Computer Music Composition Blog

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Post 14 - EXS24 Samples

This week's class was an interesting one. We were taught on making our own samples ourselves on Logic with the settings on the EXS24, such as in the menu can be seen on the picture here.

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Post 14

All that influences the past few weeks has made me super inspired and I feel the need to get all this inspiration brewing out of me into a product. This is my first try out at ambient music after all the years of playing punkrock and acoustic music. A certain transition it was.

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Post 13: Music discovery

Found out that the lead guitarist of the band Archabald is way popular than his band. Andy Othling, is an ambient music guitarist who produces his own music known as Lowercase Noises. He also creates videos of his ambient music sketches with him playing and using the techniques of stacking delay pedals to create this very scenic ambient sound. He also create tutorials on youtube on producing and playing ambient music, the different type of chord structures to avoid getting too much low ends on the swells of the sound and etc. Here are two of his pedalboards that he uses for his project. 

As can be seen on the top left hand corner of this pedalboard, Andy stacks 3 delay pedals inclusive of the Memory Man down below and two reverbs. But usually only one reverb pedal is used.

Here is a screenshot of one of his music sketch posted on his youtube channel

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Sem 2/Post 12 : Music discovery

During the holidays, my interest for effects pedals and what it does grew so drastically. The reason for this is because I got so inspired this band who made great use of the pedals they have in their arsenal. This band is called Archabald. I dont know how to specifically describe their genre but probably indie, post rock, shoegaze, abit of punk as well. They are totally independent musicians, producing and publishing their band all by themselves and it really inspires me to do as well as them. Anyways, this is a  youtube video of the band playing in one of their home session which they call it, Library Session. Here you go! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7awvyvZkvQ

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Post 11: Progressing with a build up

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This week, I looked back at what I was taught in class. That is to create a section or a pre chorus that will build up well before hitting the chorus with a bang. The technique can be simply created with help of the "Play at double tempo" (:2) on the notes section of Ableton live.

  A very good example that I fell in love with is a song by Calvin Harris, titled Summer.

Here is the link for the song on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McEoTIqoRKk

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Post 10: Discovery of chiptune music

Today marks a history in my life. I found a very interesting genre and that it caught me into trying out something new with music composition and production. And that is to incorporate retro games music with new age punkrock. I got inspired with the research i made for my Digital Audio Production presentation.

This link here shows an example of a band playing chiptune music, incorporating rock music into it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmYqNkclgwc

Their live shows really got me inspired.

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Post 9:

Today I learnt how to create the wobbly bass effect using the TAL Noizemaker. Its all about controlling the LFO's and making it control the cut off in Synth2. Switching on both oscillators and making them out of tune by a bit and there you go.

And with that, here is a video of a band that covers a whole lot of Skrillex  with the bass player creating alot of that wobbly bass effect using the hot hands ring. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuunY8BTqNs

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Handmade Tape Delay

Post 8:

Came upon this video and this is super awesome! A handmade tape delay that works and sounded pretty well with the guitar. 

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Visit Original Link

Post 7:

A song I wrote and composed. This is a demo version thats only left with the vocals to be recorded. But most importantly, just posting the structure and arrangement of the song.

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Post 6:

Found this MIDI guitar made by Fender for Rock Band 3 game. It also works as a MIDI controller and therefore players and musicians will be able to record music into their DAW using this MIDI controller. Cool!

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Visit Original Link

Post 5:

A random electronic music doodle i made that inculcate what i learnt about composing music. That is to introduce an instrument one at a time to keep the interest alive for the listeners.

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Post 4:

Tal Noisemaker Week

What an amazing technology we have here. I found out how amazing it is that an oscillator is. It can actually create sounds of almost any instruments by simply tweaking the perimeters it provides. It works just like how any instruments would literally work, and that is by adjusting and mimicking how much of a certain frequency on an instrument has. How the waveform of a certain frequency is like and more like the ADSR (Attack,Decay,Sustain and Release) of an instrument. For example,  a kick drum would have a faster attack and a shorter sustain that how a trumpet would sound.

So, to attain such instruments, all that we have to do is to tweak the perimeters accordingly, its gonna take quite awhile before mastering this art of creating sounds of virtual instruments. But its cool!

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Visit Original Link

Post 3: 

This week, I learnt about how song structures are being build up in different sections. How adding instruments into each section as it progresses makes it more interesting for listeners and kept them hungry to know more what will happen next, just like a story.

And the song i posted here for sure did caught me from how it started off with an acoustic guitar and gets into its dept of the song with more instruments introduced. Listen and enjoy!

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Post 2: - Session recording & Quantize recording

Composition

Its so easy to make one bar sound different from another yet keeping the same beat. Just duplicate and modify the beats in diff bars. Such as changing the last few bars of a drum beat with fills and then a crash rather than a simple four beat of kick and snare and then a crash.

Claps is the same as a snare. - Its not a good idea to use claps relevant to every snare clip - Use it as ascends instead

Session Record a clip = Live record & Loop playback. (Record while playing and it will loop to either overlap or add on to what was recorded previously)

Quantize or Quantize settings = To adjust the settings bars to ensure a perfectly placed clips for perfect or preferred timing, swing, auto-quantize while record, etc.

Keyboard shortcut learn this week: Command + B = Switch between pencil tool & midi key tool

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Composition & Ableton Live 9

Post 1:

Taught on the different ways of composing music. Consists of 3 factors, they are Rhythm (made up of beat,pattern,tempo & note length), Melody and Harmony (2 or more notes played together). I also got to know about the term common time, which resembles the mostly used time signature of four-four. Had a tutorial too on the basics of ableton live 9 in familiarising with the icons and key commands. It is also easy for musicians to create loops (e.g. drum loops) of our own by using ableton live, by having that "Statement" & "Response" in our loops.