Happy new year ! Welcome to the second edition of the monthly Renoise centric challenge !
Code name of the challenge is : The Synthesized Bus Driver
The monthly challenge is not a competition, it’s a way to share practice and expand creativity together.
You can spend a few minutes to a whole month of work on it, it’s up to you. If you can share your .xrns that would be great (demo users welcome), but you can also share a rendered audio file.
Even if you feel stupid about your creation, please share it, someone may learn something about it, you never know.
The produced piece of music must comply with a few constraints that will change every month. Sometimes the constraints may appear stupid, but this is what gives some fun and push creativity. Feel free to not honor some constraints if it helps your creativity.
For this month, I picked 2 of the most voted constraints on the poll, which are :
- The theme of the song is “BUS DRIVER” (I clicked the Feeling lucky button of wordnik.com) - Craft all your beats and instruments with a synthesizer, no presets allowed. You can use Renoise capabilities or a VST.
Post your piece (or your pieces) whenever you want (even work in progress), I’m very excited to listen to it.
Previous issues of the challenge :
2020/12 : 1 minute piece derived from a single sample with .xrns file less than 435kb
If you have new smart and dumb ideas for February, please answer this thread and I will suggest them for next month.
Open Renoise, press keys, click, copy, paste, turn knobs !
I think I’ll go for 1. I’m totally new to synths. My prior experience consists in using presets slightly modified (volume enveloppe and random buttons). I guess if I master one, I could use the others in another project later.
Here is what I got so far. I started with creating an engine sound. Then a beat, then a snare. And Then a bus air horn sound. And then a sound I made when trying to create the horn sound.HeartBeatHero - Demo 00254 - The Synthesized Bus Driver.xrns (801.0 KB)
The idea is to use the engine as a bass (like you did). I automated the pitch to give the illusion of acceleration. It’s quite vivid in my head but I’m not sure it makes you think of a bus.I think I will add some percs for blinker light, a horn, and I would like to use an new instrument that reminds the passenger. Maybe some coins (with a arp effect?) when they buy tickets. Don’t know yet
I exclusively used Surge and no renoise effects yet. The manual is very good.
Some of the instruments (the kick and the high synth at the end) I used presets, then fired a blank Surge and remade them side by side. I discovered load of stuff. I think that’s a nice way to learn and bend the rules I’m not an expert but I’m quite satisfied of the quality of kick, snare and other blips and blops. Maybe I will sample them and reuse them in other compos.
I would like to improve the “engine” instrument because it sounds muffled. I’ve already lost 2 evenings on it.
I have to find some great melodies to put on top of that.
Yes, surge is really good and has a lot of potential since it went open source…
I bought pigments 2 in need of a “do it all” synth with wavetables but 2-3 instances max out my cpu, it’s really a workflow killer… surge is really light compared to it.
Next I’ll have to dig in Surge ! Then I will build a highway. The road will be long.