, think or would be drawn to.

I have recorded my own samples from very few items present in my room at the very moment and used as least instruments possible. In terms of composition I decided to make something adhering to the grid and following bars in contrary to less structured tracks, with use of absolutely no metallic but rather organic sounds. I also went for way more faster BPM than usual.