New Song. Patrons Hear it First! (Patreon)

Patrons. Hear it first. Brand new Turbo Volcano song called "I'm Not Going on Carousel"

Also, first look at the artwork for Turbo Volcano 4 called "She Wears Pink but Flies a Blue Lion." Full album releases on June 4.

I don't really like to document my production process because it shatters my concentration, but this song is a beast and by far the most complicated Turbo Volcano song to date.

This is the last song that I made for the new album because I wanted to spend a full day with my Moog Matriarch and really dig into the sounds and settings, something I haven't had much time to do lately. 

Most of the album is disco and funk inspired, with a  lot of songs built from a wicked bass guitar synth and the Roland 707 drum machine. But, I wanted to try something a little bit different and heavier, so here we are.

So, here's how this came about:

1. I made a catchy sequence with the Korg SQ-1 sequencer.

2. A spent a few hours working with manuals and documenting Matriarch sound settings (if you don't know anything about this stuff, the Matriarch is about the best analog synthesizer on the market and really hard to learn.)

3. I found a sound I liked and ran it with the SQ-1.

4. I made up a catchy drum beat on the Korg Volca Drum.

5. I live recorded the Volca and the Matriarch together while messing with the knobs and adding diversity to the song to keep it interesting.

6. Then I mixed it with some additional drums and added some FX.

7. Next I recorded some actual music playing off the Matriarch and kept the bass line (its the line in the song.) The lead keyboard part was good off the Moog, but I digitally re-recreated it on a Roland Jupiter-8 for precision (I'm a shitty keyboard player) for the smooth synth lead over the crunchy analog stuff. This mixed Roland and Moog together (which never works) but it worked! That's what gives the song its unique unpredictable analog and smooth digital sound. That's hard to achieve.

8. I made a few other sequences with the Jupiter-8 plugin and then built the rest of the song around the main Matriarch sequence and viola, a completed song! The voices were added at the end and final mastering etc...

Anyway, Turbo Volcano is off and flying. You can hear the first three albums on the major and not-major music services. As one who spent nearly a decade being shit on by a crappy internet monopoly, the ability to work with 100+ companies all at once with music is a godsend.

The fifth Turbo Volcano album will start up sometime this summer, I'm not going to dive into production any time soon. I want to work with the analog gear some more and figure a few things out. The third Omega Ronin album is being made right now, and there's so much more in development (including a bunch of books too. )

Take care and I'll try and start getting more early releases out here now that there's more in the creative pipeline,

Mark