So what better than to lock ourselves away in a dark, hot room with a bunch of unruly synths and make another track using just one of them? Go on - you know it's what you want to do really.
So I hereby declare this Challenge 'Open'. I did contemplate waiting until September to kick it off (August being summer vac season), but I'm thinking that we can just run it a little longer and be a bit more relaxed this time. Plus, September seems to get busy as we try and get back into doing things and I think that a gentle bit of fun to keep the old musical grey cells ticking over might do us some good.
So, the plan is :
1. This week we can decide on a nice abstract 'theme' for the music. We can have things like 'light', 'hope' or 'extreme heat' (extreme ... not deep for obvious reasons). Suggestions?
2. Any synth, any synthesis, just one model - multi-tracked is fine, multiple instances is fine, and any additional resources (drum samples - too much synth percussion sets my teeth of edge) should be referenced in the submission. If you're using a modular, then a little bit more than 'my custom modular' would be welcome - a bit of a breakdown would be nice thanks
3. I vote we run this until Sunday 16th September. That gives us 6 clear weeks to fiddle about
4. Shhhh!!!! Don't tell a soul what you're using! It's more fun that way. Yes, certain people may use their preferred synth, but then the fun is in guessing which one it is.
5. Please use this thread (I'll ask the mods to sticky it) to let us know that you're taking part or for asking questions.
6. Once you are happy with your track, then please drop me a PM with a link to where I can download it and a little bit about the synth (+additional resources) used. The idea is that I build a playlist in Soundcloud and, once the deadline has passed, publish that. After a couple of days of listening, I'll put up some notes on the synths used. Then we (ok .. you ... I'm cheating) play 'pin the synth on the track'.
7. Effects / Processing. Last time, we said that that was fine and I'm all for that. If someone wants to swamp stuff in Eventide, then I say go for it. Last time, we were all fairly restrained and it seems that we mainly stuck to a little corrective eq and some reverb and delay.
8. After some guessing, I'll post the 'who done what' list and we can all 'ooh' and 'ahh' at each other's talent. Because we are pretty spiffy here
This is open to anyone - really anyone ... hell, last time, we even had a guitarist!!
So pitch in and have a laugh. The idea is to force us to use one particular synth to do everything we can hear in our heads and that's a good thing to do - it forces us to delve into the synth rather than just use a bunch of presets. I was really surprised by a couple of the last entries and they made me think again about certain bits of kit. So let's get our thinking heads on. Theme? Chosen a synth yet? Want to stick to the obvious or go off the wall?
Exciting ... isn't it ..?
)
