First off, I thought the easiest target from last week was to extend the song, so I did just that. Now, the track is over two minutes, compared to last week when it was just under a minute. I feel like this is a huge achievement as now it is more structurally sound and works more like an actual song as it has a verse-chorus form. To add to the structure, I repeated certain parts, however adding a difference to it, whether that be a drum fill or change in rhythm. This can be seen in the verse, which was only eight bars last week but now it’s sixteen, with a rhythm change in the first eight bars.
Furthermore, I added a main melody to the chorus which consists of a vocal organ that plays an airy sound over the strobe pad to add another layer of texture for the main part of the song. I said I wanted both a melody and some airy vocals in my last week’s evaluation, so I thought that mixing the two together would be perfect for a trap song as both of these are conventional. Even though the melody is simple, I used effects like a quaver note delay and extra reverb, giving it a sense of space in the track and to make the simple melody more impressive.
In addition to melody, I improved upon another musical element that is hugely important in trap music; rhythm. To do this, I added drum fills and changed the drum rhythm on the snare in the first half of the verses, as mentioned in the first paragraph. One of the more prominent fills in the song (and personally my favourite) is the one at the end of the 5th bar in the verse which uses two quavers and a crotchet. It is my favourite as it incorporates both rhythm and pitch as the snare drum goes up in pitch every time it is hit, which takes away from the fairly simple rhythm of the fill. I did this by recording the drums in but sliding the pitch bend wheel on the keyboard up as I played, then quantizing the notes in the piano roll after so they were timed correctly.
To make the composition even better and sounding like a finished piece of work, I should extend the song further. I am hoping to get to at least three minutes as this is usually how more mainstream songs are today. To do this, I need to make a longer structure, perhaps with another chorus as most songs have three choruses. This could be a post-chorus however, so it doesn’t sound exactly the same as the other ones as this would become boring very quickly, especially without vocals. I also could add a bridge or break after the work I have done here to perhaps slow the song down and allow for a change of rhythm or melody line. I also need to add a sufficient outro so the song does not just end like it does this week. I could choose the easy way and do a fade-out, however, I was thinking of dropping the instruments out, leaving only one instrument and then fading that one out.
Even though I have added some effects to the tracks, for example, the delay and reverb on the vocal organ, I feel like I could do more, especially with the amount of time I have left to finish the song. Once the song is finished, I could mix the track by working with volumes, panning, and most importantly, effects. These effects will be added to the instruments to make it sound more professional and engaging for the listener. I plan to definitely add an EQ to almost all instruments to get rid of frequencies that don’t work well in the song or that are simply not needed. I also want to add reverb to the hi-hats and snares.
So the song keeps moving and there are no dramatic changes, I want to add sounds like risers so the structure flows well and the choruses move into the verses in a much more interesting way. Risers are popular in modern music so I would like to add one to my song so it fits in the genre I am going for. They are popular especially in electronic music like trap as they can be difficult to create without using technology. I would also like to add some spoken word parts, as I saw a midi pad in Logic that plays people saying different sentences. As well as this, I want to fade in and out instruments so it plays smoother and not everything comes in and drops out at the same time, as this isn’t very compelling.
Targets For Next Week
-Make the song more structurally interesting by adding a break and an outro, maybe even a post-chorus.
-EQ the instruments and add other effects if needed.
-Add a riser effect to make the change in forms seem more fluent.