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#####....#...#...### - wouter van leeuwen presents -
#####. .. .. .### - groovebox -
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####. ,. ,. ,#### - length: 5'51 -
####. .. .. .#### - genre: chiptune i guess? -
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###. . . ,##### - soundcloud.com/woutervleeuwen -
###,,,,,,,,,,,.##### - wouter van leeuwen 2017 -
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-. So this song has been in development for a looooooong time now. I
originally started work on this module one day in October 2016, writing a
large portion of the song, but it was nowhere near to it's current state. I
set out to write a more chiptune inspired track with a lot of synth noises
and glitchy melodies. To add to that, i sampled all the sounds from my own
equipment. The drum sounds are from my Novation Circuit, the PWM lead is from
my Bass Station II, and the other synth sounds are from my Korg DS-10 (which
is an amazing application for getting weird, gritty synth noises). Safe to
say this is where the inspiration came from for the title, as most of the
sounds were sampled from groovebox synths.
-. Back in October, the song was far from what it's turned into. A large
chunk of the song was finished, but i was already struggling with creating a
proper intro and bridge, and some patterns have gone through some heavy
changes. And there was next to no mixing either. Heck, i've gone through a
headphone change *and* a computer change within the time i started this
track, that's how long it's been in progress! The song was missing a lot of
parts, such as a bridge/breakdown, and an intro and outro, but most of the
patterns were there already, such as patterns 2 through 6.
-. I've set this track aside a lot of times to work on other modules.
Increated two versions of the song in October but since i struggled with
working on the slower parts of the module, i often stopped working on it and
moved on to other projects in the meantime. But in November 2016 i messed
around with the module again and ended up with a third and a fourth version.
Originally, pattern 22 would transition into pattern 15 (also still there by
the way!) and build up and cut straight into pattern 2, but this transition
was way too sudden. Because of that, i added patterns 23 to 29 to create a
larger section to transition between the intro and the section with pattern
2. In this version i also got some of the mixing down, but it still wasn't
perfect. I also set the base for the outro of the module.
-. I once again stopped working on it until early December 2016, when i
created a fifth version. I didn't really change anything except that i
downsampled the PWM and the Sync samples, but doing this screwed up their
offset ranges and broke much of the song, so i left them alone after that. I
then created a sixth version where i added pattern 33 in front of the intro
(although it really wasn't much more than a few kick drums, i didn't work on
it all that much) and i started working on the transition from pattern 6 to
pattern 2. In the current version, the song breaks down to a slower part and
a few patterns used in the intro, and then goes through patterns 8/7 and back
to pattern 2 again. But version 6 did not contain the slow part yet, instead
it just cut to a small transition pattern and then to patterns 0/8/2. In the
current version, the transition pattern was copied over to the last 16 steps
of pattern 36, and the sequence replaced with 8/7/2 instead of 0/8/2.
-. And after the sixth version... well, nothing basically! I've tried
multiple times to finish it but i still struggled with adding an actual
intro, and tracking out the hard edges of the song. Until now, August 2017.
I've been working on the song again for a short while and i'm happy to say
that it's finally finished!
