Task 1: Three Minute Song Production (70%)

Task 2: 1000 Word Write-Up (30%)

Process

To begin this production, I began by writing the guitar part, finding a key that suited my voice and chords I liked. I tuned my guitar to DADGAD because I like the sound of open tunings as they allow the strings to ring out. After deciding on the chords, I started coming up with the vocal melody and lyrics. I chose to write the song about my dog, leaning into a more comedic lyrical style.

At the end of the first verse, I introduced drums, plucked guitars panned hard left and right playing harmonised sequences, lead synths and bass. This all gives the song much more direction and groove. This takes the song from folk-adjacent to more of a bedroom-pop style track, which also fits the theme of the childlike lyrics.

After the third verse, I wanted the song’s direction to change to something more electronic to avoid it getting too repetitive, so I introduced a sampling element. I sampled the main hook and played this into the sampler then made the vocal sampler which I then played into Logic over the instrumental sampler, here I focused on making chords out of the different notes in the style of a vocoder.

To mix this track, I did it as I went along. I made sure that nothing peaked and that all instruments were relatively balanced as I went along, adding compressors and EQ whenever I recorded something new, which made the final mix quite easy, I simply added a limiter to increase loudness and made sure that everything was audible and clear. I used a list of reference tracks to help me mix such as the vocal production of “Colors” by Beck (2017) and the instruments of “Box for Buddy, Box for Star” by This Is Lorelai (2024) which provided me with a good set of tracks to compare my mix to with similar instruments.

Methods

I recorded my vocals and guitar with a Marantz MPM-1000 as this was all I had access to at the time of recording. I find that this mic is better at capturing vocals than guitar but with some slight EQ tweaks, it captures guitar fine. If I were to re-record this, I would prefer to use something like a Shure SM7B on my vocals and a higher quality condenser mic for the guitar (such as the Warm Audio u87).

For vocals, I chose to double track these, panning them hard left and right because this is a common convention of the bedroom-pop genre over a single mono vocal in a Pop track, creating a wider soundstage and being clearer in the mix overall. On the vocal I added slight pitch correction to cover the imperfections in my vocal performance, then I added a De-esser just to reduce the harsh sounds of the close-mic vocal, an EQ, compression, and delay.

For the bass of the track, I created an 808-style bass because I found it a good way to help combine the electronic and acoustic elements together. I made a simple 808 bass in Serum 2 with a 57Hz LFO on the fine pitch modulation to give it a “fuzzy” and more interesting sound, something I learned from producer Porter Robinson. This grit makes the bass feel thicker, making it a strong foundation for the track under the higher frequency guitars.

For the lead synthesisers in the track, I used a KORG WAVESTATION plugin in Logic. I have only started to use this synthesiser recently, so I picked out some presets and tweaked elements such as envelope and level of the subsequent parts so that they would work well with a fast attack to get the melody across.

Then I chose a pad to create atmosphere during the drop/release, this was also a WAVESTATION plugin, this just adds more harmonic content and fills out the release section of the track. Finally, I made a very basic noise synth in Serum 2 that only plays during the release to help aid the transition between the two sections, this is a technique used in lots of EDM tracks to boost the energy of the drop, so I decided to add this to the electronic section of my track to give it a stronger sense of genre.

For the sampling aspect, I made two different samplers for the track, one with Logic’s Quick Sampler and the other with the multi-Sampler. The first sampler to appear in the song is the vocal sampler for which I used multi-sampler, getting different notes from the song vocal and then stretching these across the keyboard to create a playable vocal instrument. I added a filter sweep to introduce it smoothly into the track and stereo delay to create a wide stereo image from the mono signal, the delay also meant that although individual notes are being played, they sometimes overlap to form accidental chords, something I wanted in the track. The second sampler I used was Logic’s quick sampler, which I used to sample the main synth hook of the song, after the main guitar drops out around midway through the track, it is replaced by this sampler which is essentially just playing the same thing chopped up to create variation in the track.

All reverb on this track goes through the same Space Designer bus, to create unity between the live and programmed instruments. I think this is especially important here because with the mix of live and MIDI instruments, the mix could very easily become very disjointed, so I put all tracks through one reverb to “glue” them together and put them in the same “space”.

Commercial potential

In terms of commercial potential, I think the track fits into the bedroom-pop genre, something which isn’t commercially successful perhaps but has a very dedicated fanbase with popular artists like Cavetown, Clairo and Dodie amassing over 20 million combined monthly listeners on Spotify. Therefore, although there may not be much radio play associated with this genre, there is an audience and a market for this genre of music. The comedic lyrics also appeal to a different audience of parody/comedy music like that by Bo Burnham and “Weird Al” Yankovic who between themselves have over 4 ½ million monthly Spotify listeners. Although I don’t think I would release a track like this, there is clearly commercial potential regardless, due to the blend of commercially successful genres and the comedic lyrics.

Vocal recording video

Bibliography

Beck (2017) Colors. Colors [Streaming] UMG Recordings

Spotify (2026) “Weird Al” Yankovic Available Online: https://open.spotify.com/artist/1bDWGdIC2hardyt55nlQgG [Accessed 30/5/2026]

Spotify (2026) Bo Burnham Available Online: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2Waw2sSbqvAwK8NwACNjVo [Accessed 30/5/2026]

Spotify (2026) Cavetown Available Online: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2hR4h1Cao2ueuI7Cx9c7V8 [Accessed 30/5/2026]

Spotify (2026) Clairo Available Online: https://open.spotify.com/artist/3l0CmX0FuQjFxr8SK7Vqag [Accessed 30/5/2026]

Spotify (2026) Dodie Available Online: https://open.spotify.com/artist/21TinSsF5ytwsfdyz5VSVS [Accessed 30/5/2026]

Tape Notes Podcast (2025) Porter Robinson “Cheerleader” Full FL Session Breakdown [Video] Available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfPw4oBFFLw&t=119s [Accessed 30/5/2026]

This Is Lorelei (2024) Box for Buddy, Box for Star. Box for Buddy, Box for Star [Streaming] Double Double Whammy