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JUNE Composition Challenge


lurksalot
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Many congrats to @Dad3353for the win in May.

Another quality delivery from Douglas earns him the honour to provide the inspiration for this one.

And it is a cracker 

royaldeluxemaxppp.thumb.jpg.d409e133cd24f2bd19090f48a7766be3.jpg

 

 

I think this will provide some food for thought!

 

Usual rules apply. You know the drill:

✔️ Entries must be <5 minutes and written/recorded this month.

 No illegal samples, copyright infringements or other snide goings-on

 Bagpipes. please no bagpipes,spring bank holiday truce now Expired. panpipes only if you have too.

 No voting for your own entry. We'll know. And we'll shame you.

A line or two offering an insight to your inspiration will be good as well , it works nicely on the voting thread.

 

Deadline wise , we will follow the season and call midnight on Mid Summers Day , and yes, yet again, you probably have till about 19.00 on the 25th, ( the clue given here is that Mid Summers day is the 24th) but wow, that means that the year is flying past .

As the challenge is starting on national say something nice day " I love you all "  now go get busy :sun_bespectacled:

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5 hours ago, lurksalot said:

Something similar if not the very same in Liverpool a few years ago 

R91KekF.gif

It's pretty unique; it must be the same one; they added elephants and giraffes later. Bloomin' crazy, in the nicest possible way. B|

But anyway ...

Edited by Dad3353
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Here is my contribution to the June 2021 Basschat Composition Challenge, inspired by a picture chosen by the previous winner: myself..!
Down to the sea goes Brittany, to listen to the waves, gulls, passing ships with their sirens and horns blaring occasionally. Inspired by the festive ambiance (although it may rain...), she dances, waiting for her uncle, the diver, to immerge from the salt water.
Recommended to be listened to on decent headphones, quite loud, but not so loud as to be uncomfortable, naturally.
As seems to be my wont, I sit down and try out a few things, sticking samples, licks, riffs and rhythms into Reaper, and suddenly I can't stop until it's finished, and I'm surprised myself when I listen back to it all. All of this is samples, coerced into partnership, sometimes against their will, but it seems to work, goodness knows how. Some very slight automation tweaking with the levels and a spot of reverb, and that's about it. A couple of compressors are in play; all is standard Cockos (Reaper...) Fx. That's all, folks.
Thanks for listening, if you already have; if you're about to, enjoy.

Edit : I've re-rendered the piece through a newly-acquired Abbey Road TG Mastering Chain, using the Pop & Dance preset; it's brought out a fair bit of detail, improving it enough to keep, I think, so I've replaced the file.

 

 
 
 

 

Edited by Dad3353
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I've done some piano noodles (or are they doodles?) in the style of "My First Book of Jazz", plus some funky electric piano and clav, with an idea for wah guitar too... Drum programming, bass and search for horn samples next. Not sure if working the opposite way round from my norm will require more or less glitter and coats of varnish?

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18 hours ago, Leonard Smalls said:

...more or less glitter and coats of varnish?

Definitely more glitter. One can never have too much glitter in these circumstances. Thick varnish, too, help a lot. When I say 'thick', I really mean 'very thick indeed'.  And did I mention 'more glitter'..? :|

Edited by Dad3353
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  • 2 weeks later...

Hello fellow bass chatters.

My music isn’t all that good and I’m totally self taught so feel free to bear that in mind. Nonetheless making music is one of my main pleasures in life and who knows maybe someday it won’t all be shite.

 

Wrote this yesterday anyway after a week of Irish staycation:

https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/2KKqkidj4ZTNPhaZA

 

Cheers

Pete

Edited by DubDelay
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Talking of funky thing to play with, here's a funkyjazzy little thing which started with the piano solo bit in the middle musing on just what sort of party Mrs Gulliver might be travelling to with all her little mates.

Basses used are ACG and Lightwave fretless, piano and keys sounds are Ableton's own or Addictive Keys, guitar is a Strat, drums are by Clyde Stubblefield and me via EZ Drummer and horns are loops edited from Loopcloud. 

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It's a great picture and I was not sure whether I was amused, intrigued or a little freaked out by it.  I started a little ditty but I'm going on holiday tomorrow and won't get a chance to finish it off. It's a bit Arctic Monkeys and for anyone that's interested I went down the freaked out route.  I'll try to finish it off and put it on Soundcloud when I get back.

Lyrics are here.

Spoiler

She’s running on empty

Her dress was slightly short 

And inappropriately tarty

For a sophisticated

Early evening cocktail party

 

It seemed that love and tenderness 

Weren’t that important to her

As she looked around the crowded room 

And necked another Stella

 

And she’s running on empty

It’s clear to see

She’s running on empty

Emotionally

 

Her eyes were slightly vacant

As if she’d had some issues

Her mascara had been smudged 

Where she wiped away tears with tissues

 

I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her

As she grabbed at the lapels

Of a man ten years her senior

Who clearly heard alarm bells,  ringing

 

I didn’t want to get involved

To show her any sympathy

I gave a wide berth

In case she did the same to me

 

And she’s running on empty

It’s clear to see

She’s running on empty

Emotionally

 

 

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I thought I'd better get in with at least a day or two to spare, especially given Lurks' habit of making the deadline into some kind of puzzle... 😁

For the voting thread:

I've tried to be a lot more direct again this month, and to come up with something that relates directly to the picture... a giant puppet girl taking huge steps, like a nice big ONE on the first beat, and all the little people buzzing around pulling the strings in between. It did come out with a slightly dark feel, but then who knows what a giant puppet girl is really thinking or planning?

And the gory details...

obviously a bit electronic this month, but not programmed. The drums are straight Groove Monkee through Studio Drummer, the bass is real, it's on both sides and one is side just dry with the other through a Source Audio Ultrawave which fits in nicely with the other instruments. The rest is all played on keys through various things, apart from the guitar bit, and the vox which is my voice thankfully well hidden. The effects on the guitar and vox are played on the keyboard as well (NI "The Finger" on guitar and "The Mouth" on vox). Very little else on top once I played with the instrument sounds to make the fit together, Infected Mushroom Pusher seemed to suit the sounds so I used that for a bit of a final "squash".

One question, @Dad3353 how do you make the picture come out the way you want in the embedded soundcloud player?

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23 minutes ago, adamg67 said:

One question ...

The simple answer is ... I cheat. I pop the pic into Photoshop, and extend the 'canvas' upwards by about a third. This comes out as ...

sDhKDAG.jpg

... and that's what I load up into Soundcloud. ;)

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4 hours ago, Dad3353 said:

The simple answer is ... I cheat. I pop the pic into Photoshop, and extend the 'canvas' upwards by about a third. This comes out as ...

[ snip ]

... and that's what I load up into Soundcloud. ;)

Ah, got it, that makes sense as I couldn't see any other way to do it, SoundCloud want you to upload a square photo but the player always chops it into a wide-screen one.

Edited by adamg67
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OK, here's this months composition.

 

Inspiration was thinking about the puppet and how she may not want to be controlled, but to be free. Then I though that the people on the ground are not free either... they have to follow directives to synchronise the movements. So I named the song Autonomy and stole a short phrase ("I want you") from the Buzzcocks song of the same name.

Gear wise, same as before - Studio One DAW, Shure 58 Mic, Vox Standard 25 Guitar, Squier Tele, Vantage Bass, Studio One Farfisa keyed with a Akai Mini-Play, Studio-One drum set programmed via piano roll.

 

Lyrics in spoiler

Spoiler

Now I've come of age I do things on my own
Please don't pull my ropes I want to act alone

I want you , I need you
Now I know I can achieve
Automony *3

Don't tell me what to do that is not your role
Now I've broken free I've got self control

I want you , I need you
Now I know I can get
Autonomy *3 Don't want you controlling me

Edited by Nail Soup
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This one took a few turns on me to be honest but I settled on a very simple approach .

unsurprisingly I settled on a purely string theme and had a driving rhythm to provide the traction , lighter touches to add movement and the idea of kids playing to tie it together, all a bit loose , but I thought it suited better. 

 

Ibanez guitar through quadravox plug in , midi strings and sample from the park from  Sagetyrtle  '   park_children_110111.wav '  on freesound.org 

 

now to listen in on the others later :D

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A late entry. I've been watching waaaaaay too much of the football.

Our heroine looks like she enjoys a good tramp around but she's a little unsteady on her feet so I've gone with quite a plodding, clompy tune with a slightly wobbly synth sound. Seeing as she's controlled by strings, I decided to use stringed instruments (sorry) 🙄 violin bass, Westfield Strat copy and a homemade 4 string cigar box guitar. Yamaha keyboard used for trumpet and synth sounds with Hydrogen drums. Recorded with Wavepad. The title is 80% borrowed from Haysi Fantayzee and I'd like to think they won't sue.

 

 

Edited by upside downer
missed a bit
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Damn!

For the first time ever I missed voting!

I didn't spot the thread due to the comedy title, and didn't realise how late in the month it was to go hunting for it.

My apologies to anyone who submitted the kind of thing I usually vote for but got beaten. 🤣

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5 hours ago, NickD said:

Damn!

For the first time ever I missed voting!

I didn't spot the thread due to the comedy title, and didn't realise how late in the month it was to go hunting for it.

My apologies to anyone who submitted the kind of thing I usually vote for but got beaten. 🤣

Yes, that was me, definitely. Or so I will tell myself... 😂

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7 hours ago, NickD said:

Damn!

For the first time ever I missed voting!

I didn't spot the thread due to the comedy title, and didn't realise how late in the month it was to go hunting for it.

My apologies to anyone who submitted the kind of thing I usually vote for but got beaten. 🤣

Ah , sorry about the title , I figure that it might get a few more views if I spiced it up a bit , I think in general it worked  , but boy I missed your vote this time around 😂

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