#jams
Feb 22, 2026
This jam is similar to Discarded Drum Machine in that it also stretches the definition of embellishment and went through a similar lifecycle. Both even use 626 drum samp — sorry, I mean Roland ACB technology.
More critically, both were made when I had just begun getting hardware, but didn’t have enough to perform something I could consider a complete track — at least, not in a live setting. And the live aspect of the production workflow is what I was increasingly drawn toward.
Consequently, I felt compelled to add instrumental layers to the jam. I found this difficult. The two workflows — live hands-on improvisation vs pattern creation and arrangement in a DAW — seemed to clash. They put me in totally separate headspaces that I struggled to reconcile.
Like the Discarded Drum Machine jam, after creating a four-bar loop with soft synths intended to build upon the original recording, I felt uninspired and abandoned the project. And similarly, it was resuscitated by a burst of energy for getting shit done in relation to this website.
In the end, even the results are alike: It took about three hours, it’s fine, and while it’s not my best work, I’m happy I got it done.
Because limited hardware left me with a lot of space in the mix, I often tried to make the MiniBrute 2S take up as much of that space as possible — usually by means of paraphonic tricks.
The MiniBrute 2S is technically monophonic, but it does have four sequencer tracks, flexible routing, and eight(!) potential tone generators. I spent many fun afternoons experimenting with these tools — disguising this single synthesizer, as best I could, into something that might pass off as multiple instruments.
I think it fared remarkably well. Would you have guessed, for example, that all non-drum sounds in the first 1m 45s of the jam were exclusively being played by the MiniBrute 2S in real time?
The switch to randomized pitch around the 5-minute mark was a total accident. I consider it a nice example of what makes live performances so appealing. In a prepared setting, I’d never think, “Let’s create a break by putting the pitch of our main lead through a sample-and-hold.”
Yet it worked. I went with it, then reused it later in the performance and now, some 21 months later, I look back at it as probably the most defining part of the whole piece. It’s definitely weird, but it’s a nice kind of weird.
This isn’t quite the beat that was used in the jam, but it’s definitely what was left in that memory slot. Note that TR-6S patterns are organized into “variations.” When I archived the beats I made with it, I recorded those variations together rather than separately, which is why the last bar of the pattern sounds so different.