hello copeeps! i am posting a tracker/DAW video of one of my songs EVERY DAY on youtube and then writing a little bit about the song here on cohost! it's time for today's song, and it's one of my favorites!
<-- the previous day's song | the next day's song
today's song is: ashflower, for the NES's 2A03 chip with VRC7 expansion chip
there are very few songs in my catalog that make me feel more like a mad scientist than this one. this was my first time using the VRC7 and truly first doing anything FM-wise. i had only opened FamiTracker to do some preemptive sketching and messing around, no expectations or ideas, but i landed on a custom patch that i really liked, made some frantic IDM beats out of triangle + DPCM drums and noise, aaaand the next thing i knew, i ended up with a sketch that i thought was crazy cool (basically the first pattern)... and proceeded to spend like a week in the tank crafting this beast.
one thing i remember learning from that sketch was the 7xy command, the tremolo! i used it all over this song and it's remained a staple of my tracker (and MIDI!) music since then. and i had already been practicing with the retrigger and offset commands in the DPCM, but doing all that detail work was a big part of this track and also remains a crucial part of my process. i also recorded some quartal and quintal chords for the DPCM and brought in everyone's favorite movin' groovin' fish Suketoudara from Puyo Puyo Tetris (he's kinda the star of the show here, lol). another thing i remember was wanting to use the pulse channels as little as possible for like "the regular sounds you'd expect from them". no catchy melodies or smooth tones here.
i'm still just chuffed to bits over this one almost 1.5 years later. ashflower was truly born from nothing out of nowhere, which is a rare process for me, and i really let my hair down and let myself be as weird and obtuse as i wanted. so in a way, this is one of the most pure self-expressions i've accomplished thus far. i can only hope to keep sculpting more primordial clay in FamiTracker in the years to come!
