Assignment 1
As a lifelong musician, I have dabbled in these aspects of sound before, so this reading was rather easy to me. I very much enjoyed the programed used here though. The basic walkthrough of beats and the way that rhythm is structured into songs was very interesting.
The technical aspect of the science of sound was a challenge for me, but I have enough background knowledge of sound to connect it to the course material well. I resonated with the explanations of the bit rate, as well as the bit depth of recorded sound. It took a complex topic and used math to make it easy to understand.
Loops Project
The assignment of this project was to make a basic song using loops and material from the DAW you were working with.
I chose a series of different loops for my drum effect, and made a full drum panel that I later just composed with.
I also did this with the piano tracks, until I got frustrated enough trying to find matching loops, that I just took a sample and composed something myself there as well.
I made those two tracks and as a singer chose to improvise over them to make it the actual result of my song.
The resuLt was: Bad!
Much of this project was me learning how the DAW worked, and how I could compose on it knowing very little and just pump out whatever happened.
But I am happy with the progress, I have proven that I can write myself really simple things to sing over
I didn't spend too much time when I actually did figure the instruments out making it sound good so its very basic and sloppy, but bad art is better than no art, so I am glad I could make my first song on DAW only.
The song is linked Here!:
I approached the structure of my song with my drum beat first, and sampling loops to use as my piano tone. This is a fantastic form of musical creativity, and very exciting for me. I have recently been upset at needing so much other help to do my music, so this help me to write and perform it all on my own!
Midi 3 Track Project
This project involved making a 3 or more track Midi piece. This piece for me was actually incredibly frustrating. My composition is made of an 808 bass track first, and then two layers of drum machine track that I played with a lot to experiment with EQ and mixing.
I planned to add my voice and lyrics to the track, but I made something out of my normal genre so I wasn't very comfortable adding my voice on to it. I got my midi from instruments on my DAW, and playing on my keyboard to actually write. I used an empire drum kit to create my 2 drum machine tracks, one for snare and upper register, and one for bass and lower register. I planned on also adding horns and voice, but dear god did this one frustrate me. I am satisfied that I made a song, as shit art is better than no art, but I am not very proud of the rhythmic nightmare.
Not at all my best.
Final/ Recording Assignment
This piece was the last I'll be making for this course, and is by far the one I put the most effort into. The rest of the music I made for this course was not in a genre I was at all good at, and was dominated by the fact that I was still learning to use my DAW. So I didn't do that for this song. I started with my chords and a loop, and I found myself making some very very dissonant chords, so I paired that with a loop that fit the eerie and slightly spooky vibe. After I wrote lyrics and kind of found out what the song was going to be about. I did my baseline with a bass midi, and did four or five tracks of my own recordings, I made vocal harmony the focus of the song cause It's what I love and am best at. I didn't finish writing the lyrics until I was ready to be recording the piece, so as the instruments came along, the words and meaning changed with it. The whole point of the piece was taking the dark, eerie sound, and allowing it to open up and be beautiful in the end, and the song ended up being about how your love sees your, or I suppose how my love sees me. This isn't my best work ever, and I will definitely make better things with more time and passion, but I am rather proud of this one. It is by far the best work I have composed for this course. I think this one actually sounds kind of cool, unlike the others.