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Experimental Music Composition - Church Walk Student ID: 21815459 Module: MC568 Experimental Music Composition

Introduction:

For this composition I have been tasked with the creation and conceptualisation of an experimental track along with writing a journal in order to document the experience and process. With the help of a hand-held recording device, I spent time field recording throughout the weeks, trying to capture sounds that I thought would be interesting to use in the production or sounds that would in any way compliment the overall finished composition.

The Concept:

The initial part of this process was coming up with a strong concept in which the following music could stand upon. This is the part of the journey that I found most difficult, trying to put some kind of a story or background/thematic idea to the music without it being purely technical is something that I have been aware of in music from other experimental artists, but never something I had ever attempted to do myself. I tried sitting down and listening to the reference music that I had heard in my Experimental Composition module but after some time trying this, hearing other people’s concepts behind their music was thought provoking but not entirely helpful in terms of having a sudden spark of personal inspiration. Feeling a little bit like I had already struck a creative block, I decided to think about the local environment and how I could manipulate it into sourcing creative sounds.

I felt that the best way to get started be to just spend time outside exploring, I did think of going to nature-based areas, woods and large parks to capture that environment but I thought that might leave me with some quite dull sounds to work with. Instead, I decided to go straight into the local town. It was just getting past 6pm, when I arrived and parked my car in a local, fairly dilapidated car park. I called the lift to reach the ground floor and suddenly realised that the mechanics of the lift were making a noticeable screeching sound as they were rising to my floor. To create this sound again, I took the lift to the ground floor, took the stairs back up to the top floor and called the lift a second time, recorder ready. The sound of the lift amplified through my headphones was intense, it enhanced the low-end bass frequencies, a rumbling sort of sound plus the high-end screeches of the mechanics sounded great. Once the lift arrived, I kept recording and deescalated to the ground floor. This time holding the recorder to the floor of the lift in order to capture more of the low end frequencies. I also captured the autonomous female voice, letting me know that I was “going down” and I repeated this process once more as I had realised the doors of the lift were making an odd “clinking” noise, they must have been slightly loose and were wobbling. I was unsure where to go next but then suddenly I noticed that I could hear church bells in the distance. Realising it was a Sunday, the local church was open. This is what sparked the concept idea for my track. Heading straight over - still recording, I captured the sound of church bells with increasing volume. I walked straight into the church and was greeted by a choir already set up directly in front of me and just by mere chance, then they all started singing at once. This seemed like such a perfect opportunity so I went to sit directly at the front pew to capture as much as I could. I recorded a few of their songs once I felt I had enough. Another set of recordings done. As I was on my way out, the organ player started improvising on the spot. After recording him for a few minutes I headed off back home to make a start on arrangement. The concept idea that had come to me while doing these recordings was based on religion, maybe in a controversial way. Since I had already recorded the mechanics of the lift before I heard those church bells, it gave me the idea that my concept could be a reflection of religion being a kind of industry/machine. The cross over between modern day industrial/mechanical sounds combined with the spiritual/spectral aesthetic related to religion could really make a haunting pair in my mind.

The Production:

I had a rough idea for a structure in mind at first, I wanted to have a full church choir recording acting as the main theme throughout the piece, along with the mechanical lift sounds to create some kind of noticeable structure, intro, verse, chorus etc. After doing some arrangement and sound manipulation with effects and pitch, I quickly realised that not only was this not working because the choir was over powering, even after EQing to reduce high and mid frequencies dramatically but also that the choir had its own tempo which was slightly out of time, trying to pin point it was very difficult. I did wonder if time stretching the audio would make a difference, but I didn’t go this far as I was also wondering why should I go along with a traditional song structure while creating an experimental piece in the first place. Instead, I left the church recording to one side and focused on the lift recordings. Firstly, I started by going through all the lift recordings one by one and cutting out the clips that had different qualities to them such as tonality or dynamic differences. I ended up having quite a wide variety to play with. After cutting out a piece that had more low end frequency than the rest, I added some basic reverb (EnVerb) to widen it out as the original recording was quite claustrophobic. I then had a try with effects like chorus and phaser but these seemed to cheapen and take away the uniqueness of the sound, a little bit too gimmicky. Finally, I came to experimenting with distortion, using a plugin called “PhatFx.” I also added some basic tape delay and a single band EQ along with a graphic EQ to remove a chunk from the overpowering bass frequencies that PhatFx provided. This worked wonders, I’ve always been a fan of overly distorted noise in music, a good example would be the lower end pulsating from “Merzbow – Requiem” (timestamp - 6:25). For the rest of the lift recordings that make up the “middle section” of the composition, I used the same plugins throughout with varying settings, particularly on EQ. I sometimes opted for a delay pedal found under the pedalboard plugin section purely because I find it easier to work with and is usually my go-to delay effect, I also added a tremolo effect from the pedalboard plugin to further compliment the disorientation. There are parts of my track that resemble a “scrambling” sort of sound, this was accomplished by simply using different lift recordings that had differentiating tonalities to them, some picking up more of the screeching mechanics and wobbling doors with less of the floor rumbles but is mostly due to the heavy amount of distortion which emphasised the differences. A good comparison to these sounds could be intro section from “The Body – For You” (timestamp – 0.00). Using multiple of these scrambling, static-like sounds and cutting them up appropriately, I managed to make a kind of disorientating rhythm section. This was very useful for me as the Experimental Composition module that I’m studying has taught me that sometimes it’s useful to have some concepts of familiarity when creating experimental music, but not too much. It provides the listener something to grab onto as it resembles a recognisable quality in a more generalised sense of music.

After working for some time on the lift recordings, I had created somewhat of a structural piece already and decided that it would be best to have the church walk recording as the “intro,” and the lengthy organ improvisation recording to be my outro, the lift recordings being the “middle section.” Moving onto the church walk recording once again, my original idea of having this be the main point of focus throughout the song was simply not going to work, it would be far to difficult for me to integrate this into the chaos of the lift recordings. I also struggled trying to edit the church walk, other than a bit of EQ to remove the mid and low frequencies and pitch shifting downwards by only 1 semi-tone to add some unsettling vibes, I didn’t do much with it at all except use it structurally for a build up into the mid section. I also barely used the church choir recordings that I had, sadly I just couldn’t find space for them to fit in. Instead, this was also added into the intro, I used the “one-two,” speech from the conductor as my own count-in and only a small snippet of the choirs first harmony. Again, I didn’t do much with this recording, I wanted to keep it as raw as possible to really make it feeling like you walked straight into a church. Lastly came the outro, I knew I wanted to use the organ players improvisation here so I went ahead and attempted to make it sound as unsettling as possible to fit the feel of my overall track, adding downwards pitch shift by 6 semi-tones and reverb but most importantly, an octave pedal plugin. This allowed me to really emphasise the lower octaves of the organ which turned it into something resembling the inside of your stomach while digesting some unhealthy food. Very unsettling, but some of the sheen from the original recording still came through which resulted in an odd mix of deep low end octaves but with a shimmering almost spectral like quality in some areas. The real challenge on the outro was some kind of bridge between the mid section and the organ outro, I tried a few options like repeating the “lift punch” section again but that seemed a little unimaginative. Instead I created another rhythm by cutting out a tiny part of the lift recording and looping it to create a clicking sound. This was a nice tear away from the chaos of the middle section and a bridge to the outro. By using the single band EQ, I was able to add to the build-up by increasing the frequencies every few bars, about 200 – 300Hz at a time. This ranged from 1440Hz to 2450Hz. I also used the lifts autonomous voice “down,” to drop into the outro.

At this point I felt the structure was complete, it has an intro, a build up into a mid-section and a bridge going straight into the outro. Some parts of the track have recognisable musical qualities while other parts are off putting and I would consider the piece to be at an experimental level. All that was left to do was some mixing, compression and fine tuning any effects that I already had in place.

Here are some screen shots of the various effects that I used:

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Church Walk - Critical Evaluation

Overall, the experience of making this track and trying to keep it experimental while also captivating to listen has been a challenge. I’ve had an interest in the genre for a while but had never really explored the area properly until studying it in the module. I learnt a lot; many things could have been done better. I’d say that planning is key and also the most challenging hurdle - if you’re really going to make an experimental album, let alone one track, it could take months of planning and intense search for original ideas before you come up with something compelling. The fact that my composition does not include a single instrument or even a MIDI track made it that much harder to create. Field recording could add a considerable amount of extra time if you’re not lucky or planning ahead plus thinking of a concept whether it be before or after recording, there’s a lot of music that could be considered experimental but includes instruments recorded/played in various unusual ways. Something that could have drastically improved my composition would be if I had not wasted too much time in the early stages of recording, instead of wondering where to start and where to go it would have been best to simply take a few more trips throughout the time that I had, constantly recording because you never really know what you’ll capture in day to day life. There were many times that I had gone out to start my day and come across many one-chance sounds in the environment that would have been great to capture but I had left my recorder at home. There is also different recording equipment that you could purchase for field recording that would be perfect, such as “contact microphones.” (REF: MC568 Experimental Music Composition - Gerard Gormley) These mics can be used for under water submersion or even recording the inner workings of any object, this could have been perfect for me to record the insides of certain machines, fitting into my theme but I had left it too late to purchase one. My original concept idea was to combine religious sounds with the sounds of industrial machines, but I struggled to meet these terms accurately. I could have made some more productive plans instead of jumping straight into the production, in hindsight I should have made more trips to churches, not only Christian but I could have searched for Hindu temples, Mosques, Synagogues, Buddhist temples, even Pagan gatherings. As for the machine side of things, it could have been possible to visit industrial museums, car mechanics, factories or even just recording machines like microwaves, vending machines and cash machines. The possibilities were there, but I didn’t give it a second thought once I had enough recordings to work with. While coming up with a concept, there’s no reason why this couldn’t include a production concept also. For me – once I had an idea to work with, I went straight into producing it without any strong plans for production techniques. To counter this, you could quite easily take notes before jumping and start manipulating one sound at a time, even multiple times to see what outcomes you could achieve and then start forming a consistent theme within the production techniques. I am quite happy with my finished piece, it took its own shape and form over the course of creation which in way is experimental in itself, although the sounds that I had to work with did not seem to fully cooperate with my original concept idea. Instead, the recordings almost took more control over the piece than myself, creating a slightly different creature to what I had intended and it eventually worked in its own way. It still has some recognisable characteristics from more popular genres of music which might discredit the “experimental” side of things to some people and perhaps I could have done a better job when it comes to the dynamics of EQing and compression. But as the producer of your own music, its essentially your decision when you decide to stop working and tell yourself when it’s complete.

References:

Merzbow - Topic (2017). Requiem. [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VM40unAjfQ [Accessed 21 Jan. 2020].

voidloop (2016). The Body - For You. [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJn8RsoLfrU [Accessed 21 Jan. 2020].

Gerard Gormley (2019) - MC568 Experimental Music Composition

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Twin Head Gator - Songwriting (B)

Introduction:

For this track, I made a certain precaution to make it as different as possible to my previous composition by taking different steps throughout the creative process and laying out some rules for myself to follow. During the period of trying to envision exactly what I would like to achieve for this track, I found myself struggling to settle on one particular idea – primarily genre related. In relation to another module I was working on, I had been writing an essay discussing ancient Scandinavian music which is something I have a strong interest in – because of this I thought it might be quite fitting to attempt a modern recreation on that style of music, however I realised that I would obviously struggle a fair amount with the instruments that are available to me. I had also thought of trying to record a soulful or mournful acoustic guitar composition but I felt as though I had little inspiration to do so. Eventually I had settled on creating an experimental electronic track as that area of creativity seems to be quite wide, more relatable and inspiring to my personal taste. I also made a decision to not use any live instruments whatsoever, the full track was to be all MIDI. This was to limit myself purposefully and to ensure that the track did not start drifting off into the style of my previous guitar-filled composition and was likely to cause a few problems in terms of keeping the flow of the track interesting and captivating, also adding vocals to a track like this would likely be challenging but I thought it could be interesting to see what I could create with just a little bit of limitation, also pushing myself slightly out of my comfort zone.

The recording process and MIDI plugins:

To start the process of recording, I decided to open a wide selection of bass plugins with no particular direction in mind, I simply chose them purely because I found their aesthetics to be somewhat appealing and then later in the recording I could go back and pick a few of the bass choices that seemed to stand out to me. The next step after choosing a range of bass plugins was to start setting up some drum sounds. I did have an idea in mind for the drums, I wanted an 808-sounding kick and snare, the kick sounding dark and bass heavy and the snare sounding like an artificial clap/click. The “Depth Charge,” plugin provided this for me, it had pretty much the exact snare sound that I had in mind the kick had this unusual rattling noise on the release which I thought was interesting. The plugin also came with some siren-like sounds and a drum that seemed to emulate something similar to hitting a large metal bin with a baseball bat. I used the siren-like sound and this drum to kick off the drum beat which resulted in quite an abrasive intro. This was fine but I wanted to start the track quite subtly and slowly bring up the tension throughout, so after the loud intro I tried to bring it down and I wanted to explore a feeling of a dark, sludgy, almost sticky aesthetic. I wanted the bass to emulate this feeling with a pulsating rhythm, the “Hollow Pumper” plugin worked perfectly. After creating the drumbeat and the bass and listening back to it, it was clear that it needed a sound that was clearer and sharper in order for the track to not become stale quickly. The “Pitch Twist Builder” synth plugin was very useful although its primary use is to build a climax quickly, I used it sparingly instead. As the name of the plugin suggests, the pitch of the synth bends and wobbles the longer the sustain of the note is, this appealed to me on an experimental level. In short bursts, the pitch always bends downwards but the longer you hold it, it starts going up and down so I used mostly short bursts but towards the end of each section I would let the pitch wobble, slowly building tension throughout the track. But this synth alone was obviously not going to be enough to keep a track interesting for three minutes, I decided to have a look through some arpeggiators. I was looking for something that sounded future-like or imagine if electricity had a vocal language, what that might sound like to us. I settled with two different arpeggiators, one that could be used in a subtler way in order to keep building tension and another that could be used during the climax. I had also added some synth chords with “Echo Chords” in order to flesh out the what I had made so far, this synth ended up working remarkably well with the drums out of coincidence, making them sound more heavily pounding.

Change in direction:

At this point in the track, I was actually getting quite frustrated. Although I was more or less happy with what I had made so far, I had no clue where to take it from there. I felt as though even though I had started make the composition, I hadn’t given a second thought to what kind of structure of song I was aiming to achieve. For some reason, I didn’t feel like making a chorus, nor did what I already have sound like a verse but this reminded me of something, a track that I had heard only a few times before that had a very similar structure but used to its advantage. The majority of this track literally goes nowhere, it’s very understated and aimless but then towards the end we get a very sudden jolt of energy. I aimed to use this idea as inspiration for my own composition, by making a break after the first half of my track I proceeded to create almost an entirely different sound and emotion for the second half. This refuelled my creative optimism and allowed me to continue what I had already started. I also found it fitting to sample this song, almost as a respectful way to include it, other than in writing. In the original track, there’s a voice exclaiming “how long did it take to get to this place,” which is relatable, so I went ahead and sampled it, placing it at the beginning of the track, adding delay to the word “place,” and letting it ring out within the drum beat.

The song can be heard here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EpdFpUPKu0 The sample can be heard at 1:41

As I had now decided to essentially make two halves to the structure of this song, the first half ends abruptly, making use of a synth found under the “Arrangement FX” section called “Bike Riser.” Then the break between the first and second half was originally going to be silent but it felt a little too out of place so I carried it over with a heavy, distorted techno bass a slowly bring up the volume of the previous arpeggiator, “Crystal Flight” that had not been used yet with the help of automation. When I chose this synth I was going for a sound similar to the one in the track “Whatever I Want” – Death Grips, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dcZYux0CnY - heard from 0:33 onwards.

This was effective in building the suspense dramatically. After adding delay to the arpeggiator, it started sounding like there was almost a vocal choir embedded within the sound. This sparked the idea to use an actual choir plugin along with the synth to enhance the feeling. Then after a small break, the second half begins. My idea was to roughly keep the same instrumentation but to bring up the energy as much as I could for the remainder of the track without it feeling too overwhelming. I used another new plugin called the Techno 808 for the drums this time in 16th notes to really bring up the intensity, almost like a metal blast beat coupled with the original kick drum from the first half in ¼ notes to emphasise the rhythm even more. Of course, if I let the 16th notes run throughout the remainder of the song, it would become tiresome so I added a few bars of a punk-rock-type beat to switch the feeling almost instantly, then added a new snare drum and hi-hat from the 808 in another new rhythm with a lot of reverb which seemed to open the space of the track, although a lot is going on here. I also brought in a very techno sounding synth called “Crush Stepper” in the back of the mix which helped the aesthetic become more robotic and futuristic. The instrumentation mostly disappears quickly in the last few bars, leaving the drumbeat to play by itself which I imagine the listener would be craving (I would myself.) The Echo Chords really paired well with the drums again here, almost giving it a military feel. To end the track, I replayed the sample “how long did it take to get to this place?” lining it up to the last beat of the drum which I thought would be a perfect outro now that the listener has heard the first half of the song which could seem quite tame and dark, comparing it to the second half which was full of energy, brighter and intense.

Vocals and lyrics: Recording the vocals was by far the most challenging part of this recording, I knew that my natural voice would have most likely not suited this style of music and so I had a plan to record using a vocoder, much like herd in these two songs;

Death Grips – Why a Bitch Gotta Lie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVHly92RQRM Heard from 0:50

Death Grips – Little Richard https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7j-7IkOq8Js Heard from 0:40

It was challenging to make my voice sound like the way I imagined it to be, the plugins that are available to me on Logic are quite limited, I ended up using a Vocal Transformer, a Roswell Ringer guitar pedal and a Microphaser Modulator along with delay and reverb. With these plugins combined – I was getting closer to the sound I was imagining but I wasn’t sure if I wanted my voice to be pitched higher or lower. After trying out different options, changing the intensity of the Vocal Transformer, pitching my voice up and down and testing with and without the Microphaser, I ended up using a mix match of all options throughout the track. Most of the vocals have been pitched higher.

For the lyrics, I took inspiration from the Death Grips track “Hot Head” which has quite abstract lyrics. I tried my best to avoid direct plagiarism by mixing particular words from these lyrics with my own.

Here are my lyrics;

Dressed for Ebola, But it’s not over, Cobra eye behaviour, Favour, Raven forsaker, Phallic creator, Shut you in like twin head gator,

What’s the business, Don’t nobody, Suck it to don’t see it coming, Running, New existence, Old resistance, Fuck the filter like my pistols,

Overall, I’m fairly happy with this track considering my purposeful limitations. I almost treated it as an experiment itself and although a challenging process, it seems to pair fairly well with my previous track while being wildly different in nature.

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Triple Orchid - Songwriting (A)

My strategy plan for creating this song started off with a conceptual idea of blending together the elements of different genres that I enjoy the most. I knew I wanted the style to be abrasive, loud, heavy but also have a “shimmering” quality to it, with elements of grunge, industrial and either black metal or hardcore punk. I wanted to try and record everything as live audio rather than MIDI and the first step I chose was to start thinking of a guitar style and riff that I wanted to lead the song.

Here are some guitar orientated references:

Dive (Smart Sessions) – Nirvana

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvHgvrM2LZc

I’ve always loved overdriven guitars with an added chorus effect and I think Kurt Cobain did this very well, it allows the guitars to sound full and vibrant with the shimmering quality that I was looking for. It also seems to create a distinct feeling as if there were multiple guitar tracks at one time.

Hey Mind Reader – The i.l.y’s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCqpaBNVIzY

This guitar also sounds very similar to what I was aiming for in terms of tone, although this one uses a fuzz effect instead of overdrive. I love how pummelling they sound with the crash cymbals. It pairs very well, creating an abrasive but somehow warm sound that I was hoping to create.

After settling on an idea for the guitar tone and effects, I started thinking of where to start with a riff. I knew power chords would be easy way to go but they sound far too weak in the standard way of playing them for this song, so instead I used a “fifth on the bottom” version of power chords which adds a far more intense or mean quality, I also used octave power chords which give the riff a feeling of precision and direction.

I spent about two to three days thinking of the riff without actually playing the guitar. To me this makes the creative process much easier when you have a specific direction of emotion you wish to convey. Once I pick up the guitar before being clear of what exactly it is that I’m trying to convey, I can quickly become distracted or frustrated due to the feeling of being unsure. So, at first the melody/riff was only in my head and then once I sat down to transfer it onto the guitar, it translated well. I decided that this first riff would work best as a verse which would be driving the composition.

I then made the intro by using the singular root notes from the verse while slightly changing the phrasing and using natural harmonics to help break up the riff which also added some build-up/intensity.

I then moved back to the verse to develop it further as I realised that it would become too tiresome, hearing the same variation looped. I used a lick to add flavour in some bars and some more natural harmonics in other bars; the timing of the natural harmonics ended up being useful for “stabs” from the drums and I realised this new variation of the verse riff could be considered a pre-chorus.

After listening to my progress a few times, I discussed where to take it from here with a good friend of mine (who also studies music) and we agreed that song needed some space to breathe in the chorus, not a tempo change but it needed a heavier phrasing for another riff. After the pre-chorus, I used more natural harmonics to ring out alone with lots of delay and tremolo, this let the song structure breathe while also building tension quickly and efficiently.

The new riff for the chorus incorporated more octave power chords than in the verse, this really helped me to break up the feeling of the song nicely and conveyed a sort of “mad” or “insane” feeling which I was looking for as a chorus.

Here’s a song reference that uses a similar technique during the chorus:

Why A Bitch Gotta Lie – Death Grips

(1:30 to 2:30)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TnXsZiBUCg

Next, I started recording the bass. It was difficult to decide on what kind of tone I wanted, first I went with a scooped bass but this sounded far too strong with the guitars warm overdrive - I suppose the frequencies were clashing. I then tried using a pick with the bass after turning up the treble from the amp settings and this seemed to suit the track well, sounding much grungier.

Now that I had a song structure down, (intro, verse, pre-chorus, chorus, verse, pre-chorus, chorus) it was time to start some ideas for the drums.

As I mentioned earlier, I really wanted to record everything as live audio. So far, I had been recording the guitar and bass through a Stealthplug interface on Logic at home. I have no electric drums here and so I had to record them through Pro Tools in the studio. I was unable to book the studio for a couple of weeks and so I used the time after my lessons in university to stay behind, set up the drum mics and attempt to record within the small amount of time I had before the next lessons started. This did not go well, my friend recorded me as I attempted to play to the best of my abilities through the full song in one take within half an hour and due to the stress of the time plus having no practice, this session was rendered useless.

I immediately decided to record MIDI drums back on Logic. I had already considered this because I had become aware that time was short in terms of recording in the studio – so luckily, I did have some ideas already although the song would feel very different this way but this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. The live drums were going to be very fast and intense, giving the song a more punk feeling but I did originally want a more industrial quality so either way I would’ve been satisfied.

I used standard Logic plugins for each drum track. For the kick drum I went for the “After Party” drum machine and for all other drum tracks I used the “Dropkick” drum machine.

The kick drum alone sounds very “hip hop” orientated which initially wouldn’t have been ideal for what I had in mind, but after hearing it within the mix it sounded very prominent and punchy which seemed to work surprisingly well.

Here’s a song reference that incorporated the kick drum in a similar way:

The Power That B – Death Grips

(0:18)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVSHMKizsgg

For the snare drum, I wanted a clap but one that wasn’t too artificial sounding. I achieved this by using two different clap snares, one towards a high frequency one towards a low frequency. These doubled on top of each other somehow seemed to give me a more natural sounding clap snare in my opinion. They also have a small amount of reverb and delay.

Here’s a song reference that incorporated the snare drum in a similar way:

Pss Pss – Death Grips

(0:16)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0QhxF4OmhQ

For the toms I used and acoustic drum plugin, this helped to increase the more natural side of the MIDI drums. As for the cymbals, I used both the crash and ride very often with a fair amount of long reverb added to them, which gave the drums enough space to not feel claustrophobic.

Once the MIDI drums were finished, I still wanted to stick my original drum idea and try recording the live drums. I managed to book a rehearsal room for a few hours and so I brought a handheld recorder with me in an attempt to record myself. I knew the end result wouldn’t have anywhere near as much clarity as a recording room would, but it didn’t turn out so bad. The main issue was that I placed my recorder a little too close to the ride cymbal and so it picked up a lot of those higher frequencies over everything else. Once I transferred it onto Logic, I did a lot of editing and tried my best to equalise the frequencies.

The last part of the songwriting process was to start writing some lyrics. This isn’t something that I do often, the last time I had written lyrics was nearly a full year ago. I wasn’t sure where to begin or what my subject matter would be but I did have in mind two particular styles that I could go with, one being more blackmetal/hardcore orientated and the other being a very aggressive style of rap. The first step I chose was to start voicing the way I would phrase the voice over the music, this allowed me to have an idea of where and how syllables would be placed within the song.

Originally I was going to look at other lyrics from songs that I like for inspiration and possibly use a selection of words that stand out from different songs and string them together in my own way (with my own original content of course) but then I had a suggestion from a friend. She said I should have a look at some poetry from Sylvia Plath who’s career spanned from the 1940’s to the 1960’s. Her poetry has a lot of dark subject matter that would include

“death, blood, hospitals, skulls, fetuses and the moon.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Plath

Although very talented, she had a very troubled life and took her own life at the age of 30.

After reading some of her poems, I decided to take inspiration directly from

“The Fever 103.”

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/68911/sylvia-plath-fever-103

I love the dark concept of this poem, it seems to incorporate war, monsters from hell and the pure innocence of nature. In order to derive inspiration from this, I picked out a few words that I liked most and tried to make my own story out of them by stringing them together my own original content.

I was going to ask my friend to record vocals for me as I have never tried performing vocals by myself before, I’ve worked with him in the past so I knew we could communicate with ease but he became too busy and ended up losing his voice just in time for us to record, in this case I took it upon myself to record them myself. I didn’t have a studio to work in and so I simply used the microphone built into my laptop at home. Performing the vocals was a very new feeling for me, I did my best to replicate what I had in mind and it turned out surprisingly well in my opinion. The built in microphone naturally added some distortion to my voice due to the low quality and actually seemed to work quite nicely.

I added some reverb, delay and a graphic equaliser to my vocals and after some tweaking they sounded ideal for my first try at recording my own voice.

Here are my lyrics:

[Verse]

Tendon tongues, Dull as a triple,

Forced like a wheezing, The tinder wont cry,

[Pre-Chorus]

Yellow swollen smokes, Make your own fright,

Yellow swollen smokes, Make your own right,

Low smokes roll, Make your own like,

Low smokes roll, Make them roll right,

[Bridge]

Fuck,

[Chorus]

Choke the caged and weak, Orchid in its creek, Hang the garden from your sleeves and raise it not like meek,

Choke the caged and sleek, Orchid in its creek, Hang the garden from your sleeves and raise it not like weak,

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I also tried pairing the live drums with some of the MIDI, this also seemed to work quite nicely.

Here’s the finished track with the live drums.

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Here’s the finished track without the live drums.

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Triple Orchid - Evaluation

Overall, the creation of this song was satisfying to me. To write a journal of how exactly I went through this process gave me a reflective way of thinking that I had not experienced before and helped me realise where there was room for improvement.

The first thing that comes to mind is the process of recording the drums, had I given myself a lot more time to practice the live drums that I originally wanted I would not have had a reason to upload two different versions of the track. Although I still would have paired the acoustic drums with some MIDI drums, the low-quality recording that I had used forced me to upload another version of the track without live drums at all. After all, it was my original plan but I had failed to allow myself enough time to practice and did not book the studio rooms early enough for me to execute it.

Another issue I had with the recording process was that I had relied on a friend to perform the vocals for me, this was essentially a last-minute part of the performing as I had to wait for him to be available and once he was, he was too sick to participate. This lead me to trying something I had never done before which isn’t a bad thing at all, the bad part is that I had become very close to running out of time to subject a composition that included a vocal track.

When reflecting on the early stages of starting this song, I’m happy about the beginning process of the first guitar riff but I’m starting to feel that I could have spent more time exploring ideas for a chorus riff. I am happy with the final product but there’s always room for improvement, perhaps I have listened to the track so much that the original qualities of the composition don’t seem as exciting to me as they once did, or perhaps there is something more practical needed of me when composing.

I also had a thought every now and then while creating this track that I would have loved to of used some synths; particularly some sharp, horrific sounding synths. This idea was never fully realised as I was too worried about submitting my track on time and the drums along with the vocals were far more important to me.

But the main thing that truly bothers me personally is the fact that I recorded this whole track through a Stealthplug interface on Logic. This is the way I have been recording for years, the sound quality in general doesn’t always sound great and I would have loved to record everything in the studio given to us by the university. This is something that I will think about most in the future, I find it frustrating that these facilities and equipment are readily given to us and yet I still feel too novice to truly use them. If I were able to book the studios while creating this track, I definitely would have done so and I would have been able to record everything but mostly by trial and error. I’m still getting to grips with the recording process involved with a professional studio and the fact that I had recorded my whole song at home when these studios are only a stone through away will be significant factor in my force for motivation in the upcoming future.

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(Mini Song) I

Here is my starting melody for my songwriting assignment, I had this melody in mind before recording it and after practicing it for a while I started to add licks to help it feel variated. 

From my understanding, the chords are as follows;

(My guitar was in a full step down tuning. These chords have been listed as standard tuning chords.)

B minor (7th fret, without playing the A string)

A suspended 2nd, add flat 11th, add 13th

G 6th

E major