First MIDI project!

Initial Ideas

My initial idea for this song—like all great ideas—started in the shower. I was jamming out in my head to a minor descending bass line in 7/8, and immediately I knew where my project would start. Soon after, I sat down with a synth app on my iPad (Synth One and Flynth are great, for those interested), and started to solidify my ideas. Music theory is pretty new to me, so it took me a little while to harmonize everything. Knowing I wanted the bass line to follow the classic 1 – 7(♭) – 6♮- 6(♭) – 5, I ended up with the minor progression: i – v6 – V6 / VII – VI – V. While I had initially imagined everything with jazz instrumentation, I eventually settled on a more electronic/”synthy” vibe. This was perhaps simply a product of the tools I was using to practice, but no matter. I created a new waveform project and set to work.

Meet MIDI!

The addition of MIDI to my composition toolkit immediately proved indispensable. I know it’s quite rudimentary, but it was really nice to be able bring my own musical ideas to fruition, rather than just mixing loops. I don’t have any sort of MIDI controller, so I tried to hook up my iPad as keyboard I could play. While I found a solution that works with Logic Pro, I couldn’t get anything to work with Waveform. Ultimately, I resorted to penciling in notes with Waveform’s built in MIDI editor. I found it useful to open clips in a separate window instead of using in-line track editor, which can be achieved by pressing the “pop out window” button on the top left of any MIDI clip. Here’s an example of what I was working with:

Challenges with Synthesis

Ironically, however, the freedom of MIDI resulted in my biggest challenge with the project. I found it really difficult to accurately produce a sound I imagined with additive synthesis. Every time I wanted to introduce a new voice or instrument, I’d have a good idea of the sound I wanted, but had a lot of trouble translating that into the correct oscillator, filter, and LFO settings. I tried to combat this challenge with practice. I spent a lot of time with 4OSC and Subtractive, as well as the iPad apps mentioned above, simply jumping around presets, looking through how the sound was made, and tweaking things to see how each setting affected the instrument as a whole. (A few times, I found a sound I really liked on the iPad, but couldn’t easily translate it to 40SC or Subtractive because the interfaces are so different. Eventually I gave up on the non-Waveform synths from this frustration, even though they were quite convenient.) While I’d still say I’m far from comfortable, I’ve definitely started to get better—especially in 4OSC’s simple interface. At a few points, I was strongly tempted to look into virtual instruments, but I thought I’d leave that for my next project.

Digging into Composition

Pre-chorus, Chorus, and Rhythm/Meter Decisions

After what felt like a steep upfront time cost of getting my bearings in the world of MIDI, I was finally ready to start realizing the song I wanted to create. I started with a pre-chorus/chorus combo which followed the chord progression I had decided on earlier. I decided I wanted the odd meter of the chorus to stick out a bit more, so I wrote the rest of the song in 4/4, while in the chorus inserting an extra bar of 8/8 after every 3 of 7/8 to blend the worlds a little bit. In doing this, I signed myself up for the difficult task of convincingly transitioning between these two meters. After a few different approaches, I ended up using an isolated and syncopated pattern in the bass to erase some of the 4/4 context before entering the chorus.

Verses

Eventually, I realized that I had put a lot of attention into the middle of my song, without really thinking about how I wanted it to start. Since I was decidedly working in the world of 4/4 for the intro and verses, I thought it would be the right time to incorporate some loops. After quite a while sifting through Waveform’s search tool (something I would highly recommend, as it automatically adjusts to your tempo and key during preview) I came upon some pad, bass, and drum loops from Garage Band’s libraries that had a cool minor vibe. These went together quite easily, and with the addition of a buzzy synth melody I wrote in MIDI, I had the verse section.

Intro

Even as I tried to gradually layer tracks at the start of the verse, the start to the song was a bit abrupt. After trying a few different things, I decided to ease into the track with a smooth piano progression. One of the loops I had been using had a bass line that followed 1 – 6(♭) – 3(♭) – 1, which inspired the progression minor: i6 – iv – vii°6 – i. With a few suspensions and funky notes for some added spice, I ended up with something I liked. In order to transition in the verse, I used a sinusoidal AM LFO in 4OSC to add vibrato to the final i chord at the 1/16 note level (using the “sync” option in 4OSC). I used automation to gradually increase the depth of this effect at the end of the piano intro. This transition allowed me to play the chords at a bit slower of a tempo (80BPM), and use the 1/16 notes created by the LFO to establish the main 100BPM pulse. I though it all ended up sounding pretty cool, so I decided to use the vibrato sound as a pad throughout the entire piece to provide some unity.

With another verse, an amped up prechorus using the lead instrument instead of lowpass keys, and a solo/chorus section, the content of the song was complete!

Edits and mixing

However, I had quite a ways to go before finishing. There were still several glaring issues with the track. First, I was having some trouble with the synthesis of my lead instrument: whenever multiple notes were playing, it seemed like they would cancel out and switch between each other. I spent a good while fussing with distortion, unison, detuning, and phase, as I suspected these were all culprits of some sort of phase cancellation between notes. I felt pretty stupid when I realized I just had the “mono” toggle on. To some relief, I did end up having to change the aforementioned settings as well, as the distortion and detuning didn’t sound great in a chord. The song then lacked some grunge, so ended up splitting my lead midi clips into two tracks: one with extra distortion and detuning for one note at a time, and another with less for multiple notes at a time.

Second, even during later edits, the chorus didn’t sound nearly as full as the verses, and their overall vibes didn’t really match. This was one of my most difficult obstacles, stemming from how the piece was composed. Looking back, I think it would have served me much better to have planned out the entire song before jumping into the DAW. Writing the choruses before really knowing where I wanted to take the rest of the song resulted in somewhat disparate sections instead of a unified progression. Despite the deep roots of this issue, there were a few things I tried to help the chorus fit the vibe of the rest of the song. I added an extra ascending pad, panned different sounds left and right to spread everything out, messed with the different levels of all the instruments, and boosted the lows of the bass. These all helped the chorus sound a bit more full, and more in place.  I ended up putting a lot of automation on the oscilating pad, boosting it when isolated, and lowering it when layered with other sounds to keep the overall amplitude in check. One particularly fun edit in this phase was adding automation to the panning of an arpeggiated loop in the verse to make it feel like it was cycling around. It ended up looking something like this:

Takeaways

Overall, I really enjoyed working on this project. Music production is something that still feels incredibly out of my comfort zone, but I think for that reason I’m starting to have a lot of fun with it. I certainly still feel like there are several things wrong with my piece that I just don’t know how to fix, but just as often am I frustrated, I become excited with what have been noticeable improvements in my skills. Suffice to say, I’ve been having a great time learning more about music production. I’m particularly looking forward to branching out to less “electronic” sounds in my next project.

Here’s the final track!