It took me some time as I was busy with the production of a videoclip, but finally the oldest track of DUCAs is been created in the winter of 2020/2021.
It is a soundscape of snowfall. Embedded into synthesizers and drum machines, features a Spanish guitar.
Friday 5th of November DUCAs next Single will be online: GOING THROUGH. The track is been made with the Covid19 adventure of mankind in mind.
I am also working on the videoclip of NEW DIRECTIONS, that is expected to be online during the coming weeks.
This track made it after a long way. It started as VROLIJK, a piece for modular synths. As my concept evolved I experimented with loops with bass and electric guitars. The past weekend I recorded everything again from zero, sequences, patterns and loops. I then performed the track live, webcasted it on Instagram and recorded 16 tracks on my multitracker.
A rapid post production of only two days followed. I uploaded the track on Monday 11 October and by Friday 15 of October it is online in all major streaming outlets.
https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/ducas/happy-conditioning
As I started releasing tracks of DUCAs I recieve a lot of feedback to my concept and productions.
As these steps are very experimental it is not easy to fit into a Genre, especially the mainstream ones. The electronic sounds are very prominent, but the guitars take a lot of attention. The music is too minimal for a lounge band but too complicated for a club. I am the most curious about the medieval components, till now listeners don’t seem to care. Till now, Electro/Downbeats and LoFi/Chillbeats seem to fit the best.
The first release, NEW DIRECTIONS, has gone up the 10K plays very quickly and rises slowly after the second week. MARAEN 2021 has just been released and bungles just above the 500 plays after the first weekend. I am still considering my next move. It will most probably be HAPPY CONDITIONING, a track marking the end of the first lockdown.
The summer months left me with seven instrumentals in the making. I have already started the mastering stage. The first recordings had to be drastically upgraded with new samples, tracks, loops in order to meet the high standards of the most recent recordings. I had almost given up with recordings like Maraen, Vrolijk and Welcome Snow. But in the end they also turned into nice grooving instrumentals.
Thanks to everybody giving me early feedback in order to help me evolve with this project especially my son that provides me with the merciless feedback of a 20er.
I will start publishing soon! Stay tuned!
I did try to live without it. After all the Jupiter-Xm is a much better product, with proper hardware implementation, using the Zen engine which id the future, slightly better keybed, bigger display, much broader range of sounds and some proper amount of RAM memory. The JD-Xi feels like a game compared to all these issues. After the last update of the Jupiter-Xm firmware the internal sequencer became usable, erasing the only point where the JD-Xi was better in.
But the existing sounds on the JD-Xi are great and can cover the techno side of my sound pallet and if used careful the internal sequencer is still an asset to use. So I use it again to create three extra synth layers, usually rhythmical patterns with pan and/or delay effects, often using just the Root note, allowing nice texturing of different parts. At this moment I mute/unmute them manually, as the MIDI implementation of the JD-Xi is rather poor. The latest of my new Tracks is using these layers: “DUCAs-GO” .
In the future I intent to implement real time risers and droppers to improve my transitions in my live rig during performing/recording.