CreativePact 2016 finds me in a complex situation: while over the last few months I've had quite a few tempting ideas for topics, a busy Autumn – including an impending house move – makes most of them impractical at best.

A soundboard is awoken. (Or something of similar gravity.)

Day 2 of Pact, and unfamiliarity with Live has been slowing me down. Despite this, delving into some recordings I made of an EMS VCS3, I developed a swirly noise part which complements yesterday's piano wash pad nicely.

An audience sit in front of a stage, empty but for a side table, placed dead centre, adorned by an alarm clock. The patrons' pre-show chatter fills the hall with a distanced but comforting noise. But all of a sudden conversations are interrupted by the infernal blair of electronic noise. The alarm clock has gone off; the show has begun.

If, like me, you have a MIDI sound module or two, you might want to include it in your CreativePact. I'm like me, so today I did that.

I was wanting to not get into rhythm programming for a little while longer. But drums were calling to me, so today I developed a simple bass drum and snare combo.

The moment when inspiration takes over, and you absolutely must get that idea down. That was what happened at the end of my previous session, where I knew I had to break out the mic and record some vocal utterances for the following day. The result is a track of clips featuring 'wohs' (in unison and harmony) and filtered 'mmms', with some more SoundToys FX applied.

Oh Live, why hast straight-forwardness forsaken thee? All I ask is that recording external MIDI devices not be a "pain beyond which one might be severely inconvenienced". But that can't (not?) happen, can it?

I kind of left yesterday's Pact session on a cliffhanger, having not had time to find a satisfactory solution to making portable a string part sourced from the Proteus 2000. I knew I could do better than my stopgap fix: employ an Ableton Simpler library patch that, while sounding very similar to the Proteus', increased the project size by 2GB.

With a week's worth of Pact sessions in the bag, it was time to open a blank page in the metaphorical notebook. This was achieved with a new pad sound, which has taken its name from the song it was sampled from (Steely Dan's "Gaslighting Abbie", from the oh-too-clean Two Against Nature).

Tricky times ahead: this soundboard part will be created over two sessions, because it's from the Proteus and so required sampling into Live, and also it's a drum kit with many sounds, too many in fact for me to sculpt comfortably in one session.

In the end it was a good shout to stop when I did yesterday, as following that session thoughts percolated and I came up with the direction required to complete Kit 11.

I realised that so far this Pact I've not leaned heavily on Live's factory instruments (and their patches). This is an implicit goal for me this year, so high fives all round. However, those high fives may now sound muted, and not because of a low-pass filter: today's session utilised a bass sound from Live's Analog.

Cheesy MIDI saxophone. It's a sound that every self-respecting studio composer should be integrating into their work. And I'm a self-respecting studio composer.

This was a simple Pact session, as I already knew what I wanted to do: create a part which followed the Funk Saw Bass part from a couple of days ago, adding a high-frequency twist through filter modulation. It's a subtle part, designed to add some flexibility when arranging the material in the future.

File this one under "nice experiment" (#niceexperiment). This is the first session in this Pact where I struggled to construct a cohesive sound, due in part to directionlessness and in part to unsuitable start material. What I have created, though, could be the basis of an interesting effect later down the road.

A new week, a new idea for CreativePact. Probably a good time to commit too, considering my lack of direction in the last session. This time I've created more of a pulsing, rhythmic pad, which I call StarHeight.

Keying to the results of my previous CreativePact session, rhythm was in my head and so I went forth and created a drum part. Nothing too remarkable here really, it's electronic and there are two main rhythms from which some deviations were made.

Short and sweet today (because it has been a long day and I don't have my Push set up right now). For live performance with this Set I forsaw the need for some mini-tracks, only several seconds long, to connect actual tracks of incompatible key signatures together (and provide a short period to cue a new bunch of clips).

A different development process has been on show today in the Pact: rather than focussing on one sound, this time I started two, putting down the notes for them this time and leaving the mixing of both to a forthcoming session.

Continuing on from yesterday's double-part-but-unmixed situation, today I finished the job. There are now two mixed parts where there would have been two mixed parts if I had stuck to the process established previously anyway.

Waaaay back in the past, six days ago, I presented PeopleRental and opined that while I'd probably write off the sonic outcome, the process that underpinned it could be useful. Well I'm back from the past with this message: I was right.

Before I decided to dedicate yesterday's Pact to CB words I had thought of creating a part using a clavinet sound. That thought was enacted today instead, with a part based on a patch from Live's Tension instrument which I call Clavicomp.

New idea time. And yes, I've started with a backing pad sound again. And no, it's not a hollow pad, it's Hollows pad.

Back to the familiar (and more powerful) surroundings of my studio, where I went textural with a recording of one of my son's wooden toys which I call "rolly bug" (it's a wooden bug on a string which, when pulled, rotates some beads on strings in the opposite direction).

Having delved into my sonic sandbox and done some sampling, and also used some of Live's in-built synths, I realised today that no third-party VST instruments had yet been used in the Pact. That has been assuredly addressed this time round, by breaking out TAL's TAL-U-NO-LX synth.

Trying to build up from Glockenberg has proven tricky, and at the end of my session today I was not satisfied with the result: a distant-sounding sampled piano part.

Pouncing on Goldpiano from yesterday I've gone ahead and developed a bass part for it, and, you know what, I may have the seed for the last idea of this pact.

Today I quested to magic up a rhythm part appropriate for the current idea. And boy did I labour. I suppose I'm happy with the result – it seems to work – but it doesn't do much to improve my lukewarm feeling about the last few days.

I went ahead and mixed the drums I laid down yesterday (of course taking the intermediate step of Samplering all the necessary hits). Overall, pretty decent, nothing particularly novel to report on the creative side.

This is the first Pact session in a few where I've not been time constrained, and hallelujah! it's a good feeling. Two parts came from this session, though they were based off a single seed – they were only separated to allow for a more straightforward use in the Set.

This Pact session was a complex one: not only did I employ the Proteus and thus need to do some sampling, I also Instrument Racked up three samplers and then grouped that with the original MIDI track. On top of that it took a while to nail down the right mix.

Like the final crumpet of the packet being placed in the toaster and subsequently devoured, CreativePact 2016 has concluded (for the record, there is no significance behind the crumpet metaphor, I was just thinking about breakfast). I decided to go easy on myself and create a string part using one of Live's instruments.

Last week the curtain closed on what ranks as one of my best CreativePacts, and, you know, by the end of the first week I had proved to myself that this method of creative generation was the way to go. The Pact was already a success.