Overall, this week has seen a couple of changes to the arrangement of the flute, but nothing has changed too dramatically as I have been working a lot on my other single, which needs a lot more time on it than this one. I got a couple of moments this week to finish all of the flute channels in terms of structure, but I am still yet to add things like effects and mix the track as a whole. As well as this, I need to potentially add the sub-bass track but this won’t take too long as I am just importing an auto file into the track; not many effects will need to be added. I then need to arrange the bass accordingly, thinking of where I want/don’t want it in the structure. Having a sub-bass can be difficult as you don’t want it to make the track sound too muddy, so I might want it to just drop in and out during certain areas.
Progressions And Strengths
This week, I finally finished arranging the flute parts for the song. I decided to use a part that I found in the final take as the main part which just holds on one note, and does some nice melody lines at the start and end of the chop. Also, some other parts have been chopped up to act as a flute solo during the break as some people had mentioned that the break can get a bit repetitive, so adding a solo counters this and makes it more interesting to listen to. I have also added other backing melodies across the whole song to go with the drone-type note on the flute as well. At first, I had a problem with the final take channels as the left track gradually got slightly out of time through the whole song; at the end, it was almost a beat out. So, to counter this, I went through the whole audio file and sliced where the track started to get out of time, then dragged it back so it matched with the right panned audio track. This was a bit of a pain to do but the flute wouldn’t have sounded good without it!
As well as this, I also arranged the delay tracks, using some different chops to fill out empty spaces but not going too over-the-top with the effect. I achieved this by automating their volume to make sure the delay doesn’t saturate all of the song and make it sound untidy. Automating this was important for the second region on the image below as I wanted the delay to finish in the middle of a waveform which meant you could hear it suddenly cut off when it hit the end of the region. Slowly lowering the volume counters this, making for a much smoother transition and song in general. Next week, I definitely need to automate the other delay track as this will allow me to dip its musical ideas in and out of the song without making it sound too messy, similar to what I have achieved here.
Improvements
To improve the sound and quality of the flute tracks, I need to work on adding effects to them. This would consist of an EQ, and it would ensure that I am not getting any low frequencies by rolling off the low end. I can also add bell EQ’s to places where I want certain frequencies to be more prominent/obscure and brighter/duller; this would improve the sound dramatically. Also, because the draft and final take sound ever so slightly different to each other, I need to EQ one of them a bit more to make them sound as similar as possible. I should also add things like reverb so they fit the aura of the song and sound more spacious, and also compression to control the volume a lot more, as some parts of the flute can be loud, and then go very quiet.
As mentioned before, I next need to add the sub-bass part, only if I feel it is necessary to and would improve the song. I need to make sure the track is not warped when I start working on it, like what happened with the flute tracks initially. I most likely won’t want the sub-bass to play throughout the whole track so I need to arrange this accordingly, and potentially use automation to make it flow more when I get onto mixing. I have a sub-bass part during the break but I think I prefer the one that Lex made so I will most likely remove that one and replace it with the new one. This will also act as another collaboration and as this was made with a physical analogue synth, I can experiment with working among physical synthesisers and how they are different to digital ones. He used a Moog analogue synthesiser to make this bassline.
Targets For Next Week
-Add EQ, reverb and more effects to the flute tracks.
-Add sub bass part and arrange accordingly.
-Begin to mix the track if I get time if I finish arrangement this week, but this is not likely.