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Bop
Hour
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March 28, 2026

#20. 🎱 Clouds and Cirlces

A somber drum and bass evolution that sees a heaviness in the mirror. This was a fast and clean write, but I was clocked in. Drum and bass is something I have to be in the mood for. Some fun effects here, which is where this process was the most fun. Interesting technique with the bass where I used an extremely low piece of audio from the o coast and pitched it up 3 octaves via various methods and drowned it in soundtoys.

Most difficult part of this track: just being in the mood to make drum and bass. Gotta get em out, gotta follow through. Biggest takeaway: This was made entirely with large brush strokes, which honestly is weird and feels kind of good as a way to make sketches. I don't even know what the details sound like on this.

March 22, 2026

#19. 🥽 Scooters

A frustrated trap sibling lost in a distopian nightmare. They can’t all be zingers. This was a cool Idea that wasn't executed well at all. It would take far too much work to get this sounding good, but at least I got it out. Potentially one of worst sounding demos so far in bop hour, as far as the frequency spectrum is concerned. We keep going though! That’s what it’s all about!

Most difficult part of this track: This was a bummer to mix. Found a really great vibe from manipulating a percussion loop but the processing degraded the audio so bad that It's not savable. I would have to recreate the percussion from scratch to get it to feel full and satisfying. If I love it later maybe, but that's too much time for this project. I'm quite a few songs in the hole. Biggest takeaway: Take the time to start with better ingredients.

March 22, 2026

#18. 🧽 Pushing On

A determined, hypnotic bass moving through the impact of loss. I’m counting this as a big win for bop hour. Maybe someday it’ll serve as a seed for a vocalist somewhere but more importantly I’m way behind in my goal and am starting to get creative with speeding up my writing. This took very little time in-session, though it’s been cooking for several weeks.

Most difficult part of this track: It took very little time to establish the main groove but was difficult developing it out into a full sketch. Biggest takeaway: It's much easier and more fun to establish all the big tonal movements before doing anything else.

March 22, 2026

#17. 🧸 Lotusish

A mischievous house groove that knows something you don’t. Almost lost the big picture on this a few times, had to circle through some other projects before coming back to it. The track grew out of a generative vocal sampling exercise that I’ve been having a lot of fun with. Most fun here was vocal processing. Those reverbs are tasty 😋

Most difficult part of this track: Mixing. I sketched this with poor sound choices and had a really hard time getting them to sound good. I hate the mix on this. It's too thin and snappy. Biggest takeaway: Spending slightly more energy on initial sounds goes a long way once the magnifying glass comes out.

March 14, 2026

#16. 💾 Don't Actually Need Any Other Stuff

Drums that don't loop make me want to continue listening. I'm starting to get quick. This track was lazy and not overthought. There are many details I don't care for in this but from a distance it hits the vibe I set out for. Big breakthrough. This wasn't made in a hurry like some of the previous tracks, but it was made quickly and calmly, which is precisely what I'm trying to practice with these songs.

Most difficult part of this track: This was made in two very short sessions. I shut down the first session right when I started overthinking layering and cinematic textures. I came into the second session having forgotten entirely what my plans were and was able to hear it in a new way and quickly found drums and fleshed out an arrangement. Biggest takeaway: filling out the textural details and production flourishes felt like a reward for writing most of this in mono on a laptop speaker. I didn't spend as much time as I would have liked but I was starting to get sick of it and wanted to move on. This is also a really good sign. I can't remember the last time I finished a song I was sick of.

March 14, 2026

#15. 🌹 Masking

I love the clave as an elevated ornamental element. This energy comes naturally when I sit down at a computer to make music. This track was made in a short session while traveling, committing to each new idea that I had through to execution and catching myself each time I started getting carried away with something that wasn't directly impacting what needs to be in a demo.

Most difficult part of this track: manufacturing high end from samples without it. I wasn't able to achieve as balanced of a mix as I would have liked, but focusing on energy and composition is the point of this project anyway. Biggest takeaway: Smells very much like me. This track is darker and has strange elements; a world I enjoyed exploring. I'd love to put together a body of work like this.

Febuary 16, 2026

#14. 🌊 Outliers

This was a tricky week for music. Lots of getting stuck and being unhappy with the resulting experiences. I decided I want to do something that didn't require any looping at all. This was very much an excersise in calling it quits. I could have spent a hundred hours making small noises that only caused density. That said, I ended up with some interesting combinations of textures with I like. I've never done the synth wash thing with vocals.

Most difficult part of this track: leaving space. My tendancy is to overcrowd the spectrum, especially if there's a juicy drone. Biggest takeaway: It feels great to not loop a track, and play it more as a performance.

Febuary 16, 2026

#13. 🧬 Coastal

I like this now but didn't at all during any part of the process. This bassline is from the 0-coast and is super expressive, but I wasn't able to match the expressiveness with the rest of my production. Switching between hip hop and dance music highlights some interesting energetic differences for me. It's difficult to transition but it creates an extrememly clear difference in each process.

Most difficult part of this track: making it interesting for 2 minutes. Really had to drag this one out. Biggest takeaway: Pocket is everything, expressive production is a skill that I need to hone.

Febuary 16, 2026

#12. 🛒 Bull Dog

Dug through some crates and landed on a few samples I liked, but looped them until I lost all sense of momentum or direction for the song. This was built around bootleg vocals, which it sounds better with. If I didn't feel the pressure of a certain number of Bop Hour tracks I would have scrapped this (or let it sit in my folder until I got sick of looking at it). I wasn't able to really listen to it and find out where it wanted to go. Missed the shot!

Most difficult part of this track: Taking the song anywhere, but also figuring out a bassline. I think in this case those are tightly wound. Biggest takeaway: It's mportant for me to keep moving early on. The earlier I start looping sections the deeper the quicksand.

Febuary 7, 2026

#11. 🍯 Dirty Pepsi

Meg and I went to a coffee shop this morning and decided we were both going to produce a track for the duration of our coffees. This is definiltey a way to force big brush strokes. Any type of detail gets completely swolled by the noise floor. It took a heavy hand when I got home to get this working on monitors but honestly it was really helpful to separate the writing and mixing.

Most difficult part of this track: Mixing. I had to enrich samples with vsts in subtle ways to fill out the spectrum. Biggest takeaway: This track took less than two hours, and was fun to make. Maybe writing with a high noise floor is the way to train my focus on high-level writing.

Febuary 7, 2026

#10. 🍁 Maple Flavor

Gotta get out the ugly ones sometimes. This started with a combination of samples that were inspiring and I built a weird groove with them. Extremely awkward to mix the samples in a balanced way once I held it against a regular song as a ref. Fun to find this bass sound but overall this one is a doozy. As always the ingredients were all harvested for later use and thrown into my ocean of in-house samples. Best part of this process was finding the groove. It Immediately set the tone for the track.

Most difficult part of this track: I got carried away with details until everything was messy and hard to mix. Biggest takeaway: I want to focus on the larger brush strokes first.

Febuary 2, 2026

#9. 🪽 Let A Couple Go

Another track built around bootleg vocals. I did the thing where I make three songs and scrap them until I ended up with this. It's fine. Love the snare and the attitude of the bass, but this feels a bit like I ate something weird and my stomach is doing its best. Mixing was a blast, everything is crunchy and squishy. Best part of this was playing bass over that rhythm. When the bass was recorded there was no snare so it was really off grid.

Most difficult part of this track: starting too far off grid and slowly working everything in as it went on. Biggest takeaway: It's ok to just pick random samples of things and smash them until it works. Very fun and useful.

Febuary 1, 2026

#8. 👑 Rite Bounce

Returning to a composer flow. Recorded this chronologically without looping sections or thinking about structure. I strongly dislike the Deepmind but it's what I've got. I forgot how fun it is to record and patch on the fly. If the take is weird or doesn't fit, manipulate the audio after the fact untili it works and keep moving Maintaining a performance aspect keeps things magical. Best part of this was the flow process of listening to it from start to finish only, no looping.

Most difficult part of this track: mixing this synth is ugly. There's loads of mud and I don't like the high end. Biggest takeaway: I often think more than I feel, it seems. I'd love to bring the process of this track to other genres.

January 31, 2026

#7. 💅 Vons

Feels good to get back on my hip hop. This was built as a remix around bootleg vocals, which I hadn't done before. Total blast. There's some sloppy bits but I had to keep moving. Took me a lot of time to sink back into a sample-based workflow, as opposed to mostly synthesis or recording. I work mostly in mono and often on laptop speakers. Best part of this track was bringing it to the monitors, no question. It snarls when played loud.

Most difficult part of this track: aligning everything to this groove was annoying, and it kept morphing slightly as the track progressed. Next track I'm gonna try to lock someting in and try not to spend any time undoing things. Biggest takeaway: I get a lot out of working in different genres. It almost feels like playing different instruments.

January 24, 2026

#6. 🍩 All So

Allowed myself to go slow with this but it was worth every second. I was able to stay focused on an atmosphere and ended up with a drum pattern that I really like. The bass keeps the groove and the drums are almost just ornamental. This track took about 6ish hours. I got the drums to a place where I was happy just listening to them without anything else. I built the structure that way, alternating bass and guitar afterwards to find where it wanted to live melodically. Best part of this was finding that buttery guitar delay. At first everything was really dry but that put it into a totally different space.

Most difficult part of this track was landing on a bassline that amplified the energy of the drums instead of overpowering them. This was an extrememly satisfying song to make. Biggest takeaway: less is more.

January 18, 2026

#5. 🐝 Scrap

Turn and burn today. Opened up another project and immediately got some drums going. They were a placeholders until they weren't. This started off with some improvised keys, and I was able to follow my ear for the development of the B section. Really fun finding that main melody. The phrase is only 6 measures and I forgot how much I like doing that. I was curious to try leaving any sort of bass out and just letting the low end of the rhodes breathe. Don't know if I love it.

I'm extremely unpracticed in both bass and guitar, yikes. Biggest takeaway: I'm more likely to write an interesting melody on a fretboard vs a keyboard.

January 18, 2026

#4. 👔 Grocery Isle

This started from some really interesting chords I found on our new Casio 460. They're slightly out of tune and it launched me right into a melancholy grocery isle. I stared my songwriting demon right in the face on this one. I had this great vibe and a clear direction but couldn't actually tune into the feeling of what was happening enough to find ideas that were from the world I was hearing. I realized I was just trying a bunch of things to see what fit instead of existing in the feeling of the song and pulling from there.

Other than getting the casio into ableton for the first time these vocals were the most fun of this. I put a frankensample of Megan into simpler and just start pushing pads. This track is a big milestone in this project. So many technical moves happened naturally when I actually tuned in with what was coming out of the speakers. Biggest takeaway: If writing a song is having a conversation with the music I've been belligerently monologueing.

January 12, 2026

#3. 💡 The Salt Flats

Stuck with the first idea this time. I started with a drum loop and destroyed it until it sounded like a spacecraft losing parts. It's the first drums you hear. Little bit more sound-design-tells-the-story than the last track. Took me around 3 hours. I definitely spent time on things that you can't feel, but overall this was a fairly focused session. I had a difficult time with the synth. I didn't know better when I bought my Deepmind 12 eight years ago but it's really difficult to make the thing sound not cheap.

I wrote mostly in mono again and actually spend some time just going through the laptop speakers which felt awesome when I took it to the monitors. Biggest takeaway: when I'm not paying attention my productions get really dense really fast. I want to tell a story with the fewest possible elements.

January 11, 2026

#2. 🐌 Butter

Less than ten hours this time but I scrapped 3 or 4 songs before this was done. It's clear already that Ableton isn't the problem, commiting to musical ideas is. The drums are audio, sequenced by hand which seemed to work well because I was forced to hear what I wanted before just diving in. Best moment was taking out sections of guitar and hearing the song get bigger.

Writing in mono really helped. I caught myself mixing too early a couple times. I didn't apply any fx to the guitar or bass until all the parts were in. Definitely the move. I'm going to commit to my first idea next time even if it's absolute musical garbage. Biggest takeaway: the point of this project isn't to express myself or even to make better music, but to develop new muscle memory for just finishing tracks.

January 4, 2026

#1. 🏗️ Bridge Got You Bent

Yikes. I have a long way to go before this project is sustainable. 😅 This little dance track took me upwards of 10 hours, many of which I don’t think actually contributed to the song in a meaningful way. I spent a lot of time being indecisive, and sunk a lot of energy into details and B characters (like complex hat delays) before fully establishing the main elements. In the end a lot of that detail work was cut because it either competed with, or wasn't in service of the overall indentity of the song.

Writing the next track on my laptop speakers in mono until It feels finished. Then monitors, then stereo.