Intro:

When starting this unit, I was so excited to be able to have greater freedom of what I could create, as I noted heavily in my previous blog post. I was overjoyed to be able to have my musical ideas come to fruition with something other than Garageband. At the same time, however, it was overwhelming finding a place to start. I would spend a lot of time just staring at my computer screen thinking about what I would want to come next, compared to the previous project which had long clips that I could just put together.

I first started my project by thinking about the bassline that I wanted, since that was something that really didn’t go well last time. The bassline from “7 Nation Army” was really stuck in my head, and I wanted something that clean but didn’t want to copy it, so it was sort of unproductive. I also tried putting a step clip with a drum sampler to make the beat but ended up switching back to the MIDI input version because I couldn’t figure out how to get more instruments to control. At the end of my first session, though, I already decided to create a piece that had a lead synth that was lively and melodic.

Early on in my project, I created a melody that I would stick with until the end:

In the end, I ended up building off of my melody, then adding the drum/percussion, adding the bass, and then adding the ambiance/sound effects.

Components:

Melody:

My melody portion consists of a thematic repeated section spaced out with distinct other sections, as shown in the diagram below.

With a tempo of 120bpm, I started off fast with the “thematic” melody, which I was able to make manageable by having slower synth notes (otherwise all fast synth notes would be absolutely painful). I ended finishing the song with a variation of the last few notes of the main theme. The key signatures I tried to stick to were D Major/Minor.

When deciding the instrument that I would use, I decided to use the 4OSC plugin. Initially, I was thinking of using the Piano or Flute instrument because I was more familiar and comfortable with orchestral instruments, but I ended up using the “Solid Lead” one with was cleaner and livelier.

Drums/Percussion:

I created this part using the built-in 808 drumset in the drum sampler after making the melody. I ended up using quite a lot of drum kicks, which I really thought was able to propel the song forward and create a steady rhythm. A particularly interesting thing when creating this part was using the claves in the “Intermission” section of the melody I mentioned above. Traditionally, in my head, I always imagine basic beatboxing when I think of percussion (kick, snare, hi-hat), so experimenting with claves was something exciting and new. I found that claves serve very well as a gentler alternative to the snare, which worked perfectly for me in the “Intermission”, where I still wanted to have a beat but didn’t want something too heavy and disruptive.

I also found the clap a good alternative to the snare, which produces a more dramatic effect, which I used at the end of measures at the ends of sections.

Bassline:

The bassline was not very interesting, as I was already quite satisfied with my drumline and melody. Besides a groovy bassline I used for the thematic melody portion, the rest of the bassline was essentially just supporting the melody, having the lower octave of a note played with a bass that I found in Subtractive. I found that the bass notes coincided with the timing of the kick, but I found that didn’t really affect the overall feel too much, because the note sustained longer than the kick, so the note could still be heard.

Ambiance/Sound FX:

Originally, I planned to have a synth pad sample that would serve as the ambiance, but the key was just way too off, so I had to delete it. Instead, I switched to flowing water as the background for a couple of the sections. The motivation for doing this was because 1) I remember this idea from before and wanted to try it, and 2) I thought that flowing water would serve to make my piece more “liquid” and more casual with the random pitches from flowing water. Of course, I had to use an equalizer to get rid of a lot of the excess white noise and used a fade out to make the noise transition better, but I think it turned out decent. I also decided to add a “sound effects” section to make my piece livelier and not just purely instrumental. I chose to use the “YO” sound effect because I thought it would be a good transition between sections that gave a more human element to my piece. I admit, though, that for both of these, I added them at the end, so I didn’t really see these as necessities, so I gave them a smaller role compared to the MIDI components.

Plugins/Panning

Panning:

In all cases of panning, I used it with automation, to have the music change between the left and right inputs. I used this in two places: the main melody and the “YO” sound effect. My main melody repeated 3 times, the second time an octave lower than the first, and the third time an octave higher than the first. I panned the first centered, the second part left, and the third part to the right. I thought that this would create a cool contrast, but I feel like in the end the reverb/delay may have made the experience less optimal. For the “YO” sound effect, I used automation to make panning occur during the sound effect to create the effect of the “YO” passing by.

Equalizers:

I used an equalizer on each track, using them as more of a lowpass/highpass filter style. For the melody, I removed the higher frequencies that were produced from the synth to get a cleaner and less jarring sound. For the bassline, I also got rid of the higher frequencies, but this was not a very noticeable effect. For the drumline, I increased the higher frequencies, to emphasize the claves more and give a bit more commanding power to the snare. As I said above, for the water sound, I got rid of a lot of the low-frequency noise to get a sound more similar to water dripping. Finally, for the “YO” sound effect, I essentially made a bandpass filter that centered around the human voice range.

Compressor:

I used a compressor for each of the tracks to get rid of the jarring loud sounds that sometimes would end up clipping. I feel the most important part was applying the compressor to the drumline, which had the loudest output that was sometimes just way too dominant. The effect of the compressor on other tracks felt very minimal.

Reverb:

I added reverb to make sounds way larger since my composition was basically all MIDI and felt too “artificial”.

Challenges:

I was surprised by how difficult it actually was to compose my own music. I haven’t ever made a whole musical piece before, and basically just sometimes generate melodies in my head, so creating something succinct and blending together was difficult. Also, with so much freedom in MIDI, I didn’t really find much use for recorded samples in my project besides serving as the background or for sound effects. Also, the MIDI interface was a bit frustrating, as I kept switching between the pen and the selection tool using the mouse. But otherwise, it was a fun and enjoyable experience.

Overall:

This project really forced me to think more musically when creating a piece. I learned quite a lot about what things sound good together from getting a hands-on experience of literally making the notes one by one, and how difficult it can be. I now have a greater appreciation for those that are good at making music, since it seems like a really precise form of art still with a good degree of freedom to it. In the future, I hope to try and recreate retro pop songs in Waveform in MIDI and make my own parodies/dubs. Anyways, below is my piece, and don’t be afraid to roast me!