07/20/2022
Hello once again! It’s been a while. I intended to post here about a show I played back in January and how grateful I was for the opportunity (shoutout to Luminyst!), but my paragraph got deleted for some reason and I never got back around to typing about it.
I wanted to hop on here and talk a little bit about my new album, Enjoyment and The Things That Bring Us Life, or ETTBUL for short. I am essentially going to copy and paste the SoundCloud song descriptions in here 🙂
This album is a culmination of the more downtempo, positive energy-type music I have made over the past year and a half. I will say that this is my favorite body of music I have put together, and probably my best-produced body of music as well. The title of this album is really just an ode to the things that make us feel like we want to be alive. Things that we live for. Things that make us feel human. I cannot express how content I am now that I have finished producing this album and that I am sharing it with the world. Thank you to everyone who has been so supportive of me since I started following my passion. I intend to keep creating and sharing that passion as long as I can.
Track 1 – Enjoyment – This track was one of my favorite tracks I had ever written and was the track that convinced me that I could put my mind to anything, especially if I had enjoyed it enough and put enough energy into it. The title track of ETTBUL. S/o to Joy Boy.
Lyrics:
Why don’t we seek Enjoyment?
In times, things are right, feel that high!
Why don’t we seek Enjoyment?
In life, it’s so nice, all the time!
Track 2 – Warmth – This is chronologically the first track I wrote on the album. This one holds a special place in my heart because it was the first track I ever created using serum and the last track I wrote in the first year of my music production journey. My fiance bought me Ableton for Xmas during 2019 and Serum for the Xmas of 2020, and shortly after getting Serum, Warmth was born from Serum presets and resampling 🙂
Can’t wait to jam this one while laying in the pool!
Track 3 – Portal – This track is one that I personally find really cool. It is heavily inspired by Flume, and it was my attempt at making something in his style. I named this track after the Portal plugin by Output, as I was hoping to get it for Xmas in 2021 which I did, of course, Mandy delivers🤣.
Interestingly enough, I had half of this track finished before I had even owned the portal plug-in and I didn’t even use Portal on this track anyway. Nothing against Portal (I use it all the time), but I think I already made a portal without it!
Track 4 – Have Fun! – What’s life like without a bit of fun? This track was written very quickly during the Fall of 2021 and turned into one of my favorite tracks that I think I would want to play live. Mandy also loves this one 🙂 I am in the process of making visuals for this track that fit my style and would just be a fun ol’ time.
This is the fastest-paced/highest energy track on the album but it fits perfectly. Do I really need to post lyrics for this one? Lol, have fun!
Track 5 – Vitality – This track is the “BUL” in “ETTBUL.” The definition of Vitality is “the power giving continuance of life, present in all living things.”
This is a sonic exploration of the reason of being and the energy within us that keeps us going and brings us life.
Track 6 – Grain Plunge – This track is very special to me. I created this after my fiance bought me the Portal plug-in for Xmas, and I experimented with the plug-in until I created what I thought was a very pleasant sound. I have listened to this song to fall asleep or to just relax, and it has brought me comfort on multiple occasions. I am ecstatic to share this with the world!
Check out the custom visuals I made for this track on youtube:
Track 7 – Synapse – This one is another very special track to me. I wrote this track during my internship where I was earning my master’s/specialist degree (which I did end up getting!), and my work/school life was interfering with my drive to create music. One morning, I was delighted to see that I had the day off due to a snow day and I spent the morning creating this song. This was one of the first tracks I wrote during 2022 that I was extremely proud of.
Lyrics:
I feel it all,
Oh, I feel it all.
Track 8 – Squaradise – This track was born out of a desire to create an entire track out of square waves (hence the name). While only a small portion of the track is not made or resampled from square waves (the kicks and snares mostly), this track turned out quite well. The second drop is one of my favorite things I have made.
Track 9 – 64 – This one is just a lot of fun. A spiritual ode to Gameboy and my love for video games, this one is a positive and lighthearted but slightly heavy-hitting and experimental track that I felt belonged on ETTBUL.
That being said, keep an eye out for Gameboy Advance 👀
Track 10 – Digital Feelings – This is probably the track that wins the award for being the least likely to stay on the album while still making it. This one was created by me mostly playing with Portal and making something that would more likely find a home on my Gameboy album. Luckily, I feel that this track fits in nicely after Squaradise and 64 as Gameboy-esque tracks that aren’t necessarily too heavy, but not too downtempo either.
Either way, I really like this track and love the textures in it. This is probably the heaviest track on the album besides Vitality.
Track 11 – gNat – Sunrise (Arcadian Sound Remix) – I really enjoy this track, and there is a cool story behind it! In March last year, I was offered to do a mix for the Electric Mitten Collective and I had the crazy urge to pump out a ridiculous amount of original music for the mix. I randomly decided to download Sunrise off of my buddy Nat’s(who you may know as gNat) SoundCloud, and made this remix using the WAV of the original in about an hour and a half. This was probably the quickest track I had ever written, and it is more of a bootleg than a remix, considering I didn’t use stems. I am happy to finally give this one a home on this album and think it is a great fit :).
Shoutout to gNatwize for letting me release the remix! Check out his music as well for some sick stuff and keep an eye out for future collaborations! 👀
Track 12 – Dimension – This is the last track I finished writing for this album. This one is nothing super special, but it fits nicely on the album and just sounds nice. I wrote this using the Granulator II max for live plug-in by Robert Henke (Monolake).
Just a nice track. Enjoy!
Track 13 – Metacognitive Awareness – Did you ever think about the fact that we as humans can think about thinking? Metacognitive Awareness is the awareness of how one thinks and an awareness of how to change the way we think.
This is the second track I wrote chronologically on this album. This one was created as a halfway point for my Electric Mitten Mix last year. I’m glad I finally found a good opportunity to release it!
Track 14 – Glow – This track is a little bit different for my project. I sat down and made this one day and wanted to keep it light while stepping out of my typical writing process. While I still used the vocoder for singing in this track, I typically do not produce a lot of music that ends up like this. The first part of this track lacks any sort of snare whatsoever, but it just felt right to let it be. I guess this track represents insomnia, but what we choose to do when we can’t sleep.
You could interpret this as pulling an all-nighter and playing your favorite video games. I think I finished this track late at night when I was not quite ready to sleep, hence the lyrics.
lyrics:
I, I, I can’t sleep
I’ll glow,
until the night peaks.
I, I, I can’t sleep
I’ll glow,
until the night peaks,
peaks.
Track 15 – Soothe – I wrote this track more recently and decided that it would be a great way to end the album. The outro softly fades out in such a pretty way, so I thought, “why not make this the outro for my album?”. The female vocals in throughout the track are sampled from the Gravitas create sample pack I won in a small contest using Christina Soto’s voice, and the vocals in the second buildup and drop are my own voice with a vocoder, of course.
Lyrics: Soothe your mind,
soothe your soul.
Thank you all for listening/reading 🙂
More updates inevitably!
08/02/2021
Hello Internet!
This is Arcadian Sound, AKA Jacob Robbins. Welcome to my website! I wanna give a quick shoutout to Daniel Wallstead for gifting me this domain. I love those Wallsteads <3. I’ve never blogged before, so I might sound a bit weird, but I will probably just use this blog as a way to journal my own thoughts and share insights about the Arcadian Sound project.
I started producing music in Ableton Suite starting last year, 01/01/2020. My wonderful fiancé purchased Ableton Suite for me during the Xmas of 2019, and I was completely floored. I had always had an affinity for bass music, and music in general, so I was eager to jump in.
I honestly didn’t know where to start, and found myself extremely lost. I had actually reached out to one of the members from the group “sfam”, to figure out where to start. Jacob from sfam told me that Mr. Bill had a ton of tutorials on Youtube, and that Ableton’s Operator was great for wubs. While I had very little knowledge of what I was doing at the time, I went for it. I put out a few singles and an EP called Mad Honey at the end of February 2020.
People were very supportive, but I received a lot of constructive criticism. 2020 was a huge learning experience for me, and I knew next to nothing about audio, competing frequencies, limiting, compression, or anything of the sort until around March of 2021. I wouldn’t have made it to that point if I never put any music out. I put out an album called Arcadia during Xmas of 2020, and I love the body of music even though I didn’t quite know what I was doing.
That being said, I have grown a TON, and I have the ability to remix/remaster anything I have made in the past. I have connected with so many awesome new people in the bass music community (Mikerohdos, gNat, Valloa, David Timko, Deemzoo, JamL, Biral and Eyetrip to name a few), and this also pushed me further when it came to producing and sharing music. I am on track to put out some music I am very proud of, and I look forward to continually growing while sharing music I love. I am very proud of my Gameboy Album/Mixtape, and I encourage you to check it out 🙂
I personally feel like I have come a long way in terms of producing, and I am absolutely ecstatic that I am able to do this.