Tag: monologue

Ice Water Ways – Microfreak and Monologue Jam for #Jamuary2020

Ice Water Ways – Microfreak and Monologue synth jam on YouTube

Quick brush fire in Australia update, we were able to raise $250! We made the donation on Thursday Jan 9, and a copy of the receipt has been uploaded to Instagram. Thanks so much to everyone that reposted, retweeted, bought a copy of an album or donated money directly. It was a fantastic effort and I’m beyond happy with how it turned out. I truly love how supportive and positive this community is!

Today’s jam is entitled Ice Water Ways. I started with a simple rhythmic beep from the Aturia Microfreak. The Behringer Deepmind is playing the ethereal sounding pad and I created a simple loop that the Volca FM plays during the chorus of the song. On drum duty is the trusty Alesis SR18 playing a sequence of my own programming.

Lots of more jams coming this month on IG, Youtube, and Twitter as part of the Jamuary event. Make sure you follow me on those platforms if you want to see and hear more synth and experimental jams.

Star Tracker Echo – Volca Drum Jam – shelfblack

Star Tracker Echo – Volca Drum full jam by shelfblack

Australian Fires Update – Don’t forget my current discography is on sale on BandCamp. You can get any album for $1. You can get the entire discography for $3.50. Thats 4 full length albums and 3 EPs. 63 Songs! Any money raised until Friday January 10th will be donated to the Australian Red Cross. Hit the link below to open a new tab with my BandCamp. Keep reading below for my best effort of trying to describe what I did to make this jam.

shelfblack.bandcamp.com

In this jam I started by building a strange, almost modular, sounding drum groove with the Volca Drum. I utilized the slice feature to get a stutter effect and do not have any drum parts being choked at all. I used some of the motion recording options as well. The whole jam is on the tube engine.

I followed that “modular” feel by recreating some modular type sounds on the rest of my gear. I tried very hard to explain what each piece of gear was doing but I couldn’t find a way to make it at all educational. I’m not a technical or theory based student of music. I know what a lot of the functions and knobs do but I don’t know why they do it or how. So the major players in this jam are the Korg Volca Drum, Korg Monologue, Behringer DeepMind6, and the Arturia Microfreak. In the background, the ElectroHarmonix Oceans 11 reverb pedal is pushing effects at varying degrees to some of the instruments.


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

View this post on Instagram

Black Zinda hitting all streaming sites on 10/31!

A post shared by Shelfblack (@shelfblack) on

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?

shelfblack – It All Started on Instagram

I’ve always been interested in making music, however, I was missing that one important skill that so many musicians rely on…talent. My dream was to be in a band, or writing songs, or creating music. As I got older, I honestly thought that it just wasn’t going to happen.

Then, in the summer of 2018, I came across some people making jams on Instagram with synthesizers and drum machines. I was enamored. It was awesome! Within the hour I was on Sweetwater and I bought my first two pieces of gear. I got the Korg Monologue and the Korg Volca Sample. The sample seemed like it would be a great way to jump into a drum machine without spending a ton of money if I didn’t like it.

With Sweetwater’s super fast shipping I got my two pieces quickly and within the hour I was up on IG posting my first jam. It was rather underwhelming but I could feel the potential starting to bust open with it. Here’s my first jam in all it’s unspectacular glory.

View this post on Instagram

First Jam.

A post shared by Shelfblack (@shelfblack) on

Since July of 2018, I have now released 4 full albums (1 as Black Zinda) and an EP. I have released music on all major streaming platforms, sold digital albums and cassettes and even shipped them worldwide. It’s been an absolute dream come true. The IG community is incredibly supportive and helpful. I have made so many real life friends and I have never met one of them in real life (yet.) If you are thinking of jumping into the electronic DAWLESS hardware game, get on there and get at me! I’m currently the most active on IG with near daily posts. I also upload full versions of the shorter IG jams onto YouTube when I make them. You can find all my links on the top or bottom of any of these pages.