Waveform 11: At First Glance

The room I used to create music: 

The room I used to create this music was my dorm room in Ezra Stiles College. The single is a little spacious, and my suite is rather quiet because my suitemates are usually out and about doing their own thing. However, whenever I record at night, I make sure that hopefully my audio doesn’t travel into the hallway space. 

Project Write-Up:

When starting my project last week, I took the first couple of days after downloading Waveform DAW on Monday to binge-watch the Youtube series that showed us what to do and how to begin in Waveform.

I would say my favorite effect that came most in handy was actually the first effect I discovered. This was the slow down or speed up fade curve that you can create instead of using automation. Of course, automation is helpful for buildups in the middle, but most of my tracks faded out or caused a slowing down drop at the end that I was able to achieve really well using that feature.

I also messed around a lot with the “Wet” and “Dry” mix of various plug-ins, ultimately using almost all of them: Reverb, Chorus, Delay, Pitch-Shift, HP/LP, Compressor, Phaser, and Volume/Pan. Below I will write down an annotated version of my Log, so that I can describe my process of approaching this track and how I used and tested different plug-ins to find out the best vibe to create with my track.

In the beginning of the week, starting Monday, I downloaded Waveform and went through the Media Library tutorial on how to set up the DAW. I went through all the videos in this YouTube video series that Waveform created: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaNjetabjrNoWj0ZCETvPEzAnrRQF6OmE.I then throughout the week binge-watched various Waveform tutorial videos and looked at the tutorial on how to insert and use Imagina Drum Loops. I downloaded them from the Tracktion Download Manager. I downloaded the same kind used in the tutorials, by the drummer Alex Filippino. 

Then, after learning how to use and access SSLIB, I looked through some of the samples there (I only ended up using one for a background ambience effect).

Recordings:

On Thursday, I was struck by the creative force that shaped and transformed my track. I knew that i wanted to create something synth and drum heavy, as I’ve never really experimented with that kind of music before, but inspiration to record and “capture the essence” of my location struck when I was at a Black Lives Matter protest in the New Haven Green on Thursday. We were heading towards the end of the protest, and I felt more fired up and energetic than I had in a long time – this caused me to think about how to place my iPhone so that it was about 4-5 inches from me and my friends’ mouths and could also capture the crowd chanting all around us through ambience miking. I recorded a little snippet of the sounds I heard, as I was then being directed by an organizer to walk somewhere. You can hear the words they say like “Can you all hear me” in the distortions that I applied to the tracks. This was one of the only recordings I was planning to include in my track, until I decided to showcase some of my beatboxing (I used to be a beatboxer in my a cappella group in high school) by later close miking my own beatboxing into my iPhone microphone from 2-3 inches away. The picture of distortion and slowing down/fading out from the beginning is what I applied to this audio. This sample formed the main part of the climax of the track I used plugins and automation to center around. I also watched a video that tried to teach about a new Waveform feature called the Drum sampler, but when I tried it it was very advanced and hard to control. The drum samples seemed better for the amount of time I had to complete the project, but I would love to experiment with the drum sampler next now that I have more experience with Waveform.

Samples, and how I used plug-ins and automation to edit them:

I searched through the sample loops provided in Waveform and came across a bass sample called “Epoch Sub Bass” which I immediately incorporated into the portion of the recording that I wanted to amp up. I used my newfound knowledge of the L button for loop to loop it once more, and I then messed around with the Reverb plug-in to add some damping because some frequencies were sounding a little bit crunchy while increasing the room size so you could truly feel that reverb and feel the people chanting around you. I tried a few other plugins like Phaser, which I felt as though didn’t really change anything, and I also tried directly changing the volume using a plug-in – I felt reverb gave more of the desired effect. Next, I used a compressor plug-in on the second Epoch Bass loop that allowed for the first round of bass to be extra loud and reverbery and for the next loop to tamp that back.

After looking for hours through the SSLIB, I found an ambient outdoor storm sound I thought would nicely supplement the resolution of the protest sample, kind of like a storm brewing. I found a nice 100 BPM drum track that could go with the storm sample from the loops in Waveform called “Ghostly Beat.” I used automation on that so that the big cymbal crashes were enunciated in comparison to the drum kicks. Then I found a “Deep Dream Synth” from the Waveform DAW that really went well with my idea of trying to calm down the storm and end this track of turbulent revolution with something in the middle and more calm. The Delay plug-in created a cool full effect of echoing and just a fuller sound. I also added that to the “Silky Smooth Synth” I found that was found to fade out and close the song. I then worked on trying to enunciate the beginning drums from the Alex Filippino Imagina Drum loops, and found to use the Volume/Pan plugin to do a cool effect with the Pan. I made the main top layer drum beat increase in volume and pan to the right, while most other kick snares panned to the left. I liked the disconcerting effect this produced. It took some time formatting all six or so drum loop tracks and trying to add a plugin to each one.

I found a sample on accident in the Waveform DAW after 15 minutes of searching called “Euphoria Pad.” This was perfect for my track. I was able to automate this and blend it with the Silky Smooth Synth to create the fade out, ethereal theme I wanted for the end. I used automation to create a sort of hemisphere curvature, where there is a buildup and then release and fade out (I also faded using the slow down mechanism). I then also went back to my main BLM recording and decided I wanted to somehow make the ending slowdown fade out deeper (there’s a lot of build ups and releases in this track) and so I tried the pitch-correct plugin after unsuccessfully trying the Phaser and the Reverb. The pitch-corrector made me need to split up the ending of the recording from the beginning and somehow merge the tracks so there wasn’t an awkward gap in the recording. I also added the Phaser to the Euphoria Pad, and the Chorus plug-in to the Storm recording, mostly to increase the “room space” so that it was like you were actually in a storm. The Euphoria Pad automation was my favorite because it was a perfect hemispherical curve.

For the beatboxing recording, I imported it and found that I needed to use a low-pass filter to try to take away from weird high frequencies that come at the end of smacking my lips together during beatboxing. That really solved the problem. Next, I added a bit of automation to make it fade out the right way but also build up in sound during the climax/resolution.

Plugins that I didn’t really like or didn’t seem to do anything:

I worked on trying out the 4-equalizer plug-in – I didn’t quite understand what it was or how it worked, especially in deciding how it changed my audio, so I abandoned that plugin. I didn’t love the synths I found in SSLIB, at least for the very hard-hitting/activist vibe of this track – maybe the 4 second sounds or more chill vibes would suit another track. I really appreciated the sounds that were in the Waveform DAW. I also was a little bit confused about how the Phaser really affected my audio or the Chorus. They didn’t really add much.

I’d say my favorite plug-in was Reverb, and I really like tweaking the “Room size” parameter because it creates a more 8D, full effect. I think that was important for this track, which required you to try to place yourself in a situation/location, like the protest or the storm.

Here’s the final MP3. Thank you so much, I learned a lot!