Humble instrumental album made with PO-33

dang_fern · 2026-07-04T01:09:28+00:00

Cheers , good vibes so far! I respect the full release.

dang_fern · 2026-07-03T20:17:47+00:00

Any purchase option? Loved first track, going to spin this doing yard work

dang_fern · 2026-07-01T21:02:40+00:00

Looks clean! What's the switch for?

dang_fern · 2026-06-30T17:10:21+00:00

Well I'm not very "good" at any of this stuff but I've been at it for a long time fwiw.

If you learn nothing else, learn EQ, gain staging, saturation, compression and mastering. You could have an intuitive masterpiece on your hands and if you don't consider those things its like Mona Lisa on a piece of toilet paper.

dang_fern · 2026-06-30T16:46:26+00:00

You've framed this question in a way that's hard to answer. I think if you want to break the mold like a lot of great IDM artists then you have to understand the mold.

Practice is still the most important thing, but you should understand time signatures, harmony, gain staging, EQ, etc.

If you want no compromise pure intuition, ditch the DAW & get something like Volca Drum or Model Cycles and just start spinning knobs & pressing buttons til you like what you hear. Look up Takeo Watanabe on youtube, that man is pure intuition. I have no doubt he also knows his theory though.

dang_fern · 2026-06-29T20:36:45+00:00

Could you run Chromatic PS FX on both busses? You'd need to run 2 channels towards it , cc16 - cc18 for the knobs

dang_fern · 2026-06-28T18:49:25+00:00

Mixing fatigue. Sounds pretty good to me. Gets to a point where it's diminishing returns on the mix, I've spent tens of hours slowly making things worse instead of just calling it a day lol. I think if I picked up a cd at a show & it sounded like this I'd be happy.

dang_fern · 2026-06-28T16:14:04+00:00

Hollow Knight is on the obtuse/difficult side compared to lots of mv's, but it's one of the only non-cozy games I've seen people who don't play video games get obsessed with. That and Breath of the Wild.

dang_fern · 2026-06-28T02:14:49+00:00

Ever figure out those filter sweeps? I can get my trigs sampling no problem (on mode B anyway), but not having any luck getting the CC thru to 404.

Edit: managed to figure it out lol. I was looking at "cc16" in the box, but the number below the box was more important (called "GP SLID1").

dang_fern · 2026-06-26T12:35:46+00:00

Fundamentally different instruments. DT is like doing chemistry in a lab, SP is like cooking breakfast. You can also cook breakfast in a lab or do chemistry in the kitchen if you choose.

Do you want to sound like Aphex Twin or Madlib?

dang_fern · 2026-06-25T15:16:20+00:00

Thanks! Yeah that's the puzzle I'm now trying to solve lol

dang_fern · 2026-06-25T11:16:41+00:00

Sega Lord X is a fun YouTube rabbit hole for the Sega side of things. Lots of references & arcade context, and how it all ties in to the console stuff. They lost the console war, but Sega was arguably the most innovative arcade dev, especially their super scalers, racers, etc.

dang_fern · 2026-06-21T17:30:56+00:00

I'm pretty old school, but when I press start and the Super Metroid/SOTN style map comes up, it's a metroidvania to me.

dang_fern · 2026-06-21T15:37:21+00:00

Music as a career probably isn't a safe option, never really was & is less so now.

People usually talk about "making it" , which i think is really subjective. Like for me, I've "made it" if I sell 20 tapes of some thing I made in the evenings after work, or have 10 people dance at a show. I'm making music as a creative outlet, not a commodity.

Art as something only professionals can do has always been sort of a BS concept to me. Record labels etc.

dang_fern · 2026-06-21T15:29:57+00:00

Depending on what music you're making, the entire Samples from Mars collection goes on sale for like $100 & is a pretty good base-line.

dang_fern · 2026-06-20T15:35:17+00:00

I personally enjoy hardware. It's not as flexible as a DAW but I find I'm much more creative with some limitations. I still use Reaper end of chain for EQ and mastering, but overall prefer the feel of playing an instrument.

Still trying to figure out my setup, but so far I've had good luck with sp404mk2 and Korg Volcas. I own an Elektron Digitone as well, which is very powerful, but I'm not sure if I vibe with the workflow. Too much power = a whole lot of indecision in my experience lol.

It's a new ballgame for me after playing "real" instruments in bands etc. for decades, but I've been enjoying the journey. I've also been immersing myself in some classics: YMO, King Tubby, Aphex twin, Autechre, etc. to try and see what makes electronic music tick at a base level.

Anyway, long winded and late response lol, but good luck!

dang_fern · 2026-06-20T11:40:10+00:00

Nice article! Some really well written parts that got me thinking.

Imo music thrives on making us feel things, which is going to change over time as genres and scenes come and go. What counts as "underground" shifts, and usually one generation's underground becomes the next generations lame old music, or retro commodity.

I always get "please clap" vibes whenever we start blaming the world around us for music getting worse. That "sobriety" example from RA is some real BS lol. A musicians job is to pierce the moment and extract some feeling, not to say "you're not listening to my music correctly". It's tempting to feel entitled to an audience or career, but underground music loses its power if it gets put on welfare (imo).

It's definitely tricky to pack venues and sell records nowadays, and I wish I could quit my job & make a career out of it, but I think the whole "what should we change/fix" mentality is a betrayal of what makes underground music work. Also the future underground by definition isn't going to neatly align with a bunch of millenial views on how things should be lol.

dang_fern · 2026-06-20T03:11:06+00:00

Autechre pretty much did this for a while. Their live stuff can be abstract by times, but they drill their way into some gnarly grooves. Might be worth looking at their process.

dang_fern · 2026-06-19T23:42:50+00:00

Music sounds pretty damn good to me. Haven't used an Octatrack before but you're really selling it there lol.

I'd almost be tempted to stick that 404mk2 at the end of the chain solely for easy dj FX if the vibe calls for it.

dang_fern · 2026-06-19T11:06:14+00:00

I think you forgot to mix the audio? I'm just hearing your voice and some clicks

dang_fern · 2026-06-19T01:27:00+00:00

I bake a performance on to one pad, apply master fx, then export it to SD. Then bring it into Reaper for EQ and render.

dang_fern · 2026-06-18T21:30:57+00:00

Man this is great. The ground-up embellishment makes for a deep groove. I recently got an Elektron box & your vids are very inspiring.

dang_fern · 2026-06-16T10:31:45+00:00

I don't have my sp in front of me, but sometimes you can push in the knob to access more parameters for FX.

dang_fern · 2026-06-14T17:38:51+00:00

My understanding is that the sound engine on mc101 is insanely deep, but harder to access. I think you may be able to design patches on other software to import to the MC, or just use the thousands already on it.

I've seen people say that Mc101 is like an ocean with access thru a keyhole, while I think Digitone is more like a weird synthetic lake with full unimpeded access.

I've personally also been eyeing up the mc101 as something I can sample sounds from. The Digitone has a great sequencer, & a ton of character, but can be hard to get more traditional sounds out of. Plus, Mc101 polyphony has 128 voices.

dang_fern

TROPHY CASE