#lostfileschallenge – presenting some old music of mine (2015)

Hello again! After a week of break I wanna show you something that has been happening over on my Instagram account a couple of days ago. Fellow producer Scarecrow tagged me to take part in the #lostfileschallenge. This basically means that I was challenged to present some forgotten and/or unreleased works from the past. So if you want to see what some of my music sounded like back in 2015 keep on reading! I’ll just post the original instapost here so you can click through the individual files. Below I’ll give some more detailed information than that from my post.

My #lostfileschallenge

https://www.instagram.com/p/B_A39DenX4Y/

File 1: Sermon (2018) – back to the trap roots

After making quite a lot of atmospheric and dark music throughout 2017 and the beginning of 2018 I wanted to go back to my musical roots which definitely are experimental Trap and Bass tracks. So in summer of 2018 I decided to go for some more glitchy beat-type action for once. Actually there was a reference track I really liked so I tried to copy some of the characteristics of that track in the beginning and went on from there. For the intro and bridge I used a sample of a Tupac interview, chopped that up and had some fun pitching and glitching it. It certainly contributes a lot to the vibe of this track, the sloppy sample work much of the mid 2010’s trap music had. It’s not that old and I’m still planning on putting it out there. In fact I wanted to send this to a collective that wanted to feature me but they never got back in touch so this is going on my very own album soon which is also why I wont post the full version here at the moment.

File 2: mind of the unlovable (2017) – failed collab

This second one is a pretty unique one in my opinion. It doesn’t really have any highlights but the making of action is quite interesting. Originally this track was supposed to be a collab with another artist. The mistake I made was basically finishing this track with next to no space for the collaborator left to add his own stuff which lead to the track never being released.

In the video you can hear some arpeggiated stuff throughout the beat that’s played by different synths. It’s all MIDI material from some piece by Franz Liszt. I can’t remember why I used that MIDI file but it adds some weird vibes to the beat for sure. The second section I didn’t post is pretty different from that drop you can hear in the clip and sounds more emotional with some Future Garage elements. All in all this second file is definitely one of the weirdest ones I’ve made so far.

File 3: u76usw (2017-2018) – smashing my keyboard cause I can’t name orchestral music for shit

This original orchestral composition never really had a purpose, so no wonder it still sits alone in the abyss some might call project folder. Composing orchestral music without any music theory knowledge has always been interesting to me because I think it’s pretty incredible what you can create without knowing why stuff works, which scale you’re in and all that stuff. Still want to rework it a bit but other things are always more important so this plan has been around for almost three years now. But changing some of the sounds and adding more percussive elements would surely elevate this piece to the next level. The full piece is exactly four minutes long and could most certainly be expanded upon it’s structure in the future.

File 4: Bday (2015) – #lostfileschallenge done right

Yeah.. 2015. ‘Bday’ is literally my second piece of music ever. The DAW was Music Maker, I had no clue, I had one software synth and I guess me and clipping were best friends back then..

That dorky lead sound is the result of me clicking the ‘randomize’ button on ANA (that only software synth I had back then) time and time again until I had something that sounded somehow usable.

Of course I didn’t know how to create any of the drums when I started out so I believe these samples are all from the same free pack I downloaded when I figured I’d need some samples until I could make some of my own. As I deleted most of my Music Maker projects, this 30-second long clip is everything that’ll ever exist of that piece of music and I’m quite happy about it to be honest. The positive thing to take away from this is seeing I’ve evolved. Slowly but steadily. Especially after switching to Reaper after 2016, things started to flow a lot better.

The #lostfileschallenge has taught me this: Listening to your old works on a regular basis really helps reminding yourself where you started and how much you’ve improved over time. In the moment of creation we tend to think we don’t learn and advance to higher levels but in fact with almost every project you work on you learn something. Even if it’s just how to find the right samples from that free pack on your hard drive faster. It all helps and getting the little things out of the way makes room for way more important improvement you can achieve if you just keep doing your thing.

Thank you Scarecrow!

So this it. My #lostfileschallenge! It was a fun experience and I encourage every creator out there to see what lost files there are hidden in the archives. I tagged Noovez, doublemydose, Edwin Hosoomel, J3NGV and Carson to do the #lostfileschallenge.
I recommend you follow them all as well.

Thank you for reading, make sure to check in on my other blog episodes and until next time.