After listening to the first ideas I put into this song last week, I felt like the drums needed to be more interesting, especially the hi-hats. I researched how to make hi-hat rolls on logic at home in my spare time and realised how simple it is! The next day I came in and added them within about 10 minutes by using the piano roll and the paint tool, then removing one of the beats and replacing it with much shorter notes like semiquavers and 16th note triplets to create that rolling effect. I am pretty proud of these additions as I feel like it lives more up to the trap genre now as these are very common in trap and rap music.
Even though the structure still needs work as it only just less than a minute left, I managed to make it less of an idea for a song and more into an actual song as it now has two different parts to it (I plan to add more parts to it later in the project). The build-up at the start leads into the chorus about 14 seconds in, and then it goes into the verse 31 seconds in and you can tell that it is the chorus as the synth line starts playing in just one pitch.
To keep the track moving and interesting I thought that adding some unique parts like drum fills and a synth to fill out the choruses and breaks would help the song. I added a () synth which you can hear quietly in the mix, as I don’t want it to be the main melody. The small drum fill at 30 seconds is simple yet effective as it happens when everything else has dropped out. To indicate when there is a change in form, I put a highly edited crash cymbal to show this change. I ran a normal crash through an EQ to get rid of some of the higher frequencies and put loads of reverb to make it ring out for longer.
To make improvements on this song, I need to extend the song to at least three minutes in total, a normal length for a song today. To do this, the song requires more unique additions like the ones mentioned above. This is so the listener will not get bored during the repeated verses and choruses. To do this, I need to make the song longer but in a way which is both interesting and fun to listen to, by potentially adding different drum beats during a certain verse for example and making a main melody for the choruses.
To further improve on both the song and my production skills, I could sample some things. First I need to do some research into sampling and figure out how to perform this on Logic and also into the legalities behind it; I would need to use royalty-free samples or get permission to be able to use someone else’s work. Especially because this song has no rap or vocals, I could find some airy vocals or spoken words to put in the song, both of which are very typical in trap songs. However, this is something I could work on later, once the track is actually finished as then I can start to perfect it by adding things like these in.
Overall, I am really proud of this composition and how it is sounding at the moment! There are definitely things to work on however I have learnt the basics of Logic and then gone even further by researching how to make things like hi-hat rolls in my own time. I am excited to see where I can take this track in terms of the elements of music, like adding harmony, dynamics and even experimenting with different textures within the song to create completely new sounds and points in the structure.
Targets For Next Week
-Extend the song to around three minutes in total.
-Add more interesting parts to the song, like more fills and breaks.
-Work on the structure of the composition; add a main melody to the chorus and perhaps change the drums in one verse.