One Last Breath – shelfblack – Electronic DAWless synth jam with a Korg Monologue

One Last Breath – full electronic music synthesizer jam featuring the Korg Monologue, Behringer Deepmind, and the Drumbrute Impact

This is a bit more on the experimental side for me. I wanted a very guttural and intense main line. I looked no further than my workhorse synth, the Korg Monologue. I tweaked and manipulated the Korg line to make the synth sound like it was fighting and screaming and clawing it’s way through the track. The rest of the track features the usual suspects, the Behringer Deepmind, the Arturia Drumbrute Impact. I also used the Korg Kaosspad 3 for some of the scratchy sounding effects on the Monologue.

As always, to see and hear more original music just check out my YouTube page and subscribe. I upload a few songs per week. If you’re reading this and you are putting together a compilation album and you’d like a shelfblack track exclusively, just reach out!

I’ll do a demo video of the Korg Kaosspad 3 in the coming weeks.

shelfblack – dawless hardware synth jam – Just Burn It All

Korg Monologue, Arturia Drumbrute, Microfreak, Behringer Deepmind, Korg Volca Sample, Beats, Keys, Oceans 11 reverb, Grand Canyon reverb, Beatstep pro, Korg monotron

This is a jam I put together starting with a slowed down 40 bpm minimal beat on the Arturia Drumbrute Impact. From there I layered in the Deepmind 6 with a weird, plonky key sequence, and some shimmery pad sounds from the Korg Volca FM. I also used a preset from the Microfreak to offset the Deepmind sequence and kicked it into overdrive with a blistering fireball bass line from the Korg Monologue. I made a 60 second version on Instagram and I have embedded the full version here from Youtube.

Lots of stuff going on this month. Fresh update from the Electronic Curiosity Collective Spotify Playlist . We will also be announcing the next monthly challenge on the Electronic Curiosity IG account. Thanks for tuning in! Make sure to subscribe on YouTube for more weekly content and original synth songs.


Black Zinda – Feature Length Self Titled Album Streaming Now!

Black Zinda – self-titled album streaming everywhere streams are streamed.

It’s always been my dream to be in a band. When I was in high school I would day dream about it. I tried and failed to learn a number of instruments throughout my life and never quite had the focus or ability to create music along with other people.

Sometime in late 2018, right around the time I released my second album, Happy Robot Dreams, one of the songs I pushed the hardest was called Invader X. It’s a fast paced, video game-esque ride punctuated with a crazy 16-step synth line. One of my Instagram friends who went by the name Stephen Zinda messaged me that he liked the song a lot and he wanted to use it to work on a collaboration track and add lyrics to it. I was extremely excited about the opportunity to work with a real musician and I was already a huge fan of Stephen after checking out a few of his indie/rock flavored songs he had put out.

A few weeks later, Palm Trees was delivered. I was absolutely floored with what Stephen was able to do with it. He had taken a song I loved a lot as my own creation and added his own lyrics, spin, slowed it down, and made it into something I couldn’t believe. Immediately, we decided to work on more tracks and focus on releasing an EP.

Right away, I started working on tracks to send him. I knew I wasn’t working to deliver an EP. My goal was to send him so much stuff there would be no choice but for us to turn it into a whole album. I never told him of this plan and as you can tell by the release of this album, it worked perfectly!

So here it is. Our debut self titled album. It’s available on Spotify, iTunes, Google Play, Amazon, Deezer, iHeartRadio, and more. I hope you enjoy it. I’m happy to be a part of this band, thanks for making a childhood dream come true, Stephen. Now let’s get to work on the next one!


Kryptic Species – Full Jam

Kryptic Species

New jam is up and I named it after the creator of that very awesome little modded tape deck that I used for the drum track. I bought the tape deck from @krypticspeciesmutations. He creates and/or mods a lot of unconventional items and he has caught my eye on more than one occassion . Check him out on Instagram for a complete listing of stuff he currently has available.

The drum track was created by recording a 4 minute loop of a drum track from the Zoom MRT-3B drum machine into my computer and then recorded it onto a blank pink cassette. This particular tape deck has been modded with a knob that controls the playback speed. I’m running the drum loop back at a slightly lower speed. At the end of the track you can see me messing with the playback speed.

Stay tuned as I’ll probably do a gear demo video of that tape deck on YouTube in the next coming days.

Black Zinda – album teaser – Digital release on 10/31/19

Black Zinda album teaser from YouTube – Album will hit all streaming sites on 10/31/2019

Here’s a teaser for the Black Zinda album that shelfblack has put together. It is a super cut of all 9 songs played in succession. The album is available for streaming on all major sites and is available for purchase on our Bandcamp.

Black Zinda – Coming 10/31 to Spotify, iTunes and all other streaming services!

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Black Zinda hitting all streaming sites on 10/31!

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A few months ago I collaborated with an amazing musician on Instagram by the name of Stephen Zinda. Stephen is a multi-instrumentalist, genre-hopping mastermind. He is one of the first people that I connected with on Instagram. He’s released 3 excellent albums on Spotify (Brains, King Pig, and Meat Freak.) I started chatting with Stephen early on and what really captured me about his music was his guitar playing and songwriting. He’s got that booming voice that really captures you’re attention.

Eventually, we collaborated on one song called Palm Trees. Here’s the link to the original version of Spotify. This song is included on our full release but it has been re-worked and is way more badass and epic in it’s final form.

The first Black Zinda song we created.

The goal for us originally was to create an EP. I ended up sending about 30 tracks to Stephen in my signature style, all full versions of jams in the 3 – 5 minute range. I did this over the course of a few weeks. Stephen was able to take the tracks and manipulate and flip them in ways I never imagined could be done. In the end we ended up with 9 tracks and released them on CD and Cassette on October 1st. Now at the end of the month we will be releasing our album digitally on all streaming platforms on October 31! We can’t wait for more people to hear what we have created.

Big shoutout to everyone who supported us by purchasing a CD or Cassette! You’ve helped fund the Black Zinda movement and we are currently entertaining an offer of perhaps releasing on vinyl. Anybody interested?