Hey there! Today I’ve decided to show off a goofy way that my electronic composition and production students and I use up any additional time at the end of our lessons.
One of my Friday students had 6 minutes at the end of his lesson, and we took 30 of those seconds to decide that we should see how much of a piece we could write in the remaining time. We each chose an instrument in ZynAddSubFX (one of my favourite synths, it comes included in LMMS). The instrument he chose was strongly emanating 80’s sci fi energy, so I picked a complement and we got to work.
He chose the direction for the ostinatos and the secondary underpinning, and I plunked the notes into the piano rolls. There were a total of 4 patterns, and since we had 20 seconds before the end of our lesson, we opted to plunk the aforementioned underpinnings in at random.
It’s not likely to win any awards, but what a delightful little piece to come out of this little arbitrarily limited project.
(shared with permission of my student, who has now requested that we end many more lessons like this.)
Just in case you’re one of my small handful of avid readers (thank you thank you thank you!), I’m taking July off from posting; everything is fine, I’ve just got a few projects I need to focus on for the time being. Expect my next update to be on Monday, the 2nd of August!
Thanks for listening!
Hi. I'm Mandikat. 
One reply on “Five Minute Monster”
Your lessons were always fun and this sounds like an appropriate way to end a lesson – love the music, can you share more of these please?!