"Foxy" - 2025 (portfolio #1)

This composition samples a couple of records and chops them for the background melody – the main melody is from Jerry Butler's "The Spice of Life" and the background voices in the intro are from a ventriloquism comedy record I found. The drums are one-shots that I programmed – run through some light compression, a drum buss, and EQ. The bass is played live by me and looped. I added a few risers for tension and release.

For me, this was a practice in mixing and sound choice. I recently started playing electric bass and was eager to make a song with it. I like the energy that I created in the sample chop too. Lately, I’ve been experimenting with Ableton's warping features and used the formant shifting to give the sample that high-end sparkle.

"Warm Me Up" - 2025 (portfolio #3)

This track marks my first attempt at a rock song. Recently, I built a custom guitar effect rack in Ableton, and I’ve been exploring different tones—here, I went for a sharp, clean sound, good for rhythm guitar. I played a simple groove on my electronic drum kit and processed it with compression, saturation, and reverb. I also played the bassline on my electric bass and processed it with light compression.

The vocals, written and performed by me, were processed with multiband compression, EQ, and saturation. I also sent them to reverb and delay return tracks to create depth. This track was a fun challenge, allowing me to push my production skills in a new direction.

"Love, me" - 2022

I composed and produced this track using a Rhodes VST for the chord progression, applying compression and a light reverb send, with auto-pan as the main effect. I played the bassline using a one-shot sample on a MIDI keyboard. All the drums were programmed by me—typically played in manually on a MIDI controller. I wrote and performed the lyrics in a hip-hop/spoken word style. The track was processed with limiting, multiband compression, stereo width, and saturation.

"March 15 - Instrumental"

I was playing around on the piano and recorded the session into ableton. Then I treated my playing like a sample and chopped it up into the chords you hear. I found a vocal sample to lay on too. The drums are a loop. This is meant to be a hip-hop song.

"March 11"

In this composition, I played piano, synth bass, and drums. I added some electric guitar notes and some other background percussive elements. There isn't much processing on these instruments besides a touch of reverb and saturation. The whole song is run through a master chain consisting of a limiter, multiband compressor, and saturator. The compressor is helping to unify everything and I'm giving a slight saturation to everything below 500hz. I feel like it gives some warmth to the track. 

"June 19"

The main melody of this beat is made using one of Ableton's warp features. I used a sample of some pre-recorded rhodes chords, then warped on quarter notes and turned down the transient decay. 

The bass is also a found sample, but it's been reversed and chopped up to my liking. The drums are one-shots I programmed. The hats also have some reversed hat sounds laid in. The drums are run through a drum buss with some saturation, some tape emulation, and reverb.

The bass gets a bit intense in this because I decided to add an 808 on top of the reversed bass sample. I liked how it shook the speaker. 

"What You Do To Me" - 2022

This track uses a vocal sample chop that I really love from "Heaven And Hell Is On Earth" by 20th Century Steel Band. The bass, drums, pads, and keys are all me. It turned out to be a really beautiful mix.