Monday – Register website and domain, Work on Track
Tuesday – Read Music production books
Wednesday – Plan my Day
Thursday – Work in the Room and look at instruments
Monday 10th March
I completed feedback on my presentation and reflection. I registered and set up my website, crmusic.co.uk, and website hosting is now live. I will use the website to upload the tracks I create and produce. The website will also show a portfolio of my work throughout my university course and beyond.
Tuesday 11th March
I have started reading a recently purchased book, Music Production 2024+ (Swindali, 2024)/ having looked at the chapters, I became interested in one in particular: Working With Loops and Samples. For the tracks that I intend to produce, I feel as if there will be a good reason to use loops, as title themes in a lot of video games I play have a very distinct split: they either use instrumental variants of popular songs from that same game or they have a completely original composition for the title alone. In Metroid Dread, the latter is true. For my track, I also want to make an original composition and only use a few samples and loops to get the desired result. My chord progression will likely be minimalist; therefore, I can repeat it a handful of times, taking the recorded segment and copy-pasting it again to avoid playing it again on a MIDI keyboard.
Wednesday 12th March
Plan for Thursday at college in the room booked:
Instrument Selection
Explore the library of instruments on the Triton Rack Synth to determine which instruments to use for a song before recording. Plan to experiment with the MIDI keyboard to produce and evaluate sounds across different instruments.
Composition Development
Aim to create a one-minute composition segment, potentially extending to two or three minutes. Set up chords, bass, and choir elements, focusing on choir arrangements.
Technical Exploration
Investigate methods to detune instruments in Ableton, inspired by the detuned stack church organ in a Metroid song.
Publishing and Feedback
Plan to publish the one-minute track as a work in progress on a personal website. Provide a link to the website for others to review and provide feedback on the ongoing projects
Thursday 13th March
Today in college, I hope to begin work on my track and get a minute done, while also exploring the Korg Triton’s library once more. I have already figured out whether or not I have a room booked, and I did not – but this is no issue since there are rooms free for the day that I can take anyway. Evan will be grabbing the Korg Triton from the other building and bringing it over to the David Hockney Building from Lister Building, so in the meantime, I will research how to detune instruments in Ableton 12.
I have read the Ableton 12 Manual and come across the tuning systems segment: Taking the screenshots from the manual itself, there is a dedicated tunings segment in the core menu. I have a vast selection of different tuners to pick from, so I will take time today to look at what I can do. Perhaps today could be less about getting one minute of track done, and more exploring my options to then have a better understanding of what I have available come next week. I will see what I can do over the span of today, working to the best of my ability while not burning myself out.
It seems that the tuners come with built in info boxes to help me understand them before I load and delete them if they do not fit. This is a wonderful addition that will cut my research time in half, as I can go look through them now and pick out the ones that stand out to me personally. (Currently still waiting on the Korg Triton to be pulled out, and also a lesson going on that I unfortunately have to attend).
While I understand very few of these words (due to being new to using tuning in Ableton), some of my choices to play around with are:
Due to me being unable to use the Korg Triton today, I will be spending today and tomorrow looking at the tools available to me on Ableton so I can create the pieces I want to make.
For my Title Track, I have already found:
Airline Bass (Sounds, Bass), the reason I want to use this being its low, growly synth-qualities while not being too expressive, I could use this to perhaps start the song and give it a powerful build up.
Glitch Sequence (Sounds, Ambience & FX), because this could help me create a small gap in the song where the music sounds like it has faded out after the Airline Bass’ buildup, but then I can lead into the actual track.
Sounds I like, but will hold off on until I have an idea:
Warehouse Kit (Drums), I love the reverb qualities of this kit, and it would work well with the below sound to create a more industrial-quality track.
Machine Ambient (Samples, Ambience & FX), something about this draws me in because of how it isn’t properly playing any music, but it reminds you in narrative that there are plenty of machines around.