This has been an interesting two-and-a-bit year journey. The plan to release two Cubes a month was wildly optimistic—other projects got in the way—and there was a big gap between 06 and 07, but I’m hoping that I can ramp up to something monthly, especially in these lockdown days.
Looking back over the 48 pieces so far, overall I’m really pleased with the material, though it perhaps leans a touch too much towards algorithmic percussion/sequencing, albeit with some unexpected ambient and electroacoustic studies in there too. But there is, I feel, a lack of melodic and harmonic exploration, perhaps partly due to the one-minute time constraint. That aside, there’s plenty of raw material here to be reworked into longer, more compositionally considered works, with more considered mixdown: some of the Cube tracks are a little lacking in clarity.
A note on the instrumentation: 07 and 08 were sequenced/recorded in Bitwig Studio rather than Ableton Live, partly because I had that in for review, partly for the MPE support, and partly because I’m very attached to the modulation system. (See above re: algorithmic composition.) But Live still lures me back with the Push 2.
Finally, I should say that I am deeply indebted to Mike Metlay for the simple, focussed and awfully clever name “Minute Cubes”, which is a lot better than my original “Beer Mat Electronica”.