Jamuary is one of those creative internet challenges like Inktober, but for music. The goal is to upload a new piece of music for every day of January.
I gave it a go, and probably wrote more music in that month than I had in the last couple of years, even though I burnt out after 23 days.
I wasted at least an hour each night recording screen captures from Reaper or Ableton, then importing that into Photomosh to make some pretty visuals that were responsive to the audio, and still showed the track in the DAW. In hindsight, it probably wasn't worth the time.
I'm also a little disappointed that none of the tracks with real guitar in them were among my favourites. Recording guitar was time-consuming, and perhaps not worth it for next year. There is time spent writing, in addition to time spent practicing, and then recording. Much effort for mediocre results. I think my tastes are moving away from guitar-based music anyway.
Overall, it was a worthwhile challenge, and at the time I was keen to continue working on a few of these tracks.
But I never did.
These are the ones that aren't too embarrassing to show, from most favourite to least:
I used to play in a brass band (poorly), so the melodies for this tune came effortlessly. Arranging the rest took much longer. I put more time into this than any of the others, but it was worth it.
All sounds from SC88 samples. Individual instruments are all actually a blend between Trombone, French Horn and Tuba samples. Combining all 3 samples at different volumes gave better results than using single samples. Unquantized snare rolls sound nice too.
I really like the main super-duper-saw patch, made in Synth1. Main melody/chorus bit is cool, but I realise now sounds too much like the theme of The I.T. Crowd. Oh well.
Verse and pre-chorus are pretty meh, but if vocals were added, this tune would be decently listenable. Best video FX tho
This might actually be the most listenable one? It's the most musically simple thing I did for Jamuary, but it's one of the best.
Slightly annoyed that this took so little effort, sounds so simple, and yet is better than most of the other tunes.
Found a cool Baritone sax instrument for Sforzando, and had to make a song with it.
A and B sections are good, C section doesn't really work, should just do ABABB1. Drums/percussion not grooving quite right either. There is the beginnings of a good idea though.
Chorus has that Japanese VGM type harmony, which I like, but I think the melody is a little too busy. Overall texture/sound palette is nice.
Other than the chorus, I don't think this tune really works as a whole yet. There are some OK ideas, but it needs a lot more work.
Using "realistic" samples here, which I mostly like to avoid. Courtesy of BBC LABS and BBC free orchestra, I think. I'm happy with this track, although it feels pretty generic.
It would probably flow more smoothly if I removed most of the glockenspiel from the middle section, and made the whole thing longer with some better transitions. The big ending feels a bit too grandiose compared to the rest of the track. Overall, not bad.
As one of the youtube comments says, it's veeery Ocarina of Time sounding. Exactly what I was going for. The SC88 samples here sounding so similar to OOT, I wonder if they actually are the same samples.
I wasn't super happy with this track in Jamuary, but listening to it again, if I removed most of the unnecessary glock phrases, this could actually work in a game as is.
Some good music was made. I'm sad I haven't had the time or energy to revisit and polish these, or produce much music since.
I'm undecided as to wether it was a good idea to be switching genres each day or not. It lead to some fun results, but having to trouble-shoot a slightly different workflow each time was exhausting.
My focus on music for this period temporarily made me a less attentive husband and carer - something I definitely don't want to replicate next time.
Lessons learned for 2025:
27/11/2024