What the hell's a djembe? No, me neither. So it gets an airing in the intro. Tried to hit a just-behind-the-beat edginess to fit in with the just-behind-comfortable intent of the song. Titles are hard. *Tech Corner* More clangs and thuds…

A bit of Frankenstein of a song, lyrics cobbled from old lyric fragments, with variations on bass and melody and piano motifs, like I couldn't make my mind up where it was heading. Something about it, so has made the cut! *Tech Notes* Hmm…

The song's about betrayal: about mixing with the wrong crowd, who then drop you from a great height. It's a love song. Maybe I should find a twee skirmish instead of relying on that Muse. *Tech Notes* Hmm. The usual set of twenty-three sound…

The song started life as more sonic doodles using the Numanesque 1979 synth emulators -- so if you think it's 80s, you're a year out! Was also working on transitions from verse to chorus (as I've listened to too many fawmers doing this rather…

TL;DR: more guitary than my preferred synthery. With production practice too. --- For a recent collab, I undertook collation duties: mixing received stems without (hopefully) losing their original energy. Those stems were played on real instruments…

TL;DR: it's got percussion in it. I had an idea for percussion-heavy song: that I found tough to articulate because it's not a usual thing for me. More practice required. I dialled back the bpm as the percussion became (even more) a wall of…

This started out from some sound design doodlery. A couple of the synths I've been using have some non-standard routing options, so I've been getting better acquainted. They're not modular, though the Reason hosted stuff does have visible, virtual…

I sold my upright piano earlier this year: it had been underused for a while and my head's been buried in the DAW for a long time. So played arpeggios into DAW instead. Then quantised them within a inch of their lives. More doodles with the Backbone…

Ditty with jangles, bass and celloish thing (all Halion) and plenty of triplets. [Drum sounds from Groove Agent; edited using the new Drum Pattern editor. New for Cubase that is ... but every other DAW has had for 20 years, I suspect.] Vocal synths…

Hmm. The trigger was to use a random Wikipedia page [via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random ] -- it gave me a 1990s Brazilian film I'd never heard of. Although it sparked a song, the verses that more obviously related to the film got…

I'd been recommended some free plug-ins for DAWs. One of these plug-ins emulated synths from yesteryear that were bizarrely nostalgia inducing. Which led me down a path to a sort-of retro style song. It's possibly anachronistic: I didn't check…

Not _entirely_ sure where this came from, probably the muted trumpet sound, that's only possible to play in the wearing-a-black-turtle-neck style. Other motifs followed suit. 'Tis mainly from Cubase Halion sounds ... Reason double bass, and…

TL;DR: the song's about waiting too long to do the right thing ... and then still choosing to ignore it when you get the chance. Last autumn, I spent too long polishing production & sound design at the expense of, amongst other things…

TL;DR: this is a synth-pop track about being true to yourself. For the last couple of days of January, I'd been listening to Pete Shelley's "Homosapien"¹, on repeat, like a deranged teenager. The idea was to overdose on a song I liked, so that…

A mention to freesounds.org -- a hole full of rabbits and, um, a Portland Ferry. The ferry's foghorn makes an appearance on this track: a love song. Elsewhere there's the usual synthery -- including Vocaloid vocal synth -- plus some orchestral…

*Lyrics* Looking down at the scars Seeing bars on your window There's a beauty In the broken life I see Don't cover the tears Glory in your flawed story Scratch the surface To let it bleed Roll up your sleeves We choose to sing…

This song had been a "fragment" for a couple of years -- a state the befalls many an aspiring melodic doodle, sound design or chord cadence. This time, the glockenspiel melody that formed the initial draft had another iterative polish, together…

If I'm being kind to myself, I'll say that I wrote this in a "through-composed" style. Truth is it probably required another verse etc., to nudge the song's story along and provide some semblance of structure. Instead, I was enjoying myself adding…

With thanks to FBJ Matt [https://fatboyjamz.bandcamp.com/] for the title, which inspired the lyrics and overall intent. The vocals are largely from synths (I input the melody and lyrics, the synth -- Vocaloid in this case -- generates the tone…

I don't sing many songs: this one's a duet with Sarah, who _can_ hold a note. Piano sound from Verve (the plug-in, not the band). I like the affected sounds: like socks & nails stuffed in the wires. Wonky zither from Vital, drone from x…