creative accountability, malihini mele loop

Wednesday, July 27, 2022

For this sketch, I went back to a loop-driven project after watching a neat YouTube video by Polarity about how to more reliably timestretch clips in Bitwig's sampler device. It was the advice missing from my last attempt at working from loops, and the technique helped this attempt feel much better:

I worked on this hours after returning from a long trip to Kauai, so virtually digging through crates of hapa haole songs was a way to give voice to my wistfulness.

Activities that seemed to make a difference:

• I did a better job of chopping up the sample for use as a loop
• I used the Ramp device on the sampler as advised by the polarity video
• I spent time trying various mixing techniques to give each track more space across the spectrum

I was absolutely attempting a "lo-fi beats to miss your vacation to" kind of thing. Evaluating the project after the fact, I can tell that I wanted to "validate" the work on the sample by having it be very present, but I think I should have at least tried EQing the sample down to more of an AM radio feel. I suspect it would sound better overall and still stand out.