'Pixie Power' - New Original Music - A 5 Minute Timed Songwriting Challenge, Inspired by Splinterlands - Electronic/Instrumental + Walkthrough

by the Enchanted Pixie in Splinterlands, and envisioned something sparkly, way too happy, kind of silly, and short/quick. I decided to try and combine this with a 5 minute songwriting challenge, to force myself to create something small, and this is the result. I'm mostly happy with the idea, though I thin the hi-hats are little spastic, and of course, there was 0 mixing involved, so lots of stuff could sound better. But, as far as the general vibe and progression goes, I like it. I began with Track 1, which just does some little dyad moves to outline a basic progression. Track 2 is a vocal clip, from Sia, included in the Native Instruments Community Drive pack, which I chopped up, and pitched the chord changes. Because its also pushed up an octave, there are some great warbly, sparkly sort of sounds that emerge from it, which wound up fitting with the general Pixie vibe, though it was not intended.

octave higher than it probably should have been. However, this helped to bring out the distortion on the synth, which added again to the general vibe, so I think it worked out. However, I didn't like the rhythm that was built into this Synth, so I wound up sidechaining the a gate (pictured to the left) to Track 4, which became an unused drum track. I created a rhytym using Ableton's 'Ninja Kit', and the randomize tool, just to see what happens, but it wound up being WAY too kick heavy (there are 6 kicks in the kit that are possible hits), so the last minute change was adding Track 5, which uses the 'That Feel' kit. I initially just mapped the kick and snare, and then two 1/8th note hi-hat hits, which I began to copy and paste to fill up the section. However, the area I highlighted to copy was slightly longer than a 1/4 note, so it made for a weird, off-kilter rhythm. I didn't hate it at the time, but it feels a bit odd now. But, 5 minutes was up, so I just had to roll with it!