LIP INJECTION 01
LIP INJECTION - what is it?
i've had this problem for years now where i haven't been able to work on a music project long enough to actually finish anything, and because of that i only post my work sporadically, despite the fact that i am constantly making new things. in an attempt to challenge my perfectionism and actually post music on a regular basis, i decided to start posting collections of my most recent project exports on a bi-weekly (every two weeks, not twice weekly) basis. i will try not to worry too much about what i put out and instead focus on doing new things, finishing works, etc.
i settled on the title LIP INJECTION, "Lip" being short for "learning in public", and adding "injection" as a play on words.
because these are meant to be a roundup of works in progress, there will be no consistency as far as length, style/genre, or overall quality; i'm not trying to make this a project of its own, just a sort of portfolio i can direct people to when they ask about my production work.
every LIP INJECTION volume will be available on my youtube, but only the most recent ones will be available on soundcloud, due to the data limit.
this one sort of has two halves that are completely different; the second half containing projects that were started before the projects in the first half and sonically are very different. this is because in late april i bricked my computer and had to wait a week to get it repaired and in that short span of time i completely switched gears on my creative goals and aspirations.
i had started this year with an attempt to challenge myself and emulate music from before (and around) the year 2000, as well as trying to make projects with more organic sounds (read: real instruments, as opposed to synthesizers). i don't play any instruments so this meant relying primarily on samplers of real instruments. i also used the built in templates in fl studio (i was surprised to find the templates in the more recent versions have been somewhat good) and rotated between the templates for Jazz, Rock, and Funk music. because i was using templates, a lot of the sounds across projects, especially the drums, are pretty much the same. i also didn't do very much as far as mixing because the templates came with complex mixer track routings that i didn't feel like untangling. this started off as a bonus because it meant i could start working on a track quickly without having to spend much time on sound selection but it kinda came back to bite me in the ass, especially with tracks 7 and 8 as i couldn't figure out why things sounded so cramped and muddy.
when i killed my macbook, i ended up losing quite a few rendered parts of a lot of my projects where i had bounced things to audio to keep the cpu usage low. still not entirely sure why they're gone, since literally right before it happened i had literally moved all my rendered and sliced audio to my external drive. but whatever. anyway, losing all that data made it hard for me to continue working on a lot of projects i had started since the beginning of the year, as many of the rendered clips weren't things that i could easily reproduce. that's part of why there's only 3 tracks from that period on here, i just gave up on most of them because i didn't feel they were worth the effort.
all the tracks in the first half were made after i lost the data and had taken a week off from producing. i had already sonically drifted away from the 90s/00s, and had begun listening to more modern electronic music again. surprisingly i found it difficult to get back in the habit of making electronic music, and most of what i made didn't sound very good. eventually i started making things that at least felt interesting. i have been trying to learn more electronic production techniques, especially when it comes to specific genres of edm like house and techno (is it called techno? or trance? i really don't understand genre at all). after spending so much time relying on instrument samplers it has taken me a while to get back in the groove of working with synths and being more intentional with sound design, especially when it comes to creating the sounds that i want on the fly. i'm inching closer to creating a sound that embodies the mood i want to capture on the main project i'm developing right now so that is very exciting.
because of how different some of the tracks sound, i tried to arrange them in a sort of gradient, instead of chronologically. hopefully this makes the listening experience less jarring. don't know if i'll continue to do this on future releases.
QUICK DISCLAIMER
it just occurred to me that the track titles might be confusing for anyone who doesn't live in my brain.
the way that i label project files is by using the date (US shortened format, MMDDYY) and adding a letter from a-z to differentiate so that on days when i start multiple projects i don't get them confused (the first one gets an "a", the second one "b", and so forth...). when i export from the project file, i usually start with a 1 or a 0, and then count up from there with each subsequent export.
i started doing this only using 1 for the first export, but recently i've decided to use 0 to denote an export that hasn't actually been arranged (its a really small distinction but like, in my head, just putting loops in the playlist doesn't count as arrangement, and even if i actually spend time arranging clips for the track in a specific way, a lot of the time its more of a demo arrangement or mock up of how it might be arranged if i were to make the track a full song..)
none of this matters in anyway to anyone who isn't me and should not effect the listening experience, i just wanted to clear that up.
Track Commentary:
TRACK 1 051624a 0
a synth based work, one of the better ones since i've circled back to electronic based music, still not sure about the arrangement, part of me wants to keep it short but another part of me wants to extend it into a full track. very happy with how the layering turned out.
TRACK 2 050824a 1
another edm dance track, it sounds very basic right now but i feel like it has a lot of potential. might let it sit for a while until i can think of something more interesting to do with it.
TRACK 3 050524a 2
i was having so much trouble with the cpu overloading on this project file i might have to let it go, or clone it and strip it down until i can run it. it went through a few changes already and at this stage i think that the 4th section (starting 1:44) might have to go. that was one of the first parts i made for it but it's starting to fit less and less with the rest of the track and to me it feels like the weakest link. i might try rearranging it all first just to see if i can make it work.
TRACK 4 051424b 0
i was going for a 90s style house (so specific, ik) idk how i did as far as emulating the 90s, early 00s sound but i do like the way it turned out i might end up doing more with this later.
TRACK 5 050624a 1
this was so fun to make. i like blending the techniques i've been using from different styles for different elements. i was still aiming for a more organic, late 90s sound. the bass on the hook reminds me so much of kilo kish's distractions iii. i can't stand it when something i do sounds like a song i listen to a lot it feels like plagiarism. also the chords over the hook sound familiar to me but i can't place if its from a song i heard or a song i made myself. i might end up changing that whole part if i end up using this for anything.
TRACK 6 041524a 0
another one of my late 90s imitations attempts, one of my first successful "rock" attempts, very cranberries inspired. i love this so much but i really don't see myself using it in any of the projects i currently have planned. i could just write a song to release as a single but i hate doing songs that are so different from all the rest of my work with no context.
TRACK 7 041124a 2
unintentionally interpolated the tetris theme but i don't hate it. i do love the overall sound but the mixing on the project is so bad i might have to completely reconstruct. also does not align with my current projects so until then i'm not too concerned about this.
TRACK 8 012124a 4
started off attempting an early 00s rock track and ended up more born to die lana, not sure how i got there but what i have isn't the worst, i guess :/ its another project where i fucked up the mixing so bad i don't even want to try to sort it out. also i have no idea what the drums are doing. i really lost control of this one but it was fun to make.