Jamuary

Jamuary — is the month of January when you record daily music jam practices and share it with community (or not).

One day I decided to participate in this madness.

The main problem here is lack of time. To make such a video you need to choose the equipment, connect it, find an idea, design the space, prepare a camera rack, jam for the recording, then monrage, adjust and post it.

There are quite a lot of activities for every day, which you have to do before the sun goes down, because you try to shoot everything in natural light. And I was rarely good at it.

Day 1

There is such a comic book, Moon Cop by Tom Gold, which is imbued with the atmosphere of loneliness on the moon.

Day 2

On this day I managed to get such a layered, aggressive sound from the Ants synth that it’s hard to believe it’s the only one synth here.

Day 3

At the time I was playing Aeon of Sands, a game with a wonderful fourth-wall breaking text component. This music is something inspired from there.

Day 4

It was a bit of a challenge how to sync Microbrute and Volca Sample at all. In the video I start them together after a short pause, and the synchronisation is done by sending CV-gate signal to the Sync input of Volca Sample. Which is not a fair synchronisation, as it’s tied to the notes, but nevertheless I got something.

Day 5

By this day I am somewhat tired of doing this, as there are other things to do over the New Year holidays. I can’t say that this jsm is good, but it was done.

Day 6

A smooth build-up of aggressive bass in a beautiful composition of rectangles. Looks good.

Day 7

I don’t really play the piano at all, it cost me a lot of effort not to lose my way when playing this tune live on this little box.

Ants synth here played just an intimidating background buzzsaw.

Day 8

It was late evening, which clearly hinted that it was time to call it a day with the jams.

Day X

But after a while, I went back to jams again. It’s one of those winter days, I think there’s something to it. Some kind of cosmic blizzard.

Day Y

I stopped recording jams, as it took a lot of time away from the jam itself.

Day Z

Then I prefer to concentrate directly on the magic of instruments and sounds to record raw material without the zeal to share momentary jams that go into the void. But things can change.