This piece a demonstration of the skills I’ve acquired over the last month. This piece has the basic beat element drums melody and harmony. Its start off with acoustic instrument for the first sixteen measure and synths sounds for the last sixteen, with parallel minor and sus chord as spice to the chord progression. The custom built sounds combine with the samples and vocal recording give the composition personality. This composition can be used for commercials and/or intro for many variety of shows/programs. The genres is not clearly define, but it does have and island vibe to it.
The tempo of the beat is an easy 92 bpm on a 4/4 time. The bass line has a cool walking vibe to start then on the second part I increased the velocity to give me a more legato effect of the bass. The drum pattern is my variation on drums beat 4 with variation D and fill B, more traditional pattern kick on the one and three and snare on the 2 and four. The second part has more snare and crash to it a less traditional pattern. The drum and bass instruments are playing different pattern for each sixteen bare but the are the same instrument. I want that to be the continuity between both parts, especially the toms. The toms are the only sounds that carries over on both side to glue the section together.
I decided to go with the F scale for the first half with a D Bb F C G chord progression and to spice the second part I borrowed Db chord from the parallel Fm, and closing it out with Major 7th and Sus Chords. For the melody used a combination of rising and falling arcs. The arc in the first part is quicker while the arc in second part is slower. This also where you can hear difference between the acoustic harp and the synth lead instrument.
I think sampling and making my own instrument was the time consuming part because this was unfamiliar territory for me. For the sample I record myself into Logic Pro’s Quick Sample saying “reaching new height.” Then I added pitch correction, compression, reverbs and delay to the track, that gave something cool. I made two custom instrument in the second part. The first instrument was something to layer with the baseline adding the synth vibe to the bass. The second one I made is playing on the 8 measure of the bar, an accompanying piece to the second melody. The vocal recording is me saying “predator and prey, predators prey” with eq and compression for dynamics and delay and reverb for my time based.
I like to put eq on all my track even if I don’t use it you never know frequency will start clashing. On my bass track has chorus bus to give the bass some body. My snares get the a reverb bus. The vocal track has pitch correction. I like to bus my drum track, a bus for my harmony and melody, bass bus, and vocal bus. Then I eq those bus. The drum bus gets drum room reverb and eq’ing. The vocal bus get reverb and delay. Then I did a static mix.
I really enjoy making music things like sampling re-invent what we know and takes musician further.