Misc Werdna Music

[andrewwerdna]

I have a lot of songs from unfinished album projects I'd like to share. I don't consider myself to be a particularly talented musician. I think I have a lot of interesting ideas, but rarely am I able to follow through and finish any of these projects, usually because I get swept away by new ideas. So I'd like to put some of this stuff on youtube and write details about what I was going for, because many of these will not be fully-realized so it may not be clear. And I think writing candidly about the creative process could maybe spark interesting discussions or inspire new ideas for others. And maybe eventually I will post new tracks in this way, if they don't fit with a larger album concept. Any sort of feedback is welcome.

[andrewwerdna]

This is material from an unfinished Illusionment album project made in July-August 2017, started immediately after the release of Ensorcellment.

Everything is made with the Roland D50 vst, except the last part which is made with the Korg Wavestation vst. I might've used patches from the Cult of D50 Archive, but I can't recall for sure, and I can't find the old project files to check. But in any case, I recommend that for anyone who uses a D50 vst or hardware, so many patches to explore!: cultofd50.neocities.org/downloads

I also made these notably using the ReaControlMIDI plugin (comes with Reaper). The way I come up with melodies and harmonies is just by noodling until I find something that sounds interesting, but because I don't know music theory or how to properly play the keyboard, I tend to just always gravitate to the same scales or modes or whatever. So one thing I like to do is transpose the midi input by a different amount for every song on the album, so I come up with slightly different stuff by noodling on the familiar patterns. But another thing I like to do sometimes is use ReaControlMIDI to make all the notes snap to specific scales, that way I end up with stuff that sounds very different from what I normally play. For this album I decided to make every song in a minor scale using that plugin. I only managed to get five done though, because I was finding that only working with minor scales was bumming me out quite a bit! And maybe I was just burnt out from making music at the time.

Idolatry was the planned name for the album while I was working on these tracks, thinking that I would just name each track "Forsaken."

The image is generated with the Midjourney blend function, mixing different artworks by Ferdinand Keller.

[andrewwerdna]

This was an attempt to sort of mix of dungeon synth and darkwave, something which I've tried to do many times (and will probably post more of), but I don't really know how to make darkwave so I think maybe it is just weird dungeon synth? I don't know, but I think it sounds pretty good. It was originally just saved as "-1_3," but I am deciding to call it "Solastalgia." It was made with the Roland Sound Canvas VA vst in April 2020. The image is a Midjourney blend of five different public domain artworks, no text prompting.

[arillius]

I dug these quite a bit. You may not consider yourself talented but you most definitely have a great ear for composition! Do you have more?
Good call on the Roland D50 — perhaps one of my favorite synths of all time. I ended up getting the Roland Boutique D-05 hardware which is essentially a tiny D50. It's my main instrument of choice at NEDS next week.

[doomed]

Okay, this is really good. You really should put out more music, for me DS is all about the vibe, and the vibe is definitely here.

[andrewwerdna]

Thank you both, I have a lot more I will try to post soon.

Mar 21, 2024 11:38:42 GMT -5 arillius said:

Good call on the Roland D50 — perhaps one of my favorite synths of all time. I ended up getting the Roland Boutique D-05 hardware which is essentially a tiny D50. It's my main instrument of choice at NEDS next week.

I've wanted to make a whole album with the D50 for a while, and making all the patches from scratch, but every time I've tried making patches with it I find myself getting frustrated by the weird limitations, like how you can't do filter envelopes on the PCM sounds. Of course those sort of idiosyncratic limitations are what make it special and sound distinct, but it is some real friction for me.

[andrewwerdna]

This was originally called "C Phrygian" because I used ReaControlMidi to snap to that scale for noodling to come up with the riffs. I'm calling it "Deforming Principalities" now. It was made just with the Roland Sound Canvas VA vst, in March 2020, I think when I was still trying to figure out a "dungeon synth + darkwave" sound, but I'm not sure how focused I was on that idea here. The image is Midjourney blending five different public domain artworks.

[arillius]

Mar 22, 2024 1:27:15 GMT -5 andrewwerdna said:

This was originally called "C Phrygian" because I used ReaControlMidi to snap to that scale for noodling to come up with the riffs. I'm calling it "Deforming Principalities" now. It was made just with the Roland Sound Canvas VA vst, in March 2020, I think when I was still trying to figure out a "dungeon synth + darkwave" sound, but I'm not sure how focused I was on that idea here. The image is Midjourney blending five different public domain artworks.

There's something unique and nostalgic about this piece here. Do you have these songs sitting around or are they on an album? Would you ever be up for collaborating or doing a split with an artist?

[andrewwerdna]

Apr 4, 2024 12:13:38 GMT -5 arillius said:

There's something unique and nostalgic about this piece here. Do you have these songs sitting around or are they on an album? Would you ever be up for collaborating or doing a split with an artist?

Thanks. They are songs that have been just sitting around on my hard drive, not previously released, some meant to be parts of larger albums that never got done, and some just odd experiments. My official release projects are Illusionment and Valscharuhn. The 2017 Valscharuhn album Ykcowrebbaj was a similar assortment of song scraps in various states of completion.

I like the idea of collaborating with someone eventually to make a lowkey ep or something, but I've never had much luck attempting to do that with folks in the past so I would be a bit reluctant. And I don't really like splits tbh.

Anyways, here's a few more songs I uploaded over the past few days:


This song is from April 2013, always thought of as just a weird unfinished experiment, but every time I listen I feel like there's some sort of accidental something about it. I don't seem to have the original project files anymore so I don't remember what I used to make it, or my thought process behind making it, all I know is that it's been a wav file called "mysteriousfunky" hanging around in my music production folders all these years, so I feel like I should stick with that name.


I always found it interesting the way Mortiis used a vocoder in Cintecele Diavolui and Vond. So this is me experimenting with the "vocoder+DS" idea in September 2018. These lyrics are a bit cheesy (included in the video description). This was meant to just be a quick test, but I'm sharing because I think even with very little effort it still has a cool sound and there is a lot of potential to explore here. It was made using the Roland Sound Canvas VA. Specifically in the case of the vocoder voice I was having the audio of my voice fused with a Cello sound from the Sound Canvas via ReaVocode.


This is another dungeon synth + darkwave attempt. Made using Roland Sound Canvas VA, Roland D-50 vst, and a bass guitar vst called Ample Bass P Lite II. Made in March 2020.

[amnor]

You've got some interesting ideas here.  I'm particularly intrigued by your experiments fusing DS with Darkwave.  I know next to nothing about Darkwave, but some of what you've done reminds me of Dali's Car and Mick Karn.