Week 8:
This week I created another pop track inspired by the song “What If I Told You That I Loved You” by Ali Gatie. I took inspiration from the guitar and slow tempo of the song, and taking elements from the drums. I have written and recorded some Lyrics but I’m still looking for someone to record vocals for me and I’m not particularly good. I believe a male vocal would fit this track best. Unfortunately due to Covid-19, it’s harder to find vocalists who can record from home. On this track I experimented with a new plug in called ‘CLA Guitars’ or ‘Chris Lord Alge Guitars’. It’s a fairly simple plug in. It has 6 sliders to change the Bass, treble, compression, reverb, delay and pitch. In the top left it has a re-amplify on and off switch, along with a knob to change from a clean sound to crunch, heavy or bypass. On the far right it has an Output slider to change the levels, and again on the far left, there’s an input sensor. My settings where: Re-Amplify was off, and the knob was on clean. Both my input and output where unchanged at mid range. My bass was up to around +4 and on the ‘sub’ setting. My treble was around -2 and on the ‘bite’ setting. The compression was up to around +8 and on the ‘push’ setting. The reverb was just above 0 and was on the ‘club’ setting. The delay was around -5 and on the ‘eight’ setting. And finally, the pitch was on 0 and on a ‘stereo’ setting. A screen shot of the plug in is shown bellow. This, along with some EQ to take out the Low cut frequencies, created the perfect guitar sound I was looking for.
CLA Guitars Plugin:
Track I took inspiration from:
Week 9:
This week I worked on some vocals from an old track. There was specific vocal effect I had in mind that I thought would well with the track. I found a video by a favourite YouTube of mine named ‘Crab Lord’. The video was titled “How to make a Vocoder Effect like “Zedd” in Logic Pro X”. So to start I created and new software instrument, and chose the EVOC 20 (Vocoder synth) in the plugins menu. I chose the ‘Clear voice vocoder’ as the preset and then Side chained the vocoder to my vocal track. After, I copied over the main chords I have played in from the track into the vocoder track. I made sure to add EQ to take out some of the low cut frequencies that where clipping and a Vintage Opto compressor. Going back into the Vocoder, and played around with the Format stretch, the format shift and the resonance. Finally, I added a little reverb with the space designer. Choosing the ‘Space reverb’ in the presets and lowing the wetness.
Video I used:
Week 10:
This week I’ve been focusing on promoting my social media, mainly Instagram and YouTube. I have been and will continue to post a beat every two days as this is the best way to get myself noticed on YouTube. I have also been posting regularly on my Instagram and posting on my instagram story 3 times a day in an attempt to reach more people. I have also joined a bunch of producer group chats so I can promote myself further and share around our music. I think this is the best way too network considering the current condition of the UK.
I have gained over 100 followers on instagram since starting.. And have spoken with a few other producers such as “its._.walid” who has over 1200 followers. This way we both hit different audiences and I get to learn a few production techniques from him that perhaps I didn’t know about . I’ve also officially done a paid promotion on my most recent beat. I’m going to test how effective this is but I recon it’ll be quite slow to start with.
Paid promotion:
Week 11:
This week I created a Hiphop afro swing beat inspired by the artist: Ramz, Swarmz and Hardy Caprio. I wanted to make my kicks and 808s pop on this track as that’s the style of the genre. I found a video by a YouTuber named ‘Tony Holiday’ titled “How to Make Your Kicks HIT HARDER in 4 EASY Steps”. The first step was simple. Instead of turning up my kick to make it more prominent in the mix, turn down the other instruments. That way, it doesn’t sound muddy and I don’t get any clipping.
Secondly, he suggested I EQ any unnecessary low end frequencies off all my instruments including my kick so that the bass has room to come through. I took 30hz off the kick at the low end to allow room for my 808. Again, this reduces muddyness. I added a couple compressors and added distortion 2 with a little gain just to make my 808 more defined.
The next step was something I had never heard about before when it came to mixing kicks or drums. He said to search “Drum key frequencies” into google and look on one of the charts in images. From here he explained that I should first find what key my track was in and look for which area of the EQ to raise for that specific key. My track was in A sharp minor. He said the best ones for kicks would be the first or second octave. A sharp minor was around 103hz. So I raised up to about 3db at 103hz and it did sound a little better.
Last of all was the use of binaural pan. Using binaural pan allows me to position where the sound of a specific instrument sits within the mix and within headphones. Centring the kick allow it to hit harder.
Video I used:
Week 12:
This week I worked on Drill beat with another student Merlin inspired by another producer on YouTube Called “SJbeats” titled “Wolf pack”. We wanted to make it a dark oriental sound. I incorporated asian instruments such as Japanese Koto a Erhu stringed instrument and a Pipa. This is accompanied with Piano. I have recently download ‘blackhole’ to record from YouTube and Spotify onto Logic. Using this I got a choir sample from the song “Requiem in D Minor”.
I have been experimenting with the Multi-effects plugins, primarily the ‘Step FX’. I was looking for an ambient, dark effect on my high Koto melody. I found the preset ‘Deep Space’ which I though was perfect as it added a strobing reverb effect. Another simple yet effective technique I used was bouncing down the Erhu, slicing it up into 16 pieces and adding the fade too at the end of each bit. This is a technique commonly used in Drill and one used by SjBeats.
Week 13
This week I created another drill beat inspired by a small but successful producer named “Saint6”.
Level 3 Music Tech (Second Year Blog) 