Category: solo stuff

various bits of stuff i’ve been working on – presently trying to work out a decent new name for this

*musical entertainment cube*

live performances as “daniel arena’s musical entertainment cube” will commence soon.

the cube is very complicated and it sounds like this:

(the cube is not actually a real cube, but it helps to think about it like that)

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also. earlier in the year, i had my wisdom teeth out, and while i was recovering i made this:

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also. there is a new album coming early 2019.

thank you for your patience

‘towards programmed intellectual nothing’ video clip!

So, I made a video clip. Note: strobe effects.


This is an excerpt from ‘towards programmed intellectual nothing’, a mix-set of live analog synth tracks I produced late 2016 (see: previous post)

The audio (along with everything else on the album) is cut together from improvisations on a little analog rig, recorded directly to two-track.

From memory –
* Main arp is from a Roland SH-2, sequenced on an Arturia Beatstep Pro
* …which is synced with a Roland/Boss RS-505 looper
* …playing back a looped melody line from a Moog Prodigy
* …and then halfway through I kill the loop and take over playing it by hand
* Rhythms are via a custom sample set on a Volca Sample, which got mashed on with whatever hands were free
* There’s some Elektron SidStation in there as well, keyed off the beatstep

Post-production is just a bunch of reverb and compression and a bitcrush in the middle section. Everything’s already smushed together (arp and drums on one track, melody on the other) so there isn’t really any room to get clever.

All footage from Commodore 64 games/ambient. Most of the footage is taken from Impossible Mission, with cuts from a ton of other stuff I remember playing 30 years ago.

‘towards programmed intellectual nothing’ album released

all new. made in a week.

https://danielarena.bandcamp.com/album/towards-programmed-intellectual-nothing/

i wanted to record an album that sounded unfamiliar to me. so i chose some constraints that would prevent me from getting too connected.

this set was sequenced from solo, single-take hardware jams recorded to two-track with minimal editing and post-processing, mostly between 18-24 sept 2016. everything was mashed out live into sequencers with nothing prepared apart from a few rhythms.

so there’s a bunch of mistakes and clipping and leakage and analog grunge printed in. you can maybe sense the terror in the second half of some of these tracks as i desperately hang on.

‘cave art’ album released

mostly ancient stuff.

https://danielarena.bandcamp.com/album/cave-art/

un was derived from hacked-up bits of old tracks. this is just the raw feed. some of these tracks themselves are reworks of older cast-offs. recursion!

some tracks are designed to loop forever, so they sequence a bit weirdly.

‘avocado’, ‘floaty’ js effects demo

i’ve uploaded a quick demo of some of the free js effects i’ve built for reaper (linked here, click for more info)

[audio:jsfx_example.mp3]

this is just a quick guitar improvisation, played into two instances of floaty and one of avocado, streamed live to disk – no offline edits or effects except for a limiter were added to this.

update: i’ve just updated all of the effects, here’s a demo of avocado tempo sync’ed to some drums:

[audio:avocado_demo.mp3]

solo music package #2 – start waiting

i think this is #2, anyway. should start getting pretty interesting by #5 or so.

these date back to 2005-2006.

1: please wait
[audio:daniel arena – please wait.mp3]

2: keep starting (a collaboration w/ rachel holmshaw, cheers!)
[audio:daniel arena – keep starting.mp3]

3: scissors
[audio:daniel arena – scissors.mp3]

(i’ve given up on picking a catchy name to release this stuff under, i figure my actual one will do for the time being)