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Assignment 1 - Learning Music
One of the aspects that most excited me was beat-making. Learning about well-known beat styles like ‘four to the floor’ and how it is used in so many songs was very interesting. As a fan of pop music, I instantly recognized that beat pattern. Creating baselines was another aspect that really intrigued me. My dad actually plays the bass so being able to learn about bass patterns and how much they actually add to the song was very fun and interesting. I really enjoyed playing with the playground; it was fun to create different beats, chord progressions, basslines, etc., and seeing what worked and what didn’t work. The advanced topics, especially the unusual scales, piqued my interest as well.
While the advanced topics did interest me and I did enjoy learning about them, I would have loved to have gone more in-depth with these topics. These are really interesting tools for making music and I would love to know more about them. While I do understand the concept of modal scales due to other music theory classes I am taking, I feel as though if I had not learned about these scales previously, I would have been a bit lost learning about the scales.
Assignment 2 - DAW Loop Assignment
For the creation of this assignment, I was interested in choosing loops that interested me and my ears. I first found the loop featured at the beginning and end and which is featured throughout the song. Paired with the funky guitar, I knew that I wanted to create a groovy, airy-feeling piece of music. I decided to break up sections of this song by dropping the drum loops during certain portions and adding in some electric guitar loops. I would then slowly add in some clap-loops to signify the return of the prominent section heard throughout the majority of the song. I decided to add more loops to the prominent section as the song goes on to help maintain interest as the song progressed. I used four drum/percussion loops, three electric guitar loops, and a pad loop.
After this assignment, I feel as though using loops to create music is a legitimate form of musical creativity. Though it takes less creativity to pick out samples and loops compared to making them by scratch, the combination of different samples and loops is what makes this a creative process. There are millions of different loops and ways to arrange them, and choosing that arrangement of loops does take musical creativity.
Assignment 3 - Learning Synths
This website was a really cool way to learn about and practice using synths. One of the things about this topic that interested me was all of the different effects on synths that changed the ways they could sound (LFOs, oscillators, envelopes, etc.) Another thing that interested me was the “recipes” section, which explained how certain recognizable sounds are created from synths, which filters they use to create such sounds, and how to recreate them. Another feature of this website that interested me was the playground, which took allowed me to use the things I had learned from this website and use them to create.
Assignment 4 - 3 Track MIDI Compositon
While trying to create this composition, I had a song called "The Archer" by Taylor Swift stuck in my head, so I ended up creating a three-MIDI track composition inspired by that song. Throughout "The Archer," the entire song builds to a climax that never happens, which I thought was a unique way to go about making a song. I got all of my MIDI tracks and software instruments from Logic. I decided to use an electric piano, an electric drum kit, and an arpeggiator. I used electric piano chords to guide the song. I copied and pasted the notes from the electric piano MIDI track onto an arpeggiator MIDI track to create a bright, slightly hectic sound toward the end of the song. I used the electronic drum kit to drive the song forward. I used a four-to-the-floor style rhythm pattern for my beat and slowly added in elements of percussion (hi-hats, snare, crashes, etc). I feel like personally, the end result was satisfying to me, but I understand why it wouldn't be for others, as the song continued to build to a climax that never happens. If I had unlimited time and ability, I would like to build upon this idea and song to create a more elaborate version of it, utilizing more software instruments and more MIDI tracks.
Assignment 5 - Audio Recording Assignment
Assignment 6 -Sampling Tools Assignment
Another way technology can be humanized is through personalized AI that responds and adapts to the information given to it by a human. Sampling differs from other musical approaches based on the fact that it creates music by altering a music recording that already exists. This is different from using loops as when you use loops, you use them as is to create a song, while with sampling, you take elements of a song and turn it into a new song by using certain snippets of that song.
What I found to be the most intriguing about the sample stitch was how many options I could create with it. That was also one of my biggest challenges. Trying to choose what to put into my recording was difficult as there were so many different options and methods I could use. Another challenge I faced with this was the fact that the allotted amount of bars was so short. I found myself wanting to do more but was somewhat limited by the amount of bars I was given to play with.
Assignment 7 - Remix Assignment
For this assignment, I was assigned to remix a song from another student, specifically Nykeia. I remixed her song from the recording assignment. Her original song featured instruments and electronic beats that were played a bit sparsely, so I was able to use those instruments and beats and sample them in my remix. Her original song featured a few seconds of vocal with reverb before the song, so I decided to include that, which led into my remix. Before doing this assignment, I was listening to music that featured elements of 80s synth-pop, so I used that as my inspiration for creating the song. Her original song has a tempo of around 92 beats per minute, while my remix has a tempo of around 155 beats per minute. I decided to use samples from her beat from her original song to create a beat, which would later be added to using MIDI electronic drum kits. Throughout the song, I added more and more loops, MIDI tracks, and samples from her original song. I utilized a guitar riff that was played at certain points in her original song and changed its pitch and timing to create an arpeggio, seen in the Acoustic Guitar Sample track. Throughout the course of making this song, it turned into a kind of hybrid between synth-pop and pop rock, with an emphasis on synth-pop. Throughout the song, I utilized a lot of the effects we learned about this week, especially the chorus effect, the delay effect, and the reverb effect.
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