(Most documentation will be stored in here by video.)
On my lunch break I am listening to the Sonic Riders soundtrack composed by Tomonori Sawada, Fumie Kumatani, and Kenichi Tokoi, according to (Wikipedia, 2024c). This score is a mostly faced paced techno soundtrack that implements heavy synth usage and drums associated with breakcore (Metal City and Splash Canyon), a genre that came to be from hardcore drum and bass music in the late 90s – this captures the feeling of Sonic’s attitude and nature, and shows me how synths can make a song feel either otherworldly or industrial. I want to go for an industrial vibe to my song, and a perfect example lays in the soundtracl, since there’s a factory theme!
11/03/24, Monday Week 2. Things are progressing smoothly and documentation is in video format for now so I can digest it easily later.
The music I am listening to again is the Sonic Riders soundtrack, which has been referenced above.
12/03/24, Tuesday Week 2 – I have played around with random synth sounds and with my support assistant and after creating a bass pattern that works better in a faster BPM, but I am unlikely to use this until I can make it work with the much more favourable pattern that I made out of Bank INT-A 10: Techno Vox Box; it is a 4 bar long pattern that repeats after itself playing the chord E Minor accompanied by a melody about an octave higher. The repeated behaviour of the chord and melody makes it feel more techno-inspired, and I need to create drums next to match that feel. Faye recently came by to the studio I am working in to give her input on the first instrument and she says it falls in line with the music of command and conquer – so I am headed in the right direction. After input from Lewis and Nic too, I have kept two very different patterns, one on bass and one on the vox box, as I can develop both of these side by side to see which idea I like more.
18/03/24, Monday Week 3 – This week I have decided the vox box does not cut it and have scrapped it from the recordings to make a completely familiar foundation; the drums. Having been a drummer most of my life, I know how to create different feelings with the kit and I know what accompanies it. I have created a bass pattern that will serve as the foundation for all the other bass patterns and formations during the composition and the drums will largely be unchanged to get a techno feel from the kit. Unfortunately had something written for this day but alas, wordpress did not autosave for me this time.
19/03/24, I feel completely dead to work as I did not get any reasonable sleep in the last day so I am writing this on fumes at the moment. Thankfully, Word Online has dictation by voice, so I’m going to be documenting my work from voice to text for now, thankfully. I would like to mention the bass pattern that I had created. While complex for Funk. Being it having too many notes in the pattern. It was and remains on key with the song and it does not fall out of time, and it does not feel out of place. After asking multiple tutors and multiple people for their feedback, it seems that people like the bass that does not skip out at random parts. However, I do believe that increasing the velocity on certain accent notes enhances the songs’ feeling of being funky enough. And at some point I would like to try and sync up it my digital composition because I think it’s I think songs with syncopation have a lot more detail and thought put into them and they sometimes have a lot more feel as a result. I will do this after I recover from my crash of energy drinks, which I should not do again. And I have learned my lesson. This should hopefully be the last time I used this terrible speech to text.
08/04/24 now meaning it is week 4 after the spring holidays and I am so lost as to where to begin. I have begun by using the nasty bass from the korg triton and playing with it, using chords to make the chorus/sped up parts feel alot more full, as I don’t want a terribly busy song. I am also working on developing a lead/stand out instrument that has a melody or something that isn’t the bass pattern. Maybe octave jumping patterns with a darker sound, and perhaps changing the bass if nothing works. But since the day is ending and I have the export ready, here is my current song.
09/04/24, beginning this log at 04:09am because I have severe doubt in my skill; which listening to the song, it sounds like absolute rubbish. The bass and lead don’t necessarily mix, so now I need to make changes to the bass so it fits. Now in college fixing things, it seems I have only kept the drum beats of both fast and slow patterns, and have reworked the bass completely and added a ‘mute monster’ guitar to play chords for me (may potentially work into power chords for chorus, but this works temporarily. The bass runs quicker and has less notes that draw on for too long, and I definitely like the way it’s going.
I realise the new synth sound I added is called “Fat Syn Sac” and I like it because it goes with the previous idea of me wanting a more saw sounding synth. I will upload the further wip after posting the bass images.
15/04/24, I will attempt to expand upon the structure of my song so I can get a finished track by the end of the week or the next one. I will be listening to some tracks and noting down their structure, using I for Intro, V for Verse, C for Chorus and B for Breakdown.
We Will Stop Them – Frank Klepacki
Structure is simple and instruments are droning/distant. To create a sense of “getting ready” and building forces – they also use a similar, yet low pitched droning synth to begin the song. The song follows the IVBVBCVB format which is strange for a 3 minute song, but then again I don’t know how structure works too well in the first place.
Very industrial song, uses funky synths and a saw like lead instrument like a distorted overdrive guitar. Follows IVBCVBVC. It seems like these songs both have breathing room to allow other instruments to break off and join again in verses or choruses, and I think I should implement 8 bar breakdowns in my songs too that only have the bass and drums.
16/04/24, today I have actually made an exponential amount of progress in my piece and that means making over half the structure of my song (yet to tweak further) and it follows the structure of IVCBVC and then I want it to become a IVCBVCBCB structured song. I went through the tracks and renamed things respectively to what instrument they are and where they go.
Below is the WIP with an extended structure and minor tweaks.
22/04/24 I have had to replace the saw synth instrument with something similar because the triton after about 20 minutes of searching would not produce the instrument, and now I have gone through to replace all the existing parts with the newly scaled chords which are now in E Major – and with all honesty this should be done by next week in the mixing and mastering department, because I’m running out of things to tweak and things to talk about! Tomorrow I should be completely done.
29/04/24 should be the day/week that I get my song finished, as I have taken most of the late morning to mix it and then the afternoon to master. Now alls left to do is to add the mp3 to the video I will be making, and then the project (minus additional writeup). What I have done today is removed unnecessary channels, added the desired effects in Ableton and bounced it to work on mastering. What I did to the tracks was I added multiple samples using a free soundboard online – I took about three voice clips and they repeat twice in the song at least, with a tesla coil at the end to break the song off in a well timed manner.
Once sampling was done I went into effects to make sure of two things, one being I had a compressor on each instrument to allow medium attack, getting my instruments to sound crispier than before, and with that done I had to airdrop the files to the mac in the mixing studio so I could properly hear it in high quality audio; and there was definitely adjustments to be made as my instruments weren’t completely perfect.
Lewis helped me again greatly by showing me what to do, and it took a long time of fiddling with the compressors and reverbs to make it really sound like the piece was everywhere at once, in a sense. That’s the only reason I added reverb in the first place.
