Unit 24 and Unit 15

For these units I was to produce two songs with a minimum length of 2 minutes 30 seconds. These two songs were to be made to give my tutors an insight of the different types of music I liked to listen to or produce. Personally, I feel that I am quite open to most types of music so therefore tried to incorporate a mix of different genres into both of the tracks. These genres varied from math rock to dubstep. although difficult I enjoyed the task and believe that I succeeded in what I wished to portray. My first song was a 100bpm tune which was quite different to what I normally produce. I tend to work at around 140bpm as dubstep, future garage and 2 step are my preferred musical genres. I had recently become a big fan of moombahton which is a genre of music similar to dubstep and hip hop but set to a much bouncier tempo of 100bpm. I chose to write this song to show my abilities when it came to using VST's such as the ES2 and the EXS24 and to be able to use lots of automation on plugin parameters and volume as is what's popular in these types of music. My second song was a math/indie rock tune which I chose to do to show my recording abilities instead of producing another MIDI track. I also created this track in order to tick off the rest of the tasks that I was unable to do in the other song for example; time signature changes and tempo changes. I would have much preferred to produce metal or some form of melodic hardcore as they are my preferred genres when it comes down to playing guitar, but I was unable to do so due to the poor distortion plug ins that Logic supplied me with therefore I chose to produce my second favourite type of music on the guitar, math. I also tried to give my song a kind of surfer rock/indie feel to it to give it some character and show more of my interests in the different genres. This song in my opinion was probably the worse of the two projects due to the fact that I was short of time to re-record some of the riffs. Some were very difficult to play in time to and there was also a part where the bass guitar picked up the metronome whilst recording and can be faintly heard during one of the transitions in the song. All guitars except for the bass were dual tracked and panned left and right to give a wider more open sound, unfortunately due to my lack of experience and knowledge in recording guitars this song needed a lot more work done to it to have it live up to its full potential.

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Region Colouring: Region Colouring is used to separate particular sections of the song for example; colour coding the transition between the verse and the chorus like I have in the photo to avoid visual confusion when playing the track. To create region colouring, you must highlight the MIDI regions you wish to colour, click on the top right hand corner of the project where it says colour and select a colour you wish to use. Quantizing: Quantizing is often used when notes are dialled in via a MIDI keyboard. When using a MIDI keyboard its extremely hard to keep in time with the song, therefore when notes aren't far off their intended targets we can simply quantize the notes in order to make them fit correctly. To do this you highlight all of the information you've just recorded and press the Q button above the piano roll. Manipulation of Note Velocities: This technique is used when you want to give your instruments more of a dynamic range, the example I have given here is of a kick drum, the green notes are the standard hits, and the blue notes are the softer hits, of course the harder hits would be red. To do this, you must go to the tool bar section, select the velocity tool, click and hold the selected MIDI note then drag up or down depending on whether you want your sound to be louder of quieter. Volume Automation: Volume Automation is used to for a number of different reasons, normally to gradually fade in a new instrument or layer to the track. To open an automation track you can simply press 'A' on the keyboard to open the automation tracks and then to write in the automation lines you simply click wherever you wish the line to be designated by using the pointer tool or the pencil tool and a yellow line will appear on the screen with the level of Db that are being played.

Tempo/Time Signature Change: Tempo change is achieved by opening the global track tab and selecting tempo, this opens up an automation clip where you can alter the tempo like that of when you alter the volumes for different tracks. The same rules apply, to click where you wish the tempo change to be and to select how high or low you wish the tempo to be. In this picture you can see that I have changed my tempo from 110bpm to 140bpm. I also change my time signature from a basic 4:4 to a more complex 7:4. Plugin Parameter Automation: To alter a plug in parameter, you must first open up the automation clips by pressing A on the keyboard and then clicking and holding on the volume tab until a drop down bar appears on the screen and you can select the plugin you have chosen, after this you can then automate specific sections of the plug in, for example I have changed the automation of the cut off filter on the AutoFilter to start but cutting all of the frequencies and then gradually bring them all back. Compression/EQ Plugins: Compression and EQ plugins are used on a number of things to improve the sound in different ways. A compressor slightly boosts quieter signals and slightly cuts louder signals to create a much more even mix, this is often used on drum kits, vocals and guitars. EQ's are used to make things fit better in a mixdown. Each instrument has its own specific frequency for example a snare drum tends to be around 200hz, a kick belongs around 100hz, guitars and vocals would belong more between the mid ranges like 500hz to 1khz (1000hz) The EQ is used to make sure instruments don't clash with each other or cancel each other out in a mix. Master Effects: Master Effects are used to help make an overall mix sound better, in this instance I have used a limiter which is used to cap everything at 0Db so that it doesn't peak. Any sound that goes over the threshold will be stopped by the limiter and compressed. To install a limiter on the master channel you must click in the inserts section of the channel, go to dynamics and select limiter. This will install a limiter on your master channel and stop peaking and will also give the impression of a louder overall mix.