Operation Nightwood
Dark trance built on a two-bar riff Austin recorded on Wavelength's Sounds page, played only on the two sounds he tuned there: Driven Bass at 640 Hz and Trance Strings.
- Key
- C minor
- Tempo
- 128 BPM
- Length
- 3:37
- Tracks
- 8
- Loudness
- -12.5 LUFS
- True peak
- -2.5 dBTP
Where it started
This is where the song began. Austin Ginder recorded a take on the Sounds page of wavelength serve, playing the Lead track: Wavelength Trance's Driven Bass with its filter cutoff turned to 640 Hz by ear. Then he shaped the take into this riff in the page's riff editor.
The page saved the riff to the song's riffs.json and the sound to sounds.json. The agent read both, and the song's make-job.py reads the riff again every time it runs, so an edit on the Sounds page carries through every section. Bar 1 is a C power fifth, C then G. Bar 2 crawls down to F#, the leading tone back to C.
- C2
- G2
- G2
- Bb2
- A2
- Ab2
- F#2
Where the riff goes
- Bar 9 The riff enters, its filter opening from 300 Hz toward 640.
- Bar 17 At 640 Hz as recorded: the bass line of the groove.
- Bar 25 The Hook joins: the same sound two octaves up, built on bar 2.
- Bar 57 In the drop the riff moves to F for two passes.
- Bar 65 The breakdown: the strings play it at half speed.
- Bar 111 The riff's last pass lands on its low C under the final chord.
The riff as the agent read it, in riffs.json
{
"name": "Lead riff 1",
"track": "Lead",
"tempo": 128,
"timeSignature": [4, 4],
"quantize": "1/16",
"notes": [
{"beat": 0, "dur": 2, "key": "C2", "vel": 0.57},
{"beat": 2, "dur": 2, "key": "G2", "vel": 0.57},
{"beat": 4, "dur": 1, "key": "F#2", "vel": 0.85},
{"beat": 5, "dur": 1, "key": "G2", "vel": 0.85},
{"beat": 6, "dur": 0.5, "key": "Bb2", "vel": 0.85},
{"beat": 6.5, "dur": 0.5, "key": "A2", "vel": 0.85},
{"beat": 7, "dur": 0.5, "key": "Ab2", "vel": 0.85},
{"beat": 7.5, "dur": 0.5, "key": "F#2", "vel": 0.85}
],
"played": [
{"beat": 0.64, "dur": 2.283, "key": "G2", "vel": 0.85},
{"beat": 3.879, "dur": 1.21, "key": "F#2", "vel": 0.85},
{"beat": 5.796, "dur": 1.209, "key": "G2", "vel": 0.85}
]
}The prompt
Can we build a new track based off my rift using that given instrument preset and settings?
The track
Operation Nightwood started as a riff. Austin recorded it on the Sounds page of wavelength serve, on a bass patch he had tuned by ear, then asked for a new track using that instrument and its settings. Asked what else it should use and what style it should be, he picked his own two sounds only, and dark trance. So every melodic part in the song is one of the two Wavelength Trance sounds from his Sounds page: Driven Bass with its filter at 640 Hz, and Trance Strings.
The riff is the bass line from bar 9 to the end. The same Driven Bass plays a sixteenth-note hook two octaves up, built on the riff’s second bar, and the strings hold minor chords that pump under the kick. In the breakdown the drums and bass stop and the strings play the riff at half speed. A 909 kit and a rumble bus, the kick through a dark reverb, carry the two drops.
The riff’s second bar crawls down from Bb through A and Ab to F#, the leading tone that pulls back to C. Over that bar every other part keeps G and Bb on top: a D held over the F# or the A would spell D major and sound like a one-bar key change. wavelength lint --harmony found no problems in the finished song.
| Time | Section | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| 0:01 | Intro | Kick and the rumble bus alone, hats from bar 5. The riff enters at bar 9 on Driven Bass, its filter opening from 300 Hz to the 640 Hz Austin set; open hats from bar 13. |
| 0:31 | Groove | The riff at 640 Hz, as recorded, with a clap on 2 and 4. From bar 25 the Hook plays sixteenths on the same Driven Bass two octaves up, and Trance Strings chords pump quietly under the kick. |
| 1:01 | Break | The kick drops out. The riff carries on, filtered down to 420 Hz, under the strings while a Shepard tone falls. |
| 1:16 | Build | Four bars of kick, then none. A snare roll speeds up from eighths to 32nds, a riser climbs, both Driven Bass filters sweep open and a master high-pass thins the mix. The Hook climbs in sixteenth Cs and the bass sits out the last bar. |
| 1:31 | Drop | Everything at once: the riff, the Hook, the pumping strings and the 909. For two passes, bars 57 to 60, the riff moves to F. |
| 2:01 | Breakdown | No drums and no bass. Trance Strings play the riff at half speed, two octaves up, over C minor and G minor; the second pass doubles it an octave higher. |
| 2:16 | Build 2 | The riff comes back filtered to 300 Hz and sweeps up to 1.6 kHz, the kick plays bars 75 to 78, then the snare roll and riser return. |
| 2:31 | Drop 2 | The first drop plus a slow counter-line on the strings and a ride cymbal. The riff moves to F again at bars 89 to 92. |
| 3:01 | Outro | The Hook and strings play until bar 104 while the riff's filter closes to 380 Hz. A snare fill leads to the final hit: the riff's low C, a kick, a crash and a ringing C minor chord. |
How an agent sees it
render --png draws it: sections and bars, the loudness contour, a spectrogram of the mix, and every track's notes over its level.Instruments and patches
Austin's two sounds (Wavelength Trance, from the Sounds page)
The patches and settings he tuned by ear on the Sounds page, saved in the song's sounds.json and used as they are.
| Track | Sound | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Lead | Driven Bass, Filter Cutoff 640 Hz | The riff as recorded: the bass line from bar 9, moved to F for two passes in each drop, its filter ridden around 640 Hz |
| Hook | Driven Bass, Filter Cutoff 640 Hz | A sixteenth-note hook two octaves up, built on the riff's second bar; echo throws at the ends of sections |
| Synth | Trance Strings | Minor chords pumping under the kick, the riff at half speed in the breakdown, a counter-line in the second drop |
Samples and built-ins
| Track | Source | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Kick | Legend 909 kit (built-in sampler) | Four on the floor, saturated; the sidechain trigger and the source of the rumble bus |
| Clap, Snare, Hats | Legend 909 kit (built-in sampler) | Clap on 2 and 4, the build snare rolls and the final fill, closed and open hats, crash and ride |
| FX | Built-in FX | Risers, impacts, sub drops and the Shepard fall in the break |
Mix and master
- Faders set from each track's measured loudness against per-track targets, then a master ride per section so each build empties out before its drop.
- Sidechain ducking from the kick: strings 6 dB, the riff 4, the Hook 3, the hall reverb 4.
- A rumble bus: the kick through a dark 2 s reverb, low-passed, saturated and ducked 13 dB so it only fills the gaps. The reverb runs in mono; in stereo its tail leaned 1.2 dB to the right.
- Builds: the kick drops out of the last bars, the bass skips the last bar, and a master high-pass sweeps up to 700 Hz so each drop lands about 4 dB over its build.
- Master: a gentle glue compressor (1.7:1), a soft clipper and a true-peak limiter at -2 dB, at -12.5 LUFS. Left and right stay within 0.1 dB in every section.
- Every track has a level-matched built-in fallback, so the song file renders on a computer without Wavelength Trance or the Legend 909 kit.
- One second of silence before the song.
Download the song
The whole song in one file: the job Wavelength renders, the script that wrote it, its notes, every revision and the review comments, in the open song format. Render it, change it, or ask your agent to make it its own:
wavelength render operation-nightwood.wavelength
wavelength unpack operation-nightwood.wavelengthTracks whose plugins you don't have play built-in stand-ins, so it renders on any computer; with the same plugins it sounds as you hear it here.
Download operation-nightwood.wavelength 8.9 MB · Licensed Creative Commons Attribution 4.0: share and remix it, credit the song.