Blue Monday/New Order (Circuit Tracks Revision)

video upload by Guinan

"Almost! It's another Monday, so what could be more apt than todays 1983 New Order classic, Blue Monday.

As per usual this is ALL Novation Circuit Tracks playing live from the audio outs direct into my Zoom L6 recorder. No extra synths/no effects/no extra edits.

This is a revision of a version I did about 12 months ago. There is a lot going on in this track so I've squeezed a bit extra out of the groovebox in using some short melodic samples in place of drum sounds on 3 pads.

I'd initially dug it out to get me started on an Ableton Move version of the track and with some polished up samples and a little bit of editing I thought it was worth a revision.

More details for synth nerds,

BPM 131
I originally programmed the top arpeggio line on the Circuit Tracks quickly realising I was going to run out of voices. I sampled the riff and stuck it on a pad and played it back as a pattern and saved myself a voice, I couldn't get a bass synth sound that would double up as the main synth and as 'Peter Hook'. Instead I played a short Spaghetti Western style bass guitar riff through a spring reverb in my best impression of Hooky and sampled it on the Circuit Rhythm. I then transferred this onto one of the drum sample pads and put it on Drum 4 as another pattern, finally there is a choir sample the band played on an old Emulator. I simply copied the same source they used ( Kraftwerk's track, 'Uranium') and made a loop on another one of the drum pads, turning it into a 3rd pattern for Drum 4."