Release date: 2015 Format: Single (digital) SoundCloud
This was my first fully finished music piece. It was made for the music contest Zoolook: Revisited, hosted by Jean-Michel Jarre and Soundhunters. Hosted with the help of European public station Arte, Soundhunters was made and promoted by a multimedia project by a group of international creators. A contest requirement was that contestents had to use granulated rhythm patterns from the now-defunct Soundhunters website. These patterns were made from the stems of recordings across the world, and musicians could pick which sounds they wanted to use together in their patterns. People across different countries could record their own sounds for others to use in their music.
At the time of making this track, I had only worked with MIDI files in Anvil Studio and SynthFont, so using FL Studio was entirely new to me. I worked in the free demo version, which gives you access to several plugins but locks your saved files unless you buy the program. The demo version still had enough tools for me, a complete beginner, to make an original 4-minute-long track. Nevertheless, Complex Souls is very much a novice's project, lacking common music production techniques like EQ'ing and compression. (Beginner Starly wasn't familiar with the master volume knob either but she was still learning.)
For what it is, I give myself credit for committing to it and finishing it, even if it wasn't a winning submission. Complex Souls offers a glimpse of what my style would become on my first album.