SHR4C004M-003 Song Production & Write Up Template
Task 1: Three Minute Song Production (70%)
Task 2: 1000 Word Write-Up (30%)
For this write up, I will be explaining the process of composing the song first. I had this idea I came when trying to make songs for my Second Group Study band that we didn’t end up using. It’s a chord progression in the key on G# minor. I initially used G#m6 and C#9, but I ended up making the G#m6 a G#m7. I recorded it at home with my electric guitar through my interface, to start building the song up. I also added two extra chords. D#7#9 and D#7b9. I only used this two chords to change to another part of the song.
For drums, I tried listening to different music to get ideas on what I could program. So, I chose as inspirations two songs from british artist Tom Misch, these being “Red Moon”, “Last 100” and “Before The Fall” by Bill Easton. I tried to build the drum beat by asking my friend Anya who drums to help me. I previously told her what the influences of the song were, so we sat down with my laptop and started messing with the midi editor. After this meet up, I started bringing some keys down. I decided to use my rhodes type of plugin. Phoenix by Native Instruments, which worked perfectly for what I was starting to build. I did have to mess with the presets, since the basic rhodes preset didn’t work for this specific track. I ended up going for a 70s style electric piano because the bell characteristic of it blended well with both acoustic and electric guitars. Then, I decided to also get some bass lines down but I ended up changing them afterwards.
I had a loop by this moment, and while trying different plugins I thought of making a drone sound with my guitar as a sample. So, I basically ran the guitar through my interface and recorded an E harmonic on the guitar, then loaded that into Quick Sampler in Logic, made a loop on the tail and tried to match it to the key and tempo of the song. It worked pretty well and gave an idea for the intro. I had the intro initially with just the rhythm guitar doing the chords and the drums with a laid back version of the original beat. But, I tried using acoustic guitar for it instead. I recorded this at home too. I used a WA-87 R2 through my Audient iD 14 mkII. I used these two Valhalla plugins to create a stereo chorus effect and filter some of the lows creatively. After this, I recorded a funky lick on my electric guitar which just added to the groove, I used a Neural DSP plugin for amp sim, and I honestly didn’t feel the need of recording through an amp. I got my friend to record some vocal ideas down. We came out with this melody inspired on Tom Misch and she wrote some lyrics about how being famous can change someone.
I processed the vocals with some Logic stock plugin and UAD plugins. I decided to use two compressors: an 1176 Rev A and the LA-2A, with the settings shown below. The reasoning behind it is the 1176 is a very fast compressor specially the Rev A, so it was taming the peaks of the vocals. I still let some of the transient to come through with a 5 as attack and a 6 for release so it doesn’t come back too fast. the LA-2A was merely used to level the whole track and give it a bit of warmth from the emulation. It went for a quick delay to get that slapback sound on a send. Most of the time I intend to process my instruments while arranging the songs because it helps me with creativity, and also to get an idea for the mixing process. We also came up with some harmonies which follow the line that says “Fame” three times. We double tracked and panned stereo the bass note, and the upper harmonies while leaving in the middle, one line that follows the lead melody.
For the other sampled instrument, I tried another harmonic on the guitar, but this time instead of making a drone I was messing around with some settings and effects and came out with an organ sound. I used in the last chorus to add some more texture to it. I basically played with the Amp ADSR and a filter in Quick Sampler
For finishing the track I decided to keep the verse with the chorus chords but with a quieter arrangement. I also made a bridge were my friend Anya helped me with programming the drums. It consists of two parts. One were there’s just a guitar lick some drums and keys. After that, I tried to make this part quite different to the actual song and to have some interesting fills following the chord changes. It felt more frenetic. After finishing the arrangement, I started mixing the song. I have changed some plugins and settings I had when arranging and creating the song. I spent most of the time aligning vocals and re recording some guitar/bass parts so they are on time with the song. I used Melodyne to tune up the vocals, and then bounced them tracks to save CPU. I also spent some time dialing the settings on the VSTs to ease my workflow. Even though, I did use a reasonable amount of plugins including: Harrison’s 32 Channel Strip, Harrison’s Tape Saturator, some Valhalla and Soundtoys plugins for spatial effects. UAD’s Pultec emulation for vocal eq. My master bus processing consisted on SSL Native Bus Comp, UAD Ampex ATR 102 Emulation, Oxford Inflator, StandardCLIP, and SSL X Limit. All this to glue enhance and volume up the whole song.
Below there’s a video of the track being played in Logic:
