Aaron Parecki

Day 83. I think this accurately reflects my mood today. This actually started with me accidentally hitting a few notes on the piano, and I just went from there. This is one of the few times that I can't actually tell you what all the chords and harmonies are, because I just kept layering things on top that sounded good. This one also needed some percussion beyond the Logic Pro drummers. It's a combination of some manual drum track entry plus the Logic drummer.

Day 82. Today I knew I wanted to start with the pulsing notes that got gradually faster. I jotted that down, then later decided to turn it into something that would be at the end of a scene of a TV show with a dramatic build-up and lack of resolution.

Day 81. Quick and easy one today. Piano, bass, french horns and percussion.

Day 80. This one is inspired by the style of Juno Reactor. There are a bunch of layers of percussion, all written manually. A light bongo track is on the 16th notes, with some accented beats. There's a simple synth bass+snare, plus a few other hits. This was a fun one! Tho it may have been fun just cause I wasn't trying to finish before going to bed like the last couple.

Day 79. I felt like going with a guitar+bass+drum track today. The middle section needed some filling out in the mid-range frequencies, so I added some faint horns and another guitar part in the middle. I think it could still sound warmer, but wasn't sure how to get there. I spent a while getting the drums right on this one, I felt like it needed a few more accents beyond what the Logic Drummers provided.

Day 78. A few weeks ago, I asked my friend Mike Merrill (the world's first publicly traded person) to send me some audio samples of him reading some money-related words. He sent back a 10-minute long file audio. I sliced it up into individual words, and created a Logic Pro instrument from it. (You can actually buy the 83 samples here: http://kmikeym.myshopify.com/products/audio-of-mike-merrill-speaking-financial-terms) It took a while, but I finally had some inspiration for what kind of song I wanted to make from these. So here you go!

Day 77. Just a quick mostly piano song, I feel a little bad that the other instruments feel kinda forced on top.

Day 76. This is an oddly detuned music box. I was actually trying to find a more gentle music box sound but this is all I could find. I tweaked the EQ a bit to remove some of the lower "boomier" part of the sound, but it's still not as gentle as I wanted. In addition to the music box shifting in and out of tune, the other parts intentionally don't quite line up on the beat, and the reverb on the piano and violin is cranked up really high, so this whole thing should end up feeling slightly unsettling.

Day 75. I used more complex samples than I normally like to, as a shortcut to build up this much sound. (I didn't get started until really late today and needed to do something quickly). I added a few of my own instruments on top though, and tried to give it some shape other than just what came with the original sounds. I kind of want this one to keep going for a while longer!

Day 74. I started with the piano and layered stuff over it until I felt "done". There's a 4-part choir, a solo violin, and 6 french horns. The video is me recording the piano track, I liked that the two parts overlapped but never actually hit any of the same notes.

Day 73. The piano track here goes a 1/4 step in and out of tune very slowly throughout the song. I wanted to try out a new instrument today, and I found the Dilruba, an Indian stringed instrument, which has some nice articulations in the samples.

Day 72. Enjoy a pile of poop emoji made out of music notes. 💩 Inspired by Andrew Huang's GLORIOUS MIDI UNICORN, I thought I would give this MIDI art thing a try. If you're listening to this in the podcast feed, it might make more sense if you watch the video instead ;-)

Day 71. A quick sketch of a triumphant fanfare. Could probably use some more filling out in the lower end of the spectrum, but I'm trying to finish these quicker lately!

Day 70. This didn't quite come out the way I wanted, I think all the chord hits might need more filling out with additional instruments. I had fun piecing together video effects to go along with the music though!

Day 69. Today's song is basically in no time signature, and features the electric cello again. It's a simple theme that I developed by flipping the notes and playing through it in a few different chords. There's a faint harp sound that helps provide context, and there's a soft droning soundscape under everything.

Day 67. I'm not super thrilled with this, but I have a bunch of other things I need to do today so I need to be finished. I like the opening bit with the filter that opens up for 2 bars, but I was having a hard time figuring out what else to do with this today.

Day 66. Tried two new things today. First time attempting something in the "electro swing" style. I have a long ways to go to even approach sounding like Parov Stelar though. I also learned how to make the sweep sound that is in a bunch of this as well as other style music. The sweep sound is a white noise generator run through a filter whose cutoff frequency changing creates the sweep effect.

Day 65. I decided to keep it simple with this one, only adding the little chimes on top of the piano and no other instruments. I used a strong wet reverb effect on the piano to give it a "distant" feeling.

Day 64. There was a brief moment of sun today, so I took the opportunity to go on a bike ride up and down the esplanade! This song has nothing to do with the ride, though. This song started with the bells you hear at the beginning, and I built it up from there. I actually wasn't planning on adding the drums and synth sound until I got half way through building up the strings, but I thought it would be an interesting way of quickly escalating it.