Not William Shatner - music by Used Soyuz

I rashly chose to christen my new pop filter with some dodgy singing and a clumsy song. Composed in LMMS, with vocal and mixing in Audacity. The music sample is from 'Shatner' by The Wedding Present, and the royalty-free video is from videezy.com.

My tricky third album is on Bandcamp!

Pleasing Myself Parts One and Two - music by Used Soyuz

More beeps and bleating, using the wonderful VCV Rack, the free modular soft synth that has proved a dreadful time-soak. It makes great noises, but music? I'll leave that for you to judge, dear listener. I imported a quick bit of sequencer knob twiddling (thanks Omri Cohen for the tutorials) into LMMS on my Linux Lenovo, added a rhythm track, and then put self-indulgent reverbed vocals onto this first part in Audacity (but no singing thankfully). Royalty-free video from videezy.com. This is Part One (with vocals):

And here is the instrumental only Part Two:

Too Much Information - music by Used Soyuz

Here is another VCV twiddle, in two mixes. First I made this one, with three takes, edited together in Audacity:

 

Then I worried that it sounded a bit grim, so I thought I'd liven it up with a bunch of vocal samples, taken from two episodes of Gerry Anderson's Space 1999:  

I played this version to my family, whose response was, 'It's just a load of samples, with no music.'. I guess there's just no pleasing some people.

As We Get Older And Stop Making Sense - music by Used Soyuz

My first bit of soft modular synthesis. I have been wanting to use VCV Rack for ages, but it didn't like my Linuxed Lenovo, so I put it on my Windows laptop instead. It worked first time. Here are my first two twiddlings, including my first ever use of a sequencer, edited together in Audacity. Free stock footage from videezy.com.

At first it reminded me of early Human League - 'The Dignity Of Labour' - only not as good. In fact I just read of the death of Richard H Kirk, one of the founders of Cabaret Voltaire. This is now a clumsy tribute to their early 'Methodology' period work. Only not as good.

Whatever Next - music by Used Soyuz

A quick instrumental track, meant to be cathartic - ends up sounding like cheesy movie soundtrack. LMMS on my Linuxed Lenovo, video done with Kdenlive.

A4 (M4) 8 Bit Race - music by Used Soyuz

I wanted to do something a bit more upbeat and silly. I got the title and video on a coach trip to Bristol to see Thing One, and composed it on my Linux Lenovo in LMMS, using mostly Synth1 presets that I tweaked a bit, and a FutureBass bassline with a random arpeggio and some automated note skipping. Vocal samples were recorded on my phone and treated in Audacity, using its Vocoder effect for that 80s synth-crunch (note to self - mix a mono vocal and a sawtooth into one stereo track, and make sure it's sampled at 44kHz or above). I caught myself humming 'Close To The Edit' by Art Of Noise and Cake's 'The Distance' while I composed this - can you tell?

My second album is on Bandcamp!

I have put together another album for Bandcamp. My career is still a tree falling alone in the forest. I probably ought to tell people about it...

 

Drivetime - music and video by Used Soyuz

For my first go on my new-old Linux laptop I took audio from NASA of Martian wind and driving sounds recorded by Perseverance: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multim...​ I then 'Paulstretched' (clip length x 10) the sample in Audacity and added some bleeps in LMMS on my recently-flashed Linux laptop (mostly using TAL-Noisemaker, and one Synth1 preset). The video was edited in Kdenlive, which seems much happier than on the Pi 400.

My old new Linux machine

So, I realised that while my Pi 400 will run LMMS, it only runs older versions (due to its ARM chip?), and not the VSTs (soft synths) that I want to play with. So I took my old Lenovo ThinkPad, and reflashed it with Linux (Ubuntu Studio). It now whizzes along with LMMS, Audacity and Kdenlive. I have had some problems getting individual VSTs installed (I still don't get what WINE really does if it's not an emulator), but I am in the VST business. Which begs the question - what shall I do next with my Pi 400? How about going right back where I started, with Sonic Pi?

Cloudspotting One by Used Soyuz

I wanted to make this one simple, so I could focus on practising with mixer channels, effects and automation in LMMS, with EQ and mastering in Audacity. The video has timelapse footage done on my phone with Stop Motion Studio and YouCut on my Pixel 3a, and was edited in Kdenlive on my Pi 400, which took ten times longer to render than my phone does.

I might make this track the first of a series of variations, or I might see sense.

Choice and Chance - music and animation by Used Soyuz

I am learning more about what I can and can't do (next or ever) with Linux music composition. 

This is composed entirely on the Pi 400 in LMMS, using its bundled SID and Triple Oscillator synths (Mad Mind and Future Bass presets), and my first downloaded Soundfonts. There's a background drone sound from zapsplat.com, and I just used Audacity for final mastering. 

The music suggested the video style to use, which I have added to with some top-quality stop motion animation. I had problems rendering my multiple video sources in Kdenlive, so I've rendered it in WEBM instead of MP4 as an experiment.

Return To Mars - music by Used Soyuz

Created to mark the arrival of three Mars missions (China's Tianwen-1, UAE's Hope and NASA's Perseverance) and in anticipation of a successful landing by Perseverance. Cobbled together on my Pi 400 using Audacity for vocal and telemetry samples, and LMMS for composition. The video (and captions) was originally by Science Fellow, edited with Kdenlive.

Look Up (Lateral Flow Mix) by Used Soyuz

My first go at remixing one of my own tunes. Here's 'Look Up' pushed back through Audacity again on the Pi 400, with far too much reverb and wahwah. It's my tune, so I'll do what I like with it.

Look Up by Used Soyuz

A year into the pandemic, this contemporary composer finally gets round to a lockdown song. Composed on my new Raspberry Pi 400 using LMMS, with Audacity for the vocal overdub. I also used the Pi to edit the video, using Kdenlive for the first time. I hope you enjoy it.