What the what? Jamuary?
Yeah, Jamuary is a challenge event, of sorts, to produce a piece of music every day in the month of January. The piece doesn’t have to be long, complete, or even good. The point is simply to create and share. And, as I mentioned in my resolutions post earlier, I’m going to try to complete the challenge this year, despite The Disaster Room being incomplete.
So, let’s get started. Here’s my first piece:
Now, if I’m honest, I kinda missed the point with this one. I spent several hours working on this thing. A half hour getting everything hooked up. Another half hour creating original MicroFreak patches. A half hour after that getting everything talking the way I wanted it to. And then recording. And then the percussion stuff, because it needed something like that. Maybe tomorrow, I’ll do better.
And then, I had to make it into a video for uploading. I started that in DaVinci Resolve, but that really didn’t want to go well — half hour wasted there. So, I switched to Clipchamp, the freebie editor that Microsoft is pushing with WIndows 11. It works surprisingly well. I might even buy the upgrade version (as long as it’s not too expensive and there’s not stupid subscription required).
Since the studio’s not done, I was working in the disaster area that is the old studio. So, there’s no video. But I did make some “behind the scenes” audio while I made the sounds in the MicroFreak. You can look at a picture while you listen, if you’re up for that kind of pain.
The setup for today’s jam was actually pretty simple. MicroFreak’s audio output into the Zoom G3n in, and then out of that to my MOTU M4 interface. The MicroFreak’s MIDI input and output are also connected to the M4. In the shot above, I’m recording the pad tracks — one for the MIDI data, and one for the audio. Those are on tracks 3 and 4 respectively. Tracks 1 and 2 are the MIDI and audio for what turned out to be the BTS prep audio.
My original plan was to record myself creating a MicroFreak patch, and then jam with it. It didn’t quite turn out that way. And, the BTS audio probably would’ve been more useful if I’d had a mic set up so I could record my thoughts on what I was doing. That will come.
I hope you’re enjoying the music, and I also hope you’re enjoying the variety of music being made by others. Here, again, are the links to #jamuary2023 content on YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook:
Jamuary2023 on YouTube
Jamuary2023 on Instagram
Jamuary2023 on Facebook