Tag: songlets

  • Darkwave songlet

    I recently upgraded my DAW and have been meaning to play around with it AND get more familiar with synth soundcrafting rather than using the synth presets.

    Some of this is crafted sound, some of it is presets, about half-and-half.

    I’m just playing around, not sure if this will end up as something.

    Detail free description: I was looking for a mid-speed darkwave sound that was upbeat enough to dance to with an emulated classic Roland 808 drum machine sound (although I may modify it).

    Slightly more detail: The arp and one layer of the pads are crafted sounds and the original bass sound was as well, but I wanted something punchier and livelier than what I was getting, so I went with a preset and tweaked it. The guitar is a great preset I live for guitar, so I did almost nothing with it. 134 bpm, for the curious.

    This is two sections, repeated. If I were to flesh this out, I would add some bridges and empty space between. But this is something just cobbled together in about two or three hours and, while it was interesting to play around, I’m not sure how much mileage I can pull from it (it would need lyrics, singing and full engineering work to make it sound better). We’ll see. I can already hear the arp levels were lower than I intended. And there is zero panning.

    Anyway, another one of my songs in less that two minutes thingies. This one clocks in currently at around 65 seconds, so you’ll only have around that much of your time to demand back from the timelords.

  • Testing new mp3 design

    The song below is not a new song, but one I posted a short while ago. I am trying to create a reusable set of Gutenberg blocks in-post to borrow from for future audio-oriented posts to make the songs/spoken-word stand out better as an audio file.

    sEEthIng

    a songlet by michael raven

    ©

    michael raven

    The “player” will likely evolve as I figure out exactly just how I want it to look.

    Here’s another quick modification:

    sEEthIng

    a songlet by michael raven

    ©

    michael raven

    And a more compressed variant of the second:

    sEEthIng

    a songlet by michael raven

    ©

    michael raven

    I have a few other formatting ideas that I want to play with, but if you have an opinion, please let me know in the comments (on either music or player design). Let me know if you are having problems rendering. If so, let me know the platform (WordPress Reader/web), device class (mobile/laptop/tablet) and browser (default for your device if you use the WP Reader app) .

    Thanks!

    [07 dec 25 update:]

    Yesterday’s attempts didn’t have the intended appearance when it comes to viewing on WordPress Reader,. I can still leverage what I learned, but I’m going to attempt a new approach here and see how it looks dark, (stack on mobile, header large font not H4, copyright no-call):

    sEEthIng

    a songlet by michael raven

    ©2025 michael raven

    Or this light (no stack on mobile):

    sEEthIng

    a songlet by michael raven

    ©

    michael raven

    [07 dec 25 update 2:]

    Yeah, no matter how you tweak it, the appearance is the same on WordPress Reader. A bit broken with “no-stack” on mobile, but looks good stacked. Seeing as it matters not at all for WordPress Reader, I will just decide on a favorite when I set it up later (and avoid using rows on the copyright line, because it breaks in feeds and WP Reader, but I’m just trying to be fancy there and the fancy isn’t required).

    I’m leaning towards the dark variant above (using “media and post”), feel free to pipe up if something absolutely does not work in your mind.

  • On the Hobnob with Gilly

    a songlet written in 120 minutes or less

    Picture of an audio soundboard
    Photo by Anthony Roberts on Unsplash

    For new visitors: I occasionally set myself up with the challenge to write, record and produce a songlet (not a full song) in the space of 120-minutes, starting from scratch. I try to limit the song to about a minute in length.

    As a result, quality varies greatly and I don’t promise that there are any hits that will arise of this personal challenge. The quality over time will vary dramatically, depending on how my creativity level is faring for the day.

    (more…)

  • songlets in 120 minutes — 22nov25

    Picture of an audio soundboard
    Photo by Anthony Roberts on Unsplash

    I decided that I needed something to shake up things a bit, some incentive so I didn’t keep dithering around when I was creating music. I often catch myself playing around and never actually writing anything while I was horsing, so I said to myself: “Self, you need to have some motivation to do more than press buttons and listen to sounds.”

    “Oh no, what are we going to do now, Boss?”

    (more…)

  • sEEthIng — a songlet

    As I mentioned yesterday, I was needing to get out of my writer head, who wants nothing at all to do with writing (for whatever reason). So I have.

    I had previous mentioned my intentions of buying virtual synth and maybe upgrading to the subscription model for my DAW. Then I read the fine print: that subscription price on the DAW was only good for a year, and then the price would double. Great deal at the half-off price, terrible at the standard price.

    Well, the last thing I want to do is lock myself out of my own music when I decide to no longer subscribe, so I opted out of that plan and redirected those earmarked funds to the second virtual synth I had my eyes on, thereby saving myself some money in the process.

    Michael… This is awfully boring, let me skip ahead to your demo song already

    (more…)

  • Songlet — 06 apr 25

    Listening to some of the post-punk/darkwave/synthwave music I’ve been listening to these past few weeks has inspired me not only to pick up the bass once again, but to get back to playing around with some songwriting and DAW recording as well. [DAW = digital audio workshop, a home studio option for the modern era].

    Picture of an audio soundboard
    Photo by Anthony Roberts on Unsplash

    As I was discussing this direction in comments with Chris, I began to think that it might be interesting to at least some of you to share with folks the general thought process and progression of how some of us — or at least I do — get about to writing music.

    (more…)