“grummelig” – Home Straight

I accomplished a few things this week. The Spielsachen setup has turned into its 2019 version, and going with that, I did another video in this series.

And I also continued work on grummelig. And there’s news.

Release Date

grummelig will be released on January 31st of 2019, which is about one and a half weeks from now.

Status Quo

Work has now started to move into some details. Considering that I already had marked quite a few tracks as “practically done” last time, I’ll focus on those which hadn’t reached that point back then.

Nichtfarben

I worked on details. Mainly on the transition from the C to the D section. And with that, it’s now practically done.

Alcubierres Stimme

Last time I believed that this was done. Then I listened to it, and found its musical build somewhat – boring. At least in between the surrounding tracks.

There were arrangement things done, which now have made this somewhat shorter, and reduced the album’s length to slightly below 39 minutes. My albums are typically longer. Well, if it works it’s good. And again, I call it practically done.

There was a time about one week ago when I seriously questioned if that track was good enough for the album. Well, it is.

Ephemeridenzeit

First, I trimmed that down content-wise as well. Which greatly benefited the track. Then I looked at sound design.

Of the three bass-drummy things on this, one is coming from acoustic drum samples, and earlier considerations to run them through fancy modular filters notwithstanding I decided to keep them “as is”.

Then there were two further ones. One was a sample instrument of a Korg Volca Kick. So I got the Kick back out, set up a patch and received immediate happiness.

I really don’t know why I didn’t use the Volca for so long.

For the other sound, I had envisioned a combo of a Silky Bass Drum and Bass Tom from the Analog Rytm. Unfortunately the Overbridge and device software version didn’t like each other, and the new Overbridge version is still in beta, so I had to jingle software versions before doing anything productive.

 

I just spent a considerable amount of time and energy to plan and execute various SW down/upgrades to make my drum machine work with the computer. And that's what I love about #eurorack: there's only one version of 1/8'' jacks.

— Moinlabs (@moinlabs) January 20, 2019

After that, I was happy with the sounds fairly quickly.

Sound Design for this track is now in a review stage. I’m almost certain it’ll need some detail adjustments here and there, but for appearances I’ll call it practically done anyway.

Schwarzschild

received some gentle EQ treatment in the master. Apart from that: either it gets hardware synths, or it’s practically done. I like to have such optional items in my projects.

Other Things

I need to do the cover artwork. And complete the master. Fortunately, the tracks are now in a stage where I can work at the key elements of the master (track order and spacing, relative loudness) for real.

Summarizing

This thing made progress rather quickly. Considering that three of those items are in review (meaning they’re hopefully done) and one being optional, only master and cover really remains (with the master already pretty ok). I can do that.