New Partition 36 Album Released (aka, free music!)

[Remilia Scarlet]

Yep, after over a year’s worth of work, I've finally finished off a new album: 63. It has 12 tracks, and like all of my stuff, it's electronic music that uses a mixture of software and hardware synths.

A lot of these tracks have taken inspiration from synthpop, industrial music, and some old demo scene songs that I still listen to. There's also more vocals this time around, though I can't sing for the life of me, and so they're not really "lyrics" per se. But, they work, and I'm extremely happy with how this album turned out.

You can listen to it online, and download it in MP3 or FLAC format, here. I've also got a write up about the album here.

Partition 36 Facebook Page
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[chungy]

Sounds pretty cool.

Extended Edit Edition: I've listened to the whole thing twice now, I do love this album. It gives me kind of an old school electronica/computer music feeling and I just can't get enough of it. Very well done.

Also I added it to MusicBrainz (mainly because I'm somewhat anal about tagging)

[kristus]

Not much love for this? Sounds good. I'm not involved much in music these days. But I like it.

[Aliotroph?]

Good stuff. It's nice to see electronic music that isn't trance or dubstep for a change. It also reminds me of 90s game music. I suppose a lot of that did sound like demoscenes, synthpop and industrial.

[Remilia Scarlet]

Thanks everyone! Yeah, I always forget to mention how much 90s game music has also influenced me. When I started writing, I was basically copying those songs.

chungy said:

Also I added it to MusicBrainz (mainly because I'm somewhat anal about tagging)

I'm super anal about tagging as well, so thanks for this.

[Khorus]

Congratulations on the release! :) I haven't listened to it much yet, but what I've heard so far is even better than your last album which was very good too.

[Deeforce]

The vocals are annoying, but other than that I like it!

[Blastfrog]

I'm really liking what I've heard so far of this. Great job. :)

What software do you use, and what is your method of creating the tunes themselves? Like song structure, especially how the notes progress and stuff.

[Remilia Scarlet]

Sodaholic said:

What software do you use, and what is your method of creating the tunes themselves? Like song structure, especially how the notes progress and stuff.

My main DAW is Sonar; it's very rare I use anything else. When I do it's either Reaper or Renoise, or even more rarely, Reason. Beyond that, the software I use the most is Arturia's Prophet V VST, Reaktor, MeldaProduction's VST plugins, and SQ8L. Then for the very last bit of mastering and cutting, I use GoldWave.

Here's a complete list of my equipment and software: http://www.partition36.com/equipment/

Most of the time I'll start with a bass line or a basic chord progression. From there I usually start to build a generic concept around it, adding in themes and textures, until I have a block that works as the basis for everything else. From there I'll work backwards to create an intro, then forward to finish things off.

A lot of times I'll work within specific scales or modes, switching between them depending on what I want to do. For example, if I've got an EBM/industrial or goa trance song, then I'll likely play around with a phrygian dominant mode. Not always, but usually. From there I work off of intervals and progressions I'm familiar with, though sometimes I mix things up. Sometimes I'll use a deliberate technique, like ostinato or counterpoint, to give a song a certain feeling.

Some songs actually start out with a concept. /dev/music was like this, where I started out by wanting to test a mixing idea I had. Tweak too, where I wanted to write a song that sounded like it was tweaking out worse and worse as time went on.

The sounds are either programmed by me, or chosen and then tweaked. Not many remain identical to their original stock patches. Loops are something I never use unless I made them, so any note you hear is a note I inserted myself.

Structure wise, I often take a basic Intro->verse->chorus->bridge thing and try to modify it. But more recently I've been playing with "this feels right here, let's do that instead!". My music has always been extremely structured and so I'm trying to change that.

Work wise, I start off with some good ol' fashioned synth noodling, and then start to work from there. As time goes on I'll do some minor mix adjusting, adding an EQ here or a compressor there, while regularly listening to it on various speakers. Usually a song gets a LOT of playtime in my car as I'm working on it since I have a nice pair of subwoofers in there, so I can get a good feel for the sub bass frequencies. From there I'll go into the final mixing stage, where I do most of my EQing, compression, and whatever else it needs. Then it's on to doing most of the mastering within Sonar, exporting it as a 48kHz 64-bit wav file, then final mastering and downsampling in GoldWave. Then lots of very loud playing in my car late at night.

[Enjay]

I like early electronica (Gary Numan, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Jean-Michele Jarre, Ultravox etc etc) as well as more recent electronic music (including EBM/TBM) and some game/demo music too so I'm enjoying this.

[edit] IMO "Occupy" is excellent and is a real stand-out track. "Remembering Her" gets increasingly VNV Nation-like as it goes on and that's not a bad thing. "Tweak" probably sounds the most like '79/'80 electronica and I like it for that reason. [/edit]

[xepop]

Pretty chill stuff, I like it. Midnight highway sounded a bit like C&C tracks. There's something in the intro track voice that irritates me, though, but I don't know how to express what it is D: Will be listening this for awhile.

[Violator]

Stahp

[Varis Alpha]

very good stuff, very smooth sounding. i've re-played the album twice to this date, and am really enjoying it. there's no dull moments in this album, and everything blends together very well with each other.

reminds me, i need to buy your Inside The Beat CD at some point. would be awesome to have your music physically in my hand. signed, no less.