This week’s work was successful as I am now extremely close to finally finishing the main song, so I can move on to mixing it next week. The first thing I did when I got into the lesson was find a sample for a riser as this would make the sections flow into each other better and risers are very common in electronic trap music. I also did this as I knew we needed at least one recorded thing in our composition and because trap doesn’t really use recorded instruments, I went for a sample instead. I put many effects on it like reverb, EQ and a flanger to get rid of the plain white noise. I then went into the automation tab to cut off the very end of the rise (and the vocal sample) so the beat drop is more effective and when the drop comes in, the riser still rings out which is very powerful. This riser and automation can be seen below:
After sorting out a riser, I knew I needed to take the song somewhere different so I thought a bridge and a break before the last chorus would be perfect for this. The bridge is not in the photo underneath, however, it contains a new bassline, drum beat and a rhythm line using chopped-up vocal samples. The bassline is a lot more complex as it uses more notes and a totally different rhythm using semi-quavers. The chopped up vocals are striking, yet conventional as it gives a mosaic feel to the song even though it stays true to the intended genre. The break almost diminishes the song without a change of tempo as the texture quickly comes very thin. In the eight bars, four are just drums, and the bass comes in after this for four bars, playing two minims a bar that are an octave from each other. After this, the last chorus kicks in. The break and last chorus can be seen in this photo:
After extending on the structure, I realised that some parts of the song are ever so slightly out of time. This could be heard at the first beat of the 9th of the verse last week as the bass and drums kicked in slightly too early. After noticing this and a few other problems with the timing, I went over the song in a high zoom and cleaned it up by making sure all of the regions lined up perfectly with the bar line. This is important to do as if things are slightly out of time at the start, the whole song will gradually get more out of time as the track plays and by the end of it, it will not be coordinated with the set metronome at all. This is a small preview on how I sorted the timing issue out. As you can see, the regions go just over the bar line, so I dragged it back vaguely so it meets:
To improve on the song, the last 8 bars of the bridge and the last chorus, I feel, needs something more in terms of the musical elements. I think that adding a melody line to the last eight bars of the bridge would work very well as right now, the bridge gets a little bit boring as it just repeats the vocal samples. I plan to use a synth for the melody line and the rhythm of it will be the same as the chopped vocal samples so they interlock with each other. If I have time, I might want to do some experimenting in terms of harmonising the melody to give the bridge more texture. As well as this, I want to add a totally new synth line to the last chorus as the vocal pad I used in previous choruses, I think, is beginning to get a bit repetitive and monotonous now. Adding a new melody to the last chorus will keep the listener’s engagement.
After finishing the actual body of the composition, I want to mix the track. Using my skills from last week when we mixed The Umbrellas recording of ‘Chelsea Dagger’, I plan to add vital effects onto the tracks, for example; putting an EQ on everything so I can get fid of frequencies I don’t want, and using compression so the dynamics are not all over the place. To do this, I will put all of similar instruments into buses, and add the effects onto effect buses so certain instruments will have the exact same EQ and compression on them. As well as this, I intend to add some reverb onto some instruments to make my work sound airier, especially with the drums. I also want to pan the instruments so they are not all coming through both speakers. I could pan different drums more to the left and put the melodies further to the right, and keep the bass in the middle as this is what pulls the whole composition together.
Targets For Next Week
-Make sure I have finished all past evaluations and do a write up for my final piece.
-Add some extra instruments to the bridge and chorus to finalise the structure of the whole song.
-Make the track sound more professional by mixing the track by using automation, panning and effects.