musictechdeck-blog

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Digital Rainforrest

https://soundcloud.com/dylan-fau/digital-rainforrest      For this song I used garageband on my girlfriend’s phone (mine had been broken for a while). Since I was borrowing the device briefly, I had to work fast; so I chose to use loops. I started with a machine sounding loop that served as a percussion sound. Next I chose a synth bass riff and then added a synth lead riff that would later form the chorus, as well as a four on the floor drum beat. This all served as the intro to the track.      Next everything but the drum beat drop out as I introduced a marimba melody. A string riff joined then I brought back the machine sound. This all serves as the verse. For a prechorus I used a more spacious string loop.      The chorus has the machine sound, the drumbeat, the synth bass, and the lead synth as well as a choir loop consisting of one powerful chord. The song repeats both the verse and the chorus and the chorus plays twice the second and final with the string riff from the voice joining in before the track ends on just the choir sound.

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Beast Bugs

https://soundcloud.com/dylan-fau/beast-bugs-remix-of-loop-song-1-by-rachel-jacobs‘

https://soundcloud.com/rachel-jacobs-336137293/song-loop-1 I remixed Rachel Jacob’s Loop Song 1. I worked with the MP3 of the track and not the the multitrack. The first thing I did was improvise a guitar solo over part of the track. I recorded this with an amp through my laptop microphone, which didn’t end up sounding too bad. For some reason, garage band cut off the solo due to a system overload after a few measures. I packed up my laptop thinking I wouldn’t use that material. But when I revisited the track, I was inspired to copy and paste the existing parts of the solo in order to make a melody.The next thing I found was a loop. I remember my music tech teacher, Ethan Hein said something about how loops in the relative minor of a major key sound cool. What garageband gave me was actually a loop in the parallel minor called Epoch Synth Lead. In a very strange way, this worked.The guitar solo followed by the parallel minor loop served as the main repeated material, followed by a section of fingerstyle guitar chords. I cut and pasted this section, adding a MIDI controlled Saturn Lead synth to the chords this time, which them doubles the parallel minor loop as well as the lead guitar melody. I added a kick drum to the most intense parallel minor parts of the track before ending on the unaltered, happy fingerstyle guitar which fades out. The track is called Beast Bugs because of an Music Tech Class discussion we’re we said that Rachel Jacobs Loop Song 1 sounds like it could be on a Beat Bug-Esque children’s show. My track is Beast Bugs because of the edge the parallel minor gives to that feeling.

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Is Sampling Without Permission Morally Acceptable?

I think that anyone who is sampled in music is entitled to a portion of the profits. Especially for lesser known musicians who it would be easy to sample without permission without getting into legal trouble. If a musician is dependent on their music to get by, you should definitely send a portion of the money you make from their music their way. Popstars, for instance, who really aren’t struggling with money... well they’re theoretically entitled to your money too. However, it would most likely be immensely difficult to reach out to them for permission. To that I say, if my music is making enough money where a popstar notices, then they can sue me or whatever and we can settle and they can get the money that way (this is morally speaking, I’m sure it gets more complicated than that legally).

This is all assuming I’m making money from the music I’m using samples in. If I make a song to post for free on Soundcloud, I have no problem using anyone’s material without permission. All art has a right to exist, regardless of its source material.

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Sample Genealogy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=42&v=FAucVNRx_mU https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=Bw6wugjLYU0

XXXTENTACION’s track Jocelyn Flores sample’s potsu’s im closing my eyes (feat. shiloh). He doesn’t change much. Besides XXXTENACION’s added vocals, potsu’s track provide pretty much all the material for Jocelyn Flores. The producer plays with the mixing, possibly adds additional drum sounds, and makes cuts at a few points in the track. Besides that, XXXTENACION pretty much just sings a long to parts of the song and raps a short verse. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9C1BCAgu2I8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyY7Yvx2PYA AJJ’s (formerly Andrew Jackson Jihad) song People ii: The Reckoning quotes Simon and Garfunkel’s Mrs. Robinson. AJJ is, in a word... edgier then Simon and Garfunkel but not necessarily any darker. Simon and Garfunkel explore dark themes with subtlety that may not be obvious on the first listen. AJJ, by comparison, are pretty upfront about the emotions behind their songs. In a similar way, Simon and Garfunkel’s subtle statement about religious hypocrisy in Mrs. Robinson is morphed into an expletive ridden lament of human apathy and cruelty in AJJ’s People ii: The Reckoning. Musically, AJJ takes the main melody of Mrs. Robinson and shamelessly copy and pastes it at the end of their song. Simon and Garfunkel’s song is well-known enough where this is an obvious and effective reference. 

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Christy and Bailey Remix

I decided to remix my track Christy and Bailey. The main difference from the original version is that the drums ands bass are mixed significantly louder. The bass itself was changed from two separate bass loops to the Deep Sub Bass software instrument played on my MIDI keyboard. 

The reason for this is that when I was originally putting this song together, bass was the last loop I added. For this reason, I had trouble finding bass loops that worked well with the song harmonically. Using a MIDI instrument, I was able to compose a bass line that served the song exactly the way it needed to. The last change is that I dropped tambourine out of the mix at the outro fadeout of the track. https://soundcloud.com/dylan-fau/christy-and-bailey-remix

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Megadeth - Reckoning Day (production analysis)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3c5-6N_4ys Reckoning Day by Megadeth is a track from the album Youthanasia, produced by Max Norman. The album was partially recorded in two different studios (Phase Four Studios and Vintage Recorders) when Norman and the record company decided to create a studio in a warehouse (mostly because it was an optimal location for the band). The band tends to use Dean Flying V guitars played through Marshall amps. The instrumentation is limited to heavily distorted electric guitars, bass, drums and vocals. The drums were mic’d close up and the bass drum in particular is hyper-realistically loud, especially evident in the outro. The vocals sound like they have some reverb and delay effects, aside from more subtle mixing. There is also a pitch changing effect at 1:30.

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Real vs hyperreal vs surreal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSEq4f3yZ60 This live version of They’re Not Horses, They’re Unicorns by Bayside is an example of a realistic recording. You can tell from listening without any contest that it is most likely a live performance from the crowd signing along. The guitars sound like they’re coming directly from the amps and the vocals sound relatively unaltered. The drums are probably somewhat mic’d, but sound like the unaltered instruments timbre wise. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZlKOzjy9RQ Here’s the studio version of the same song as an example of a hyperrealistic recording. Although hyperreal, its certainly not as hyperrealistic as some studio recordings. In fact, with a particularly talented live sound engineer and enough mics, that live recording could have conceivably sounded like this, at least instrumentally. The vocals most likely have a bit of pitch correction, and certain vocal sounds would at least need a special effect to sound similar live (00:33).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lIkD_TG1k0 For a little context, Say Anything is an emo/pop punk band who use traditional rock instrumentation on most albums. For Hebrews, however, songwriter Max Bemis decided to record the album with no guitars, replacing them with synthesizers. The title track, Hebrews (feat. Brian Sella), is a great example of how Bemis utilized these synths. The intro to the track sounds like it could be some sort of MIDI video game music, although the fact that it uses real drums gives it a more realistic feel. The fact that it features synthesizers throughout the whole track, and an amount of different ones that would make it at least very difficult to imitate live, makes the track surreal. When the band plays the track live, they use one keyboard to imitate some of the synths, but arrange the rest of the song with more traditional electric guitars.

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I'm So Glad That You Asked How I Would Use The Sound Of You Walking Around Your Basement!

I used Stefano’s Hunter’s sound “'Im So Glad That You Asked What It Would Sound Like To Walk Around My Basement!” (https://soundcloud.com/stefo_hunter/im-so-glad-that-you-asked-what-it-would-sound-like-to-walk-around-my-basement). I chose the sound because the voice coming from the TV was interesting. I set just the first two bars to repeat in GarageBand and noticed that that alone had an interesting rhythm. I used only this portion of the sound for the track. Then I used an EQ preset to bring out the speech of the television.      Next, I used an electric keyboard software instrument along with my MIDI keyboard to play a riff to the rhythm of the speaker. I used big room electric drums and Retro Fuzz synth bass in the same way. All these instruments were set to the rhythm of the speech.      The I used Screamland synth lead to create a verse, chorus and bridge melody.

      So basically, I picked a short portion of the found sound and set MIDI instruments to its unique rhythm. I think this was a successful experimentation with the natural rhythm of human speech in a musical context. 

https://soundcloud.com/dylan-fau/im-so-glad-that-you-asked-how-i-would-use-the-sound-of-you-walking-around-your-basement

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Akai

     https://soundcloud.com/dylan-fau/akai

     I started the process of this track by making a drum beat on Groove Pizza. All the rest of the MIDI was created using my AKAI Professional LPK25 MIDI keyboard. In total I used 9 different software instruments, some more prevalent then others. The most prevalent and constant being Major Crush drums, Classical Electric Piano for one of the main piano riffs, Big Saw Bass for the bass line that plays throughout and Paper Thin Lead for the chorus melody as well as a verse solo. There is also a Latin Percussion for one verse sound as well as orchestral instruments supporting the main chorus melody and a Glass Motion arppegiator on the third verse.

     Once I established the groove of the song and wrote up to the first chorus, I began to write in almost a jazz form; in that there are 3 verses almost treated as instrument “solos” that keep coming back to the same verse material. Then after the third verse I modulate extremely conspicuously before ending on a transposed version of the chorus, allowing the drums to lead into the ending.

     I do feel the end result satisfying but I’m sure that there’s a lot I would do differently if I had more time and more knowledge of the software. I might spend a little more time thinking about the effectiveness of the structure, especially the modulation, and definitely more time mixing, finding the perfect software instruments, etc.

[musictechdeck-blog]

Christy and Bailey

     This song marks my first experimentation with Garage Band loops and loops in general. The first loops I started with were Work It Beat 1, Tambourine, World Champion Synth 1, and Stealth Synth Arp. I wanted something like a melody for the song so I looked in the vocals section and found the Christy Background and Bailey Background loops. I cut up parts of both and used them to create the most characteristic part of the song. I actually mistakenly set the repetition of the Bailey background to start on an offbeat the second time through and ended up liking and keeping it, which gives it a much different feel. All the material up to this point ends up serving as an Intro.      I wanted to change the sound of the song for a new section so I replaced World Champion Synth 1 with Wider Echo Synth, which feels much less heavy and more hypnotic. I also decided to fade out the held note that ends the Christy and Bailey melody and not have the vocal melody play for this section. For the second half of this section I manipulated the sound of the Wider Echo Synth (I didn’t really know what I was doing but I accomplished my goal of changing the sound of the Synth). Then I reintroduced the Christy and Bailey “melody” creating a verse chorus structure that is immediately repeated. After the second “chorus” I manipulated the Bailey vocals even further to transition to the pure Christy vocal loop. I scaled down the texture to just the Work It Beat, Tambourine, Stealth Synth Arp. and Bass. I also manipulated the sound of the Stealth Synth Arp. as well as added a crescendo and decrescendo throughout the loop making it sound more hypnotic as the whole track fades out to the end. The last thing I did was retroactively add Patient Wobble Bass to the Intro and Triple Threat Synth Bass to the rest of the song.      I have wrote music before, but this is the first time using loops to do so. I find creating songs via loops just as valid as any other type of writing. I suppose the main complaint would be that none of the individual parts of loops songs were “written” by the composer. But if you break any song or piece of music down far enough you’ll find that the building blocks existed long before the composer came around. Did the Beatles devise brand new chord progressions for their music? Did Bach create melodies from scales he invented? It seems to me that all composers create music from pre-existing parts, and the validity of the music lies more so in the end product than in the process used to create it.

https://soundcloud.com/dylan-fau/christy-and-bailey      

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Zedd - Clarity (structural analysis)

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

Intro: Four phrases, loosely metered

:09 Verse: Four phrases that last 4 bars

:39 Pre-chorus: Two phrases that last 4 bars. 

:54 Chorus: Two Phrases that last 4 bars.

1:09 Instrumental Hook: Four phrases that last 4 bars

1:39 Chorus B: Two phrases that last 4 bars. Sounds of the instrumental hook combined with the chorus

1:54 Transition: 4 bars

2:02 Verse: Four phrases that last 4 bars

2:31 Pre-Chorus: Two phrases that last 4 bars.

2:46 Chorus: Two Phrases that last 4 bars

3:02 New lighter material based on Instrumental Hook: Two phrases that last 4 bars

3:17 Build up: 8 bars

2:32 Instrumental Hook: Four phrases that last 4 bars

4:02 Chorus B: Two phrases that last 4 bars. Sounds of the instrumental hook combined with the second half of the chorus

4:16 Outro: 4 bars, recalls intro

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Favorite and Least Favorite Song

Favorite Song: Say Anything - Cemetery

    There are few songs that make me tear up on a consistent basis. Cemetery is the most hard-hitting. The speaker contrasts his belief that he is deserving of hell and his skepticism of any afterlife at all with his wife’s faith and even her ability to save him from hell through association (acting as his savior). The chorus, “You’re in my body, that’s where I think about you”, speaks to his deep love for her in that she is a part of him in the most profound way possible. 

      For me, the emotional gut punch happens at 3:08 and on. I’ll let you experience that for yourself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3nXrtzllJA

Least Favorite Song:  Say Anything - Young Dumb and Stung     Besides Cemetery, Say Anything’s self-titled album features a lot of my favorite songs. This song comes toward the end of the album and directly before a profound and emotional track. “Young Dumb and Stung”, while not the worst song I can think of, falls incredibly flat to my ears. I find the repetition and overall sound annoying and the lyrics include some of the corniest lines the band has ever released (on both counts, you’ll see what I mean in the first 30 seconds). Overall, it puts a serious damper on one of my all-time favorite albums. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAPcbQcgCyM