A Ribitting Final Project

The start of a fun project

For the last project of the year, I wanted to make a project that would be the culmination of all we have learned in the first-year seminar. I knew right away that I wanted to make a Waveform project because those are the projects I enjoyed the most making. I first needed to find a way to put together everything we’ve learned in order to make this project work. Recording and mixing would come naturally with the project, but incorporating SuperCollider less so.

I knew right away I wanted to make a very upbeat and fast moving music project, this needed to be the celebration of a great first-year seminar, not a sad goodbye. I needed this project to have more energy than the last two and provide some “good vibes” as one would say. Now I just needed to figure out how to put an abstract idea such as “good vibes” into notes, frequencies, sounds, etc…

 

Loops and Sample

I first needed to do a little bit of research on Spotify. I clicked on my happy songs playlist and narrowed down the “good vibes” into some tangible variables. I noticed that most songs have at least a simple catchy melody and some hard hitting drums (especially some good snares and hard hitting claps). I probably missed a lot of other key criteria but those two two things popped out the most to me. I started by looking through different synth noises in an attempt to find something I could use. I originally wanted to use a synth sound from a loop I found on Looperman.com, but ultimately decided that I would rather make my own. Most of the Subtractive synths didn’t feel like the right fit for the project I had in mind so I ended up making my own samples with a plugin synth from my music making software (another DAW). I made 4 different samples but used the same sets of chords, and just made some notes more staccato to add some punch. 

As usual, I decided to make my own drum beats and percussive sounds because I am not a big fan of drum samples. I like to make the drum loops and samples myself (weather that’s using MIDI or a beat sequencer) mostly because I give importance to the beat over the melody. I tried in this project to keep the idea of using some powerful snares and claps, so I ended up using fewer closed Hi-Hats. I ended up with 3 different snares that I switched around in the project depending on when the chorus or verses played. As per usual, the bulk of my drum work was in the kicks. I had a total of 4 different samples, all dominated in different frequencies so that putting them together in the chorus wouldn’t overwhelm the (30 to 100 Hz range). Although I didn’t have too many closed Hi-Hat samples, I did have a few open Hi-Hat samples (with only a few hits) as well as some rides that I may have overused at certain points, but I thought (and still think) it actually worked quite well.

The samples I ended up taking for my project were that of frogs croaking as well as a ribbit sound from the website orangefreesounds.com:

 

To have some fun, I decided to throw in a curve ball in the beginning of the project. I started the project very slow with what sounded like some sort of soundscape and then I interrupted it quickly to start the upbeat music I had prepared. In addition I did use a few sweeping samples I found on Looperman.com to lead into or out of the chorus in the beginning.

 

Recordings

There aren’t that many recordings in my project, but there are enough so that they cannot be ignored. I have no faith in my singing ability, so I did not create any long audio clips, but I had just listened to Kid Cudi’s new album and I was inspired by the ad libs in his song Sad People. Although it is quite ironic that I am taking inspiration from a sad song to make a happy one, I really wanted to have some fun making some adlibs in my project. I sat in front of my Iphone microphone saying random things and making noises, only to be displeased with almost everything. After a few more attempts I was done and had a few usable audio clips.

The first recording is that of me saying “nah…nah nah nah nah, we gotta change this up” which I used as the transition from my intro into the main part of my project:

 

I originally wanted to have me say “yeah” and then have the switch after that, but I thought it would be more entertaining to have me talk a little more in the beginning and use the “yeah” later. I think it made for a better transition overall, because I was able to have a moment where all the music stopped while I was talking. The second recording is of me saying “yeah” which I changed the pitch by 2 semitones to create a deep voice.

Because I was recording with an Iphone microphone there was a lot of background noise getting in the way. After doing some research online I found out that I could use audacity (which I luckily already had downloaded) to reduce the unwanted noise. This actually helped a lot in making my recordings smoother and sound a lot better. 

 

MIDI

I used Subtractive to create some sound effects in my project, and created two different synth sounds in the intro to give a strange effect. I again used Subtractive to make a bassline synth during the chorus, even though I don’t really like using subtractive as a plugin to make the melodies for my project. I always seem to use them more for interesting sound effects. One of the synths used was called Mordor 2 and I thought it fit perfectly in the strange intro sequence with all the croaking frogs as well as the weird bowed strings. The synth used for the baseline in the chorus was simply a soft background synth that complimented the chords of the melody. Originally I thought of adding an extra layer of synth in the higher frequencies (2k to 3k Hz range), but I ended up thinking it was too much and it ruined the overall feel of the song.  

 

SuperCollider

SuperCollider was the spark to the great idea of having a strange intro to the song. When I was looking through the different sounds and came across the class BrownNoise.ar (from superclass WhiteNoise.ar) which generates noise with a spectrum that falls off in power by 6 dB per Octave (example of this class being used):

Using that with OnePole.ar (example of this class being used):

 A low pass filter and a resonant high pass filter (example of this class being used with SinOsc):

I was able to obtain a sort of bubbling sound:

 

Plugins and Mixing

 

I didn’t go too crazy with the plugins and kept them quite simple. This is about the most I put on a single track:

I put a few extra plugins on my Subtractive Synths, however, I mostly kept it simple for the rest. I stuck to simple plugins such as EQ and Reverb. I added a little of Reverb to certain tracks but kept it to a minimum. I tried experimenting with reverb for this project, but I felt like it altered the choppy feel of the main synth at times and didn’t line up well with my recordings (that sounded better with low reverb). Because of this I mostly stuck to using a very low reverb:

As always, I used the EQ to fix some errors with the frequencies of certain samples and sounds. For example, I needed to cut some of the higher frequencies (80Hz to 100Hz) for one of the kicks so it wouldn’t overlap too much with another. I had to do some of the same changes for the snares as well. I did use the low pass and high pass filter plugins at certain points, but the EQ often helped enough. The one mistake I did make in the beginning, was not realizing one of the Reverb plugins I had in my project actually came from another DAW on my computer. Luckily I realized in time and I replaced it in no time.

 

Automation

There was more automation in my project this time than the last. I used panning for the intro as well as a little bit for the chorus, but it isn’t very strong. There is also some slight panning to the right when there is the “yeah” adlib, but it is the only recording I added any panning to. I did not use my signature ping pong effect panning. I mostly used automation to control the volume level. For example, the very sharp cutoff of the intro, or how the music fades out in the very end.

Errors and technical difficulties

This time I had far fewer technical difficulties than the last time. I only had one big one. My Waveform project crashed while I was working on it and when I reopened it half of the work I had done was gone. Some tracks were deleted, some automation, and a lot of plugins. I did save my work prior to the crash. I always get scared of things like this so I save my project after I make even the slightest change, but I think the problem had to do with my computer. My computer is old and it has almost ran out of storage so I believe it was a problem on my end and it had not much to do with Waveform itself. I was able to put everything back together, but it took a while and it was a pain. In the end not much else went wrong so it wasn’t terrible. My mac kept sending me this:

 

Project