SEPTEMBER Composition Challenge

[lurksalot]

Happy 1st of meteorological Autumn 

 

A very tight call for August , 1 vote splitting the pack, and with what looked like me giving that vote, congrats to @Chiliwailer, now on a double, seeking the elusive hat-trick I guess,

 

Anyway, back to the business in hand , with the chosen image for your delight and delectation, he explains...

 

 

"Autumn is coming in with it's stunning sunsets, so given that my photo-choosing creative mojo has dropped under the horizon here's a nice pic that even has some Northern Lights, sea, stars, rocks, and a pensive dude for your muse..."

 

 

 

 

✅ Entries must be <5 minutes and recorded between now and the deadline.

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

❌ No Bagpipes, Please, I think they would suffer from the magnetic radiation and sound a bit off.

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

 

Deadline-wise, we will go for Midnight on the 24th September ... Which in reality, means teatime on the 25th.  

 

A line or two of blurb as usual for the vote thread will be super duper smashing lovely. 

 

Good luck, Have fun 

 

must dash , Victoria Coren Mitchell is holding a pose for me in the kitchen .

 

 

 

 

 

[Chiliwailer]

Aw thanks @lurksalot - good to know it wasn’t my Mum’s vote 😊

[upside downer]

17 minutes ago, lurksalot said:

Victoria Coren Mitchell is holding a pose for me in the kitchen

 

Ooh, you lucky devil!

[Baloney Balderdash]

(Edit!!! I actually made 2 versions out of this, and changed my mind, so I swapped the song to enter this challenge for the other version, which is "They Called Him Stewart Stardust I" )

 

 

 

Please !!! IGNORE !!! this :

 

 

Well, I can't seem to be able to delete the original track that I posted no matter what I do, but this is actually the one I want to enter the competition with (Edit 2 : Well, I ended up changing the address on SoundCloud for the track, but that solution didn't work at first for some odd reason, seems to work now, so these two posted tracks are actually the same anyway, I apologize for the confusion and the spam):

 

"An alternate take of an ending scene for a fictive sci-fi western movie"...

 

Solo bass, single track, 2nd take, improvisation, played on my 28.6" scale 4 string Ibanez GSRM20B Mikro Bass, converted to sort of a 4 string baritone slide guitar, tuned in an open B tuning, recorded through my "amp-less" setup directly into my Zoom H4n handheld recorder, and only edited through a simple Wav editor.

 

Edited September 15 by Baloney Balderdash

[Leonard Smalls]

Captain Kirk has got a date on the Enterprise Holodeck with Nurse Chapel in his favourite romantic piano bar on Aurora Prime. However, alien microbes have got into the matrix so when Kirk goes to find Christine admiring the view from the bar's private beach he finds she's actually a bloke called Derek from Redditch... 

 

 

This month I've sort of followed the Baloney route, to some extent! I programmed a manic 150bpm drum track, and did a 1 take bass improvisation over the top. Then I stuck 2 tracks of piano "accompaniment" on it and 3 tracks of wah guitar noodlings.

Drums programmed using Impulse pads triggering identical midi sounds from EZ Drummer (Clyde Stubblefied kit), and Ableton's Arizona and Exposed kits. Bass is Sandberg DI-ed via Focusrite (double tracked, touch of delay on 1 track). Piano is Ableton's Grand Piano, and guitar is a battered Strat with clean Helix wah and Bias FX bluesdrive. Everything is rolled in Ozone 9 and Neutron 3.

[lurksalot]

I had a few hours to myself today so managed to knock this up, we've got visitors and I'm away for a couple of days so I just about managed to get something done.

 

pretty simple, guitar, bass , EZ drummer a few FX and the dulcet tones of an angel , wrapped in Ozone and oozing gently onto your favourite personal playlist for years of appreciation.  

[Chiliwailer]

First time using the Aguilar plugin suite which fixed a problem for me, though a problem I didn’t quite fix was my intonation on the fretless Stingray I got recently and recorded with for the first time, so it only appears in 2 small sections by the skin of it's teeth 😬

 

Coasting - a deep dreamy kind of vibe that reminds me partly of holidays abroad years back, and partly of British summers in my youth - this tune kind of captures both for me. Though there’s a tiny bit of rock thrown in towards the end too as they were just sat there, scattered on the beach….

 

 

Edited September 18 by Chiliwailer

[Jean-Luc Pickguard]

On my track, 'Electric Man', I used my Squier Classic Vibe Bass VI and Gibson Les Paul Standard, both played with a Dunlop 1.3mm Primetone pick. The Bass VI, strung with LaBella flatwounds, was recorded directly into Logic via my Focusrite 2i2. The Les Paul is still fitted with its stock Brite Wire 10s, and it was tracked through my Fender Mustang GTX100 amp using Fender Princeton, spring reverb and Boss DS-1 models, recorded via the amp’s built-in USB interface.

 

For drums, I used Logic’s Scientific Method+ kit, while the ES2 and RetroSynth provided a pad sound with the Cosmic Departure and Aurora Borealis patches. Logic’s Q-Sampler was used for the lo-fi acid arpeggio.

 

 

Edited September 24 by Jean-Luc Pickguard

[Wolfram]

I can't believe it's eleven months since I've been able to get something together for the competition - just managed to rush something for this month.

 

The photo reminds me of driving out into the countryside with my daughter earlier this year at midnight to see if we could glimpse the Northern Lights and encountering a long line of cars parked up on a verge and lots of people gawping up into a weirdly-lit orange sky... Only trouble is, the light was from the east! It was quite foggy, so probably a floodlit venue or industrial centre.🤣

In keeping with trying something different for every entry, I'm going spiritual and ethereal this time, and I present my first choir composition and arrangement, Aurora Caelestis.
 

On the tech front, very simple this time: Cubase 14, Spitfire's Eric Whitacre choir and Steinberg's REVerence loaded with a church IR.
 

Edited September 23 by Wolfram
Spelling

[upside downer]

Again, a late one...

 

Another poor, shipwrecked sap falls for the sound of the sirens. Though he escaped with his life, he now spends his days tormented as he watches and waits for a ship that never arrives.

 

Spoon, moon, June-alike lyrics to pick apart hidden below:

 

Spoiler

Out here in the twilight

I remember them call

Sirens lured me to this place

Spellbound! I was in their thrall

I see this endless ocean

And I let out a sigh

On this island of solitude

I've been left high and dry

 

All at sea

What will be, will be

All at sea

What will be, will be

 

I scan the horizon

But no ships ever come

For hours I stare

And my feet are getting numb

The aurora dances

Way up in the sky

On this island of solitude

The time has passed me by

 

All at sea

What will be, will be

All at sea

What will be, will be

 

I scoured the array of sounds within Ableton this month to piece together the various synth layers. MT Drums, Westfield Les Paul guitar, violin bass and the siren sample at the end came from Sample Focus. Vocals rasped through an Apogee Mic+ by the unmelodious stylings of yours truly. Wavepad and Audacity did their usual sterling work.

 

 

Edited September 25 by upside downer
It's only words, and words are all I have to order takeaway

[lurksalot]

off we go peeps

 

superb again , brilliant