I need to learn to pace myself.

You’d think that, after last week’s post, I would have stuck to my guns and not picked up any more projects.  I know I thought that, and I turned out to be wrong.  Not only did I pick up two new projects (the prospect of paid work was too enticing to turn down), but their turn around times are almost uncomfortably fast.  If I were doing just one fast turn around it would be one thing, but I’m doing THREE.  I’ll get stuff done, but I might not get much sleep.

Speaking of getting things done, I’ve had trouble, lately, writing anything that I feel fits the projects I’m supposed to be working on.  I don’t know what it is, but, though I’m still writing music, nothing seems like it fits.   So,  I’ve been playing with tons of loops (specifically, Cosmo D’s loop pack, which I HIGHLY recommend, and it’s got me thinking in styles and keys I’ve been unintentionally avoiding.

So… without further adieu… my loops:

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These first three were my freshman attempt at really developing anything worthwhile around melodic loops.  I’ve used rhythmic loops before (and you’ll see that I use them a bit later, too), but I’ve always been a bit hesitant with melodic loops.  These three are presented in the order I made them, so you can see my improvements.

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As is indicated by the title, I wrote this Wednesday night.  Again, it’s just loops with a guitar under-track that I threw down, and I really think this is something I could clean up and develop further into a video game track.

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This is the second loop I wrote on Wednesday, and I started moving away from looped drum tracks to programming my own, which I’m getting more and more comfortable with as time goes on.  Again, I think I could develop this into something good.

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This is the third track I wrote on Wednesday, and I’m particularly happy with it because it’s a venture into a style that I’ve NEVER written in, also, I think it sounds pretty good.

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By Thursday, I felt I had pretty much exhausted myself with loops (not entirely true, Cosmo D’s comes with 3000 loops, so there’s no way I could really exhaust myself), but I wanted to give it one last go.  I like this track a lot, too, but I don’t know if I’ll ever use it for something.

All in all, working with loops is a blast, but it’s not something I could seriously use as a technique to write a melody (as a counter melody, MAYBE).  Luckily, I think all this play opened up my mind, and I can get back to writing what I need to be writing.

That’s all for now. ►►

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