r.l.

music tech things i guess

[regina-reginae]

self remix

I decided to remix my ambient track. 

Here is a link to the original track. 

Here is a link to my new track.  

When I first made my track and submitted it, I was confused why Professor Hein was like “oh cool! acoustic ambient.”  I didn’t know why that was out of the ordinary.  That was because I had a misunderstanding of ambient music.  I didn’t know that it was typically made with electronic music.  I guess I did know this, since I’ve listened to a lot of ambient music, but not consciously.  I just never put it together.  

To remix my track, I decided to make it more electronic by adding some EQ.  To me, it sounds like a completely different track.  I brought out some more of the harmonics in the harmonium that I like better than the fundamental pitches.  I also brought out the stems that kind of got lost in the original (like the voice and the tapping and some of the clarinet parts).  This was super easy to do with EQ, I just didn’t know how to do this at the time that I made the track the first time.  I didn’t even know it was possible.  

I thought about changing the track in other ways, but I actually really like the way it turned out with just adding EQ.  I had to move some things around to get the EQ on every track just right, so the timing of some of the ornaments is a little different.  But other than that, I did minimal work on this track and to me it sounds very different. 

[regina-reginae]

peer remix

here is a link to my track. 

I chose to edit Alena’s ambient track.  I chose this track because I thought something without a beat would be easiest to remix without having all the stems, since I can add any beat at any tempo and it would work.

After I decided on a beat, I treated this project much like I treated the very first loop project.  

I also added a bass line that I thought sounded cool and matched the ominous vibe that Alena’s original track had.  

In the middle, I had all the tracks drop out except for the original track and a very different sounding guitar loop.l. The guitar loop is very upbeat and happy sounding.  It’s even called “Soft Waves Harmonic Guitar.”  I liked how this track had a very different timbre and emotional feeling than the other tracks.  After two complete loops of this guitar track, everything else enters back in.

My track ends with the basses cutting out a bit earlier than the beat.  The beat and the original track go all the way to the end, with the original track fading out and the beat ending abruptly.  

[regina-reginae]

sampling

One song that contains a direct audio sample of another song is Nicki Minaj and will.i.am’s “Check it out.”  This song samples The Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star.”  Specifically, it samples the part at the beginning that goes “Oh, oh.”  This occurs at the beginning of Nicki’s song, and also throughout the song.  Similar to the original song, this sample is used to ornament the song, occurring before and between verses.  In this way, it directly calls back to the song it originates from, which includes this sample at the beginning and during the pre-chorus.  

One song that contains a quotation from another song is “Late Bloomer” by Haley Blais, which quotes “Like a Prayer” by Madonna.  Specifically, Haley sings part of the chorus from Like a Prayer in one of the background vocal layers behind one of her own pre-choruses.  This comes right after she sings a verse where she asks god to “Hear her prayer.”  I imagine that this quotation came about from her realizing that the chord progression was the same as/similar to the one from the Madonna song, and then adding lyrics that call back to the Madonna song.  I doubt she has permission to be using the lyrics n her track.  

[regina-reginae]

found sound song

here is a link to my found sound song

This sound is a door in a bathroom in kimmel.  The lock was vibrating against the frame of the door and creating a very rhythmic pattern.  I thought it was cool how it was almost perfectly in a meter and didn’t sound random at all.  It sounded like a drumline pattern or something like that.  

In the original audio, the air conditioning was super loud and the door was super quiet.  I used EQ to raise the frequencies that the door was sounding at and cut the low frequencies that the AC was living in.  Then, I went to the compressor and just messed around with it until the door was at a volume I liked.  

I used the method of chopping up the recording and then deleting random ones.  Then, I added tons of reverb so that there was less silence between chops.  

Then, I added some synths and midi tracks that enter and exit.  I also included a beat.  It was tough to perfectly match the beats with the “beats” in the found sound, so I just didn’t and I still think it sounded cool.

At the end, I wanted a brief little solo instrument moment, so I found a bassoon line from a Bach piece (I forget which one now.  Brandenburg concerto?  Who cares).  I put it on a pretty nasty sounding synth.  I couldn’t figure out how to fade out midi tracks, so it kind of ends abruptly.  

[regina-reginae]

midi song

here is a link to my midi song 

In my midi song, I used my Groove Pizza beat on 6 out of the 8 tracks.  I selected various instrument sounds for each track, including a pad, a bass, some “jitter strings” and two percussion tracks.  The remaining two tracks are just random notes in a synth pad to “fill out” the rest of the song so it didn’t sound too empty. 

I consider the end result to be a successful piece of music.  I like the way it sounds and I think it sounds “good.”  I think the beat is catchy enough and I don’t get sick of it even though its playing in the majority of the tracks.  

If I had unlimited time, I would maybe make it follow some codified song structure so that I could repurpose it into an actual “song.”  

If I had unlimited ability, I would be making music and selling it.  

[regina-reginae]

groove pizza

here is a link to my groove pizza beat 

I think my beat belongs to the hip-hop genre.  I added a little bit of swing and lots of high hats, which reminds me of some of the songs that were suggested we listen to for our pop practicum rap assignment.  There are also moments of anticipation of the beat, like when the kick plays on the sixteenth note before beat five.  I also think that the tempo is appropriate for hip-hop.  The snare is on beats 2 and 4 because it must be.  Also the kick is on beat one to show us where the measures begin, but I left out the kick on beat 3 because it sounded corny with it, and instead delayed it until the 11th sixteenth note. 

[regina-reginae]

ambient piece

here is the link to my ambient piece

i used a harmonium and a clarinet to make this piece

I used the harmonium as a drone (pad?).  I also used to clarinet to throw in some ornamentation here and there, but nothing too distracting.  I didn’t have any melody, and mostly stuck to the pitches in the C major and F major triads.  

I got this harmonium for free from someone in a buy nothing facebook group.  I never get to use it, but this assignment seemed like a good opportunity.  It’s an electric one, so I don’t have to crank anything or pump any levers.  

I used my clarinet because I think I will like being a clarinet player more if I begin to incorporate the clarinet into my musical endeavors outside of what is normally a purely academic context (i.e. only playing "clarinet” music in my lessons).  

I’m not sure what kind of feeling this piece creates.  Sometimes there is stability, and other times there is not.  At times, we wait for the resolution of a particular sound for a while.  It feels a little bit like nothing to me, which I guess is probably the point of ambient music.  Nothing distracting or ostentatious.  

[regina-reginae]

my loop-dee loop

this is my first loop 

I very creatively named it after one of the royalty free GarageBand percussion loops, “Big Cow Bell Disco Break.”  

I used 3 distinct percussion tracks, two bass tracks, a “tricky funk wah guitar,” a piano track, 2 electronic piano tracks, a vibraphone track, and saxophone track.  I also incorporated some vocal tracks that I used as embellishments, specifically a choir “aaahhhh” and a breath sound that makes a short, unpitched “ah.”

I mostly chose these tracks at random.  I knew that I needed some basic elements: a percussion line, a bass line, a melodic guitar line.  I picked some of these mostly at random, deleting them when I felt like they weren’t “right.”  After I chose two or three tracks, I decided that I wanted to go with the funky feeling, rather than something serious sounding or “rock” or “trap” sounding.  After I decided this, it was easier to accept or veto the following tracks that I added in at random.  Basically, if I chose a sound that made me say “Oh yeah, that’s funky” I kept it.  Of course, my definition of funk might be totally unhinged and I’d be more than willing to reclassify the genre if someone informs me of what I actually created here. 

I followed the process suggested to us, building from the percussion and bass up.  Then, I looped everything a bunch of times.  Then I began to delete things, but this was done in a more thought-out way than my random adding process.  I thought about song structure.  I decided that I needed an intro, something that sounded like a verse, a pre-chorus leading up to a “drop” and then a chorus.  Finally, I have an outro section that fades away.  It was a lengthy process of deleting and re-adding.  Finally, I decided that it would be best to just leave it where it was and maybe return to it the next day.  When I listened to it the next day, I was less unhappy with it, made a few changes, and decided I was done.  I mostly like what I created.  

I do think that I participated in legitimate musical creativity.  I think I came up with a unique combination of tracks, and I used a “legitimate” creative process.  I used reasoning to decide what I thought sounded good.  I also had to make creative decisions like when to discard a track, how to deal with transitions, and when to simply decide that the piece was good enough to call it finished.  I think that this loop is uniquely mine. 

[regina-reginae]

a song that i think is exceptionally good (and one that i think is exceptionally bad)

i’m really bad at questions about favorites, and so i will be going with the less definitive “exceptionally good” and “exceptionally bad” titles instead.  

One song that i think is exceptionally good is “Ode to the Mets” by the Strokes.  It starts off with a strange synth-y thing that sounds like the Kahoot music.  I won’t focus too much on this, since its not the part of the song that I think is exceptionally good (although it is a nice touch).  The main verse-chorus-verse-chorus part of the song has lyrics that have something to say (without being too pretentious or corny) with a melody that is so common that I’ve made a playlist of songs that use the same melody (link here).  It’s a popular melody because it’s good.  It’s catchy.  It’s singable.  However, this part of the song is still not what really convinces me that this song is exceptionally good and not just regular good. 

The outro of this song is something that I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about.  That sounds really profound, but I’m not pondering over the meaning of the lyrics or anything like that.  In fact, the outro to this song has cuased me immense grief because I cannot for the life of me figure out what it reminds me of.  First let me give a brief run down of what happens musically.  The melody from the verse-chorus section of the song ends and a markedly different melody is introduced.  It moves mostly by step, down and back up with a few exceptions at the ends of phrases where Julian decides to make it more dramatic by jumping up a few notes.  He also sings the repeat an octave higher, adding even more drama and making it an excellent song to sing very loudly while driving in your car alone.  

This melody has haunted me in my sleep.  I have woken up in the middle of the night thinking I have finally figured out what it reminds me of, only to figure out that whatever I’m thinking of is not quite it.  There was a point in time where I played the song for everyone I encountered and begged them to tell me the first thing that came to their mind.  Some answers have been repeated, which is encouraging, but none of them are ever right.  

This journey to figure out where I know this melody from started when I heard this song, which is just a cute little loop that sounds like those 10 hour long lo-fi study music tracks that people post on YouTube.  The answer is not this song, but as I was listening to this song I was like “Oh interesting, a song that uses the melody of the outro of Ode to the Mets that certainly comes from somewhere, but where?”   

So the melody from the beginning of the song, yes good, commonly used and I’m okay with the fact that it essentially comes from no where.  It’s just a very common melody that is also good.  But for some reason I am not OK with applying this same answer to the melody at the end of the song.  I want it to come from somewhere.  But perhaps it is so good because it has this nostalgic sound.  It’s good because it is familiar, even if I can tell why.  

Now, a song that I think is exceptionally bad.  This one is more difficult because I don’t have too many strong negative opinions.  When “Just Give Me a Reason” by P!nk came out I was convinced it was the worst song ever, but I was twelve when that song came out and I don’t feel so strongly about it now.  Probably I hated it so much because it wasn’t super relatable to me, and it was one of the more rare songs on the radio that is appealing to an audience of older people than to young children.  Listening to it now, I still don’t love it.  It does these weird, corny suspensions right before the chorus.  The melody is boring to me and doesn’t feel natural for me to sing.  Even now that I am older, I don’t find the lyrics very intriguing.  

I do think that the main reason this song came to my mind as an exceptionally bad song is residual angst left over from my pre-teen years.  It was literally the very first song that came to my mind upon reading the assignment details.  There’s no actual reason for me to think it is is exceptionally bad, and any evidence I try to conjure up is just confirmation bias.  I can say that I think the melody is bad, but I like songs with melodies that move in similar ways.  I can say that the lyrics aren’t relatable to me, but I do like “Million Reasons” by Lady Gaga, which is essentially the same exact lyric concept rewritten.  I don’t feel joy when I listen to this song.  I think it is bad, but I can’t say why.  Sorry P!nk.