The story so far: (almost) 5 years of music! part 1
Hey Ampwall! I’ve decided to hang around for awhile so I figured maybe a “get to know me” was a useful thing to write. Also, getting people interested in old releases seems hard, so why not do a two for one deal?
Roughly five years ago I decided it was time to just try the whole thing on my own. I used to rely on bandmembers (in a punky/metal project) for most of the musical side, although I did some lyric writing, came up with the occasional left field keyboard part and became an expert in screwing up arrangements. But alas, the band went the way of many and slowly withered.
Start Somewhere (2020)
What is an almost 30-year-old to do? “Start Somewhere” ofcourse. A song about songwriting, the usual femme fatale metaphor for addiction, a song written for an audition I didn’t get and a tune against depression. A solid first EP if I say so myself. I made it using free vst’s. I ended up doing a series of checking them out on stream.
I stream on Twitch btw.
Broke (2021)
Well, I rode the high of releasing my music for the first time for about a year. I did some somewriting, but it didn’t pack as much of a punch as I would’ve liked. Could samples make the difference? On “Broke” I went on a quest for freebies and tried to make a banger. "Out for a Stroll” is still one of my best bops I’d say. Fun fact: I think I accidentally shifted the arp in “Generator” by like… a 32nd note in the second half. Wild.
Sketch (2021)
After that samples seemed the answer and a friend of mine pointed out a sample library service. I decided to check it out and also challenge myself a little. Could I make a “beat” in a day on stream? Not quite, but I did end up with a lot of short atmospheric tracks on “Sketch”. A dash of melancholy, some darker stuff, and one slide guitar hype track.
Drift (2022)
After that I was kind of aimless. For content I tried piano beats with a looper (the oldest stuff in here) on stream and it kind of worked, but not really. At that point Reaper decides to bring out it’s own extreme timestretch algorithm. So I sampled 4 minutes from those jams and just…. stretched. I then cleverly exported individual tracks from a multiband compressor and went ham on the fades. “Drift” ended up being a bit of a tense ambient EP, but it’s still mostly relaxing?
Recycle (2023)
Here the transition (subtle foreshadowing) into being a hardware based musician starts. I got an SP-404 mk2 on account of liking using samples so much. At worst it would just be a multi-fx unit. So I had to try out the vinyl and tape sim right? It was time to… “Recycle” the old free vst’s jams I did. You know… the demos’s back from the Start Somewhere days.
Over these years I also tried writing more songs, but it wasn’t working all these years. Till I really examined those lyrics and saw one major theme pop up.
If you’ve made it this far: I’ll stay on the surface but content warning for some mental health stuff of varying degrees (up to and including the real bad stuff). More in part 2: https://ampwall.com/a/sparkysynth/news/the-story-so-far-almost-5-years-of-music-part-2-content-warning-for-bad-mental-health-stuff-2025-02-20