Task 1: Three Minute Song Production (70%)
Task 2: 1000 Word Write-Up (30%)
My plan for the song production task was to record and produce one of my own songs that i include in my set lists. The song i chose was a soft ballad type track which centres around vocals and acoustic guitar. i knew that approaching this track, i would have to focus on the subtlety of the production and i would also have to write more parts for the song. I started by recording the acoustic guitar, this was done through a digital interface as i felt that the glassy high end of a DI’d acoustic guitar would be a good way to leave room for the lower frequencies of the bass part that i planned to add. My main choice with the acoustic guitar was that it would be parallel processed using phase and panning to add more stereo depth to the part, this makes the track feel way more focused on the guitar and lets the listener realise that it is the main harmonic part of the track.
My next task was to write and record the bass part of the song, i decided that it would be nicer if the bass came in at the first chorus and left only the guitar play on the first verse, this gives the track an added feeling of depth when the chorus happens because there is an obvious comparison of depth between the verse and chorus. When the bass first comes in, i used a crescendo to increase the subtlety of the production, this makes the bass feel less harsh when it comes in and increases the comfortability of the song. I used logics chroma glow distortion on the bass to give it a muddier sound which complements the acoustic guitar a lot better.
After having acoustic guitar and bass, i had recorded the main instruments of the track and now was gonna add decorative, ambient parts before finally recording vocals. The first part i added was an electric guitar with heavy delay and reverb effects to make it sound almost synthetic, this part comes in at the chorus and follows a similar harmonic pattern as the acoustic guitar, it also crescendos into the chorus in a similar way to the bass. I chose the delay in inspiration to how Jonny Greenwood uses delay effects in his music to add a subtle synthetic sounding ambience, logics delay designer allows you to control almost all aspects of the delay which is why i used it to create this sound.
The next decorative part that i added to the track was swelled strings throughout the whole track to make the song feel way more ambient, i got the sound from logics multi-sampler and then lowered the attack, increased the release and added an LFO that controls the pan of the sound to make it slowly go from left to right in the listeners ear. The main thing with this part was that it had to be very subtle so it wouldn’t take from the importance of the acoustic guitar, this is how i decided that the swells had to be very high and sound almost like feedback from a mic or electric guitar. This part works very well as it creates more ambience in the first verse when there is no instruments but acoustic guitar, but then its effect is less obvious after the verse as more instruments are introduced and the ambience is no longer needed.
After adding the swells i realised that the song needed a very quiet bit of ambience that can lay under the rest of the instruments without affecting the structure, harmony or melodic focus of the song. I did this by adding the sounds of birds in a forest, the birds add a really nice ambience to the track which works in a similar way to the swells as it is less relevant after the first verse however becomes more important again at the end of the song when the instruments drop out.
The sampled part that i used in my song was from the sound of a bass harmonic, bass harmonics sound really smooth and stripped down which is why i thought it would be a nice sound for the track. I recorded the harmonic and let i completely ring out before putting it into logic quick sampler and pitching it up to sound like a bell. After reducing the attack a small amount, i decided to uses a panning delay on the sample before recording it through midi onto the second verse and outro of the track, i then bounced the part and reversed it to make the bell sounds into a swelled synth-like sound that pans around the stereo field similar to the ambience used in the music of Sigur Ros.
Due to limited time and access to equipment, i had to record vocals at home with only what i had on hand, which was a shure SM58 into a digital interface. My main issue i came across with this setup was that my soft singing style plus an SM58 made the recording way more breathy than i would’ve liked, i did my best to fix the issue with EQ. If i was to record the vocal part again, i would use better equipment to give me a better vocal sound. I decided with my vocals that they needed to be quite dynamic as it would add to the intimacy of the song which is an important part of soft ballad type tracks.
