Acid December

I made a track for Acid December. You can find it at https://acid.datapop.se/2024/21 and https://v.basspistol.org/w/gcL4He4kUfujugQ44yRudN. For a fine selection of other Acid December tracks, go to https://acid.datapop.se/.

This track didn't start out as an acid track. I was just playing around with some chords, and put them together to the sequence which can be heard twice in the final track. I put the chord sequence on two separate tracks with a Cherry Audio DCO-106 on each, one with an arpeggiator, and one without; then drenched both tracks in reverb.

So then it struck me that I had forgotten about acid December, and I thought, what the hell, just slap some acid on these chords. The chord sequence was in d minor, and I made a pattern on the TB-03 containing notes from the d minor scale. I recorded about 7:30 minutes of this pattern while twisting knobs, both audio and MIDI. It sounded quite boring and repetitive, so I started editing the MIDI to introduce some variations. The knob twisting is also contained in the MIDI recording, so I kept that, with just a few small alterations for some tension building.

I did the drums after recording the TB-03, and then brought in the chord sequence a couple of places. I decided to make the TB-03 pattern more melodic when the chord sequence was playing, so I made the pattern match the tones in the chords, and finally played the entire thing while recording the audio.

I had volunteered to play the Stylophone on a planned bonksmas track, which unfortunately didn't happen this year, so I decided to add a little Stylophone improvisation to the track. It's heavily bitcrushed, and playing through Valhalla Supermassive, so it doesn't really sound like the Stylophone anymore. But it's in there.