Make a short clip of music every day of October (ideally looping, but nobody really cares if it's not). I've listed the tools, instruments, and synths I've used, and sometimes also the plugins.
2025
On each track, I used the ACE Compressor (built-in to Ardour) and the LSP Clipper (stereo and mono) plugins in order to boost perceived loudness. On a couple, I additionally used the LADSPA "C* Eq-10 band" plugin that came with Ardour for, e.g., pumping up the bass on a kick drum or mellowing out synths or cymbals a bit.
These are all a bit hit-and-miss. I set the additional challenge of pushing myself to learn or try something new every day as well. I didn't always live up to that goal, but I did learn a lot and experiment a lot over the course of the month.
I got one or two good tracks out of my eurorack setup, but the experience really drove home how constricting it feels at the moment. Even though I had some stability issues running a DAW and a bunch of plugins in Wine on a Steam Deck, the composition experience in Ardour was loads better for me. I also had fun with making chiptune sounds in Furnace, but while the tracker portion felt a lot easier to work with than the tracker in LSDJ, the voice editing was a lot less intuitive for me. I probably won't be switching back to LSDJ anytime soon, but I also probably won't be using Furnace much either.
I did really enjoy working with strudel, especially once I started piping its MIDI output to my Ardour plugins. I may well spend some more time with that.
My fastest workflow remains just working directly with a MIDI keyboard in Ardour, however. I'm not very good at playing live, but the immediacy of just playing something into the piano roll and then quantizing and editing away my mistakes is apparently hard to beat.
Day 31: Ardour, EZDrummer 3, keyboard. Samples from "American Movie."
Day 26: Figured out how to sequence the VSTs in Ardour using strudel and immediately got distracted with recording a simple guitar riff and a bit of synth bass, with a load of filters piled on.
Day 25: A melody on the "general MIDI" psaltery in strudel.
Day 22: Began learning strudel, a port of tidalcycles to the browser. This is my first track ever made with it.
Day 21: Short on time, so I recorded an improvised guitar line over a canned EZDrummer 3 beat and played the default TAL NoiseMaker sound with my keyboard for the bass.
Day 20: Composed with the NES chip in Furnace, mixed in Ardour.
Day 18: In the DAW again. Had just half an hour to do this one, so you get to hear me noodling on the keyboard a bit again. Some distortion due to the bass frequencies being overloaded. Could've solved it with some sidechaining, but I ran out of time.
Day 17: Back on the eurorack. Just Friends, Chainsaw, Quarks, and nRings ganged together with a buffered mult and played live, with one round of overdubbing a melody on the Just Friends and nRings together in a higher octave.
Day 16: Eventide Audio Pendulate, u-he Triple Cheese, Audio Damage Axon 3, Ardour's General MIDI piano, and Airwindows ToTape8 and Reverb, recorded and mixed in Ardour.
Day 12: Recorded myself poking at the Bitbox MK1's on-screen keyboard over a PPW-driven drumbeat, Acid Raid Chainsaw droning through a low-pass filter, and the Monome crow playing the arpeggios from day 1 through the Just Friends again. Modulated the modules via ochd, filtered the keyboard through ToTape8, and trimmed the ends and compressed it all in Ardour.
Day 11: u-he TripleCheese and EZDrummer 3 in Ardour.
Day 8: u-he TripleCheese, TAL NoiseMaker, EZDrummer 3, Airwindows ToTape8, Ardour.
Day 7: EZDrummer 3, u-he Triple Cheese, and some General MIDI brass, all in Ardour. Extra cheesy.
Day 6: Bitbox MK1, nRings, uO_C, ochd, Frapp Tools 411, Just Friends, and Typhoon in the eurorack, recorded with an Expert Sleepers ES-9 and edited in Ardour.
Day 5: Audio Damage Axon 3 and TAL NoiseMaker in Ardour.
Day 3: Axon 3, Triple Cheese, and clips from the Prelinger Archives in Ardour. Sidechained the kick this time.
Day 2: u-he Triple Cheese, dexed, and Audio Damage Axon 3 in Ardour. Should have sidechained the kick, but didn't.
Day 1: Bitbox MK1, nRings, Just Friends, Veno Echo and crow in the eurorack, recorded in Ardour with an Expert Sleepers ES-9. Melody line played live on my KeyStep 37 into Ardour using the PHAROH preset in dexed.