In my quest to become better at composing music-to-picture (film music composition), I set out to find a short film clip to compose to. The exercise was two-fold in that I had small Logic X projects set aside as ideas that could be used as film cues or similar. In reviewing them a few weeks back, I came across one entitled “1st Encounter”, which I first composed, just as the COVID-19 pandemic was getting underway in April 2020.. The track, I thought, was reminiscent of something you may here during some sort of battle scene. Being only 28 seconds long, I began to work with various arrangements of it while thinking of different science fiction battle scenes and how this track could possibly fit.
After that exercise, I decided to search Youtube in hopes of finding some footage that was similar to what I’d been imagining. Searching on a combination of keywords such as “encounter”, “first encounter”, “battle scene” and similar, soon proved to be exhausting…until I came across videos about Dune 2021. It didn’t take me long afterwards to find a scene what would pretty much be perfect for the length of “1st Encounter”. The scene is the beginning of the Atreides vs Harkonnen & Sardaukar battle footage. I removed the initial music during the ships approach, then further worked with the tracks in “1st Encounter” by applying track automation where necessary and adding other elements to help describe the emotion of the scene. I call it a work in progress (WIP) because although the scene is short (34 seconds), I have additional, but minor, ideas that I could try to further flesh the composition out, however I think I’ll leave it as is. The result is below.
It turned out to be useful exercise in a number of ways but, most importantly, it’s further motivated me to continue with these rescore exercise to improve myself as I take this journey. I hope you enjoyed it. Comments are welcome.
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Studio A on The Lab. This is where the heavy lifting happens. The central recording and music production tool is Logic 10.4.8, with Native Instruments Maschine and other NI products integrated into the music production workflow. The computer – a mid-2011 Mac mini running High Sierra is the center piece. Despite it’s age, it gets the job done but I’m currently saving up for the M1 Mac mini, 16GB and a newer MOTU digital audio interface (the 828 Mk3 Hybrid) for use with the M1. To the right and out of the picture is a 16-space rack of vintage synth modules. An Akai MPC 2500 sampling drum machine sits on top.
Been spending a lot time in hear during the last two weeks working on tracks for a collaboration project dropping in January 2022, as well as a sophomore project my recording partner and I have been working on for quite some time. We’ve got three singles that will drop prior to the entire project next spring.
Right now, this man is tired and the alarm will go off mighty earlier.
Transmitting from my iPhone 22 mini via the WordPress for iOS app. Goodnight, sleep well.
Back in 2007, I registered this domain, vibesnscribes.com, to start a blog about two topics: (1) reviews about music I listen to and (2) general daily topics I felt compelled to blog about.
Back then blogging was all the rage. Twitter just got off the ground, as well as Facebook, but to me, one’s blog was always more personal and self-controlled. As my long time friend in tech and podcasting, DarrenKeith (http://myloveformusic.blogspot.com) says, it’s your OWN digital garden. Well, this is an attempt to begin a weekly series on my music production journey and all the paths that encompass it. Other days of the week will be left to the two topics above (where I’ve actually spent a fair amount of time over the last 13 years blogging about). I often miss blogging, with the draw of Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter seemingly always taking over my online time with algorithms always attempting to show me and tell me what I should be looking at (which most times is inaccurate). While Medium is huge as a blogging platform, my own site is, well, my own. Blogging like this will, again, have to be a created habit so, we’ll see how that goes. Consider Music Mondays just a brain dump on what I’m involved with and what I hope to achieve.
I’ve always had a music production studio of some sort, one that has grown over the last 25 years to a space that has allowed me to release my own projects, work on projects of remote and global collaboration, land an opportunity to score a ten-episode webseries on YouTube and helped me sharpen my skills (although not as sharp as I believe they could be). I love composing/writing, producing, and releasing the music, though it’s the latter that seems to be most difficult for me on a regular, not because it IS difficult, but because the system(s) I desire to put into place sometimes just don’t really get off the paper (from a habitual standpoint). Last I checked, I have (in various states) twelve projects going on. The latest (personal) one is releasing a 10 track project on Bandcamp next year. The project will mostly be comprised of tracks I started back in 2012 or so (that have since been removed from my Soundcloud page) and involve me getting back to some older methods of how I was recording and producing tracks (hence the image of the Akai MPC 2500 above). It was fun getting back to re-learning that tech this weekend. It showed me that ,even though some of the processes are not as convenient as what I use today, it’s still as enjoyable using it to bring those older tracks into the present. Many times (as I heard mentioned on a YouTube video last night), often times, limitations can spark creativity and more simply put, everything involved in the “longer harder” way can also be enjoyable for many reasons I’ll save for another Music Monday. That will continue for sometime as I bridge the use of the MPC, Logic Pro X, and Native Instruments to get this project moving and done. I’m looking forward to releasing it, not only because it’s been two years since the last release, but listening back to these older tracks showed me that I was creating more music (even though WIPs) to share on Soundcloud. Some got some great comments, but they were essentially just sitting there. With the advent of distribution and music streaming platforms, there’s really no better time to get music into the ears of whatever audience one hopes to. I released a project under another alias that hit the streaming platforms. The purpose of it was tri-fold: (1) See how well my chosen distribution works, (2) see how well this new genre I am exploring does, for me as an artist, on major streaming platforms and how it is received by listeners where ever I expose it, and (3) allowed me to begin to learn the ins/outs of a new synthesizer I purchased. Surprisingly, with no marketing push, a few listeners in a Facebook group I belong to really liked it.
My new journey, one I hope to fully leverage (after getting the bug from composing that webseries) is two-fold: sync licensing and film scoring. I look around my home studio and grow tired of saying “you’re fully equipped”, so the old saying is ringing loud in my brain: “Don’t talk about it, be about it” (and that means passed brain dump blogging).
In our last episode :), I was working on rearranging and audio file our keyboardist recorded into a basic arrangement for the band to start rehearsing. The only thing in the audio file I wanted to delete was the scratch drum track he included, but since it was on contiguous file and not a set of stems, that couldn’t be done. Here’s in lies the magic of using the MIDI file he exported from his Reason 5 project. I finally got it late last night and was able to import it into Logic for greater editing. What’s great about using a MIDI file in a DAW is that your choose from a library of software instrumentsto make an entirely different sounding song. What can be bad about that flexibility is belaboring over WHICH grand piano, bass synth, string ensemble sounds best! In any event, I finally settled on some instruments that sound smooth, and was able to bounce the MIDI files to an mp3 file with no drums that the drummer can now rehearse to.
11:46 am on a Thursday and I’m breaking for lunch a little early, but eating at my desk (have a task I’m working on with a colleague and just got the ok from our supervisor on format – of cousse the task is due early this afternoon).
Those of you keeping up with my last few posts have followed the work I’m doing on getting this track completed for an upcoming (and long overdue) CD project. This has been after (I hate to admit) a long hiatus from working on the project, steadily that is. This brings me to the subject of M&Ms (no, not the world renowned candy): Motivations and Momentums. When it comes to reaching goals, I’m a task-driven guy that needs a plan to execute in order to even think about successfully reaching the goal(s). One of my favorite quotes is “Failing to plan means planning to fail, so plan the work, then work the plan.”. That’s all well and fine, but without the motivation and momentum behind that, it amounts to just a pretty phrase. M&Ms apply to many interests I have – achieving good financial health, achieving good physical fitness (exercise), achieving, most importantly, the proper spiritual walk with Jesus. What I’ve learned is that none of each of those can or will occur without staying motivated and keeping the momentum going – actions truly speak louder than words. Planning is great and truly a necessary foundation, but execution is key.
So, back to the music, right now the M&Ms are there and I’m finally realizing that movements, even though they are small, are better continuously, than no movement at all. Simple concept, yeah, but it really wasnt sinking in for a longgggggggg time. Last night’s was a continuation of working on the drum track. The entire drum track arrangement is complete with final editing of the kick drum track, now it’s time to EQ the individual drum tracks to satisfaction, then play back in the mix for proper levels, before bussing them out to the submix.
In parallel to that, I’ve just about finished editing the orchestral arrangement and have decided to substitute the legato clarinet with a full string ensemble track. I think the legato flutes will stay though. I think so more editing may have to take place to eliminate any overlapped notes, or gaps that will allow the entire orchestral arrangement to sound more realistic than it does at the moment.
Anyway, M&M’s and music (M-cubed?). I think I may get some for the studio….(candy that is….)
It’s about 8:34 pm, beat from a long day at work. It wasn’t busy, but I was up late last night working out a tune strictly from an audio file. I’m sitting in the studio tonite, about to chart out an arrangement of a song I wrote for the band I play in, Divine Intervention. We’re a contemporary gospel instrumental jazz group in the DC area that’s been together for a little over two years. Over the last year or so, we’ve talked about putting out a CD (as many always ask about that on FB or at gigs of ours). A few months ago a tune popped in my head which I immediately recorded a rough rhythm guitar track into my iPhone as I rushed out of the door for work one day.
After introducing it at a rehearsal, we’ve toyed with a few different ideas for arrangements, and sorta settled on one. One of the keyboardists took the hook and bridge, recorded a rough track into Reason 5 and brought to rehearsal. Nice percussive drum track, really nice bouncy synth bass, all under a string ensemble/pad voice that worked out the progressions. It’s from that mp3 that I’ve chopped up and rearranged into the main song, using Audacity, a really nice, very capable open source audio editor – a swiss army knife of sorts, if you will.
I hope to get the MIDI file the keyboardist exported from Reason, so I can import it into Logic for great editing and recording flexibility. Next I’ll chart it, old school, on some sheet music paper, send the rearranged mp3 out to the band, and give it a go at our next rehearsal. We’re hopeful that this is one of many original tracks for the CD. Stay tuned…
Back with another edition in the series entitled “Chronicles of A Remix”. In this edition, I’ll bring you in on a song I’m producing for Santo Domingo born, London-based vocalist, Karlina Veras.
Karlina and I connected via Twitter as a result of her tweet requesting collaboration with a producer for some tracks she has. The track I’m engineering, mixing and producing is one she calls “Stop It Now”. This is strictly a barter situation where I get to hone my mix skills, get credit for and push the final tune, while she gets the tune.
So far, she’s sent me rough vocals, grand piano, vocal adlibs. and a disco-style backing drum track. This is a dance track at 126 BPM. She’s requesting “a sense of air and space and a bit of sensitivity and desperation with a search of something”. In a base collaboration like this, the more the artist can convey to the composer about the tune, the better. Already I have an idea of the arrangement and elements I plan to incorporate to achieve what she feels. The first thing I did was audition some 2-step drum loops for foundation, to give it the feel she’s looking for.
One of the first things I noticed is that the audio stems were a mix of 24-bit (which Logic Studio automatically imports) and 32-bit resolutions (which Logic doesn’t automatically import). Logic’s current max import bit rate is 24-bit. I used my “swiss army knife”, Audacity to the conversion, then import into Logic, all the time thinking “Logic Studio must have a way of doing this”. It does: Compressor. Good to go next time.
This is the kind of thing I dreamt of doing many years ago and I’m simply looking at it as creatively win-win situation: I get to hone my music production and recording engineering skills on a song within a genre I like, she gets the track…all good. I have the BPM and some other track notes on the song from her. Being that it will be a dance track, this should be fun project, since some of favorite sub-genres lie in the dance music genre.
Next steps are to augment the loop with some drum programming to thicken it up. After sending her a snippet the other day, she likes it so far. We’re both excited.
I just finished the final base arrangement of the mix. Added a little track automation to the acappella track, as well as a jazzy guitar riff towards the end. I tend to like using a nice combination of a clean tone with just the right delay on it. Here’s a screenshot of the arrange window:
Leveraging technology today, for creative purposes. is really quite easy. As Bill commented on the last update post here, it allows worldwide collaboration no matter where the participants are, or what time of day (or night it is). Some of you know of the collaboration by me (DC), Todd Kelley (Cali), and Fave (Houston), namely Cross Country Collective.
Another thing that helps is to know the tools you’re working with. In this case, I use Logic Studio (Logic Pro 8), and Bill is using Logic Express 9. Same software but as usual, an “express: version of software usually has less functionality than a full version, but in this case, I put together the session such that he could import it into his version and nothing would be lost…pretty much the same process used for the C3 EP (with Todd and Fave using Logic Studio 9).
It’s off to Bill C in NYC…handle it, bruh! Stay tuned for the birth sometime this week.
Below is a short video on the status of the remix. This is a collab between me and Bill Cammack.
In the last update, I had just started chopping up samples from the timestretched vocal acappella. Analyzing the acappella is where I always start. Knowing the BPM is always helps, but if that isn’t readily available, you could always import the original track and use Logic’s BPM counter to determine what that is. Here’s a video he did on beat mapping for this remix:
There are a few ways to timestretch an audio file. What I find easiest to do (without using any external plugins) is to use Logic’s Time and Pitch Machine. Once you know what the BPM is of the original audio file, you enter the new BPM, and let Time and Pitch Machine run the Complex algorithm selection to stretch (or sometimes called time compress) the audio to the BPM you want use. The Complex algorithm setting seems to work the best in dealing with any problems from any audio aliasing resulting from the time stretching.
From that point it was adding some other elements from my sample library and arranging how I wanted them to be. My thought, throughout, was to have the mix include some dynamics to it…in terms of audio effects, at minimum (after all, this IS a dance club remix). THe first thing was to incorporate some delay on the samples. This is pretty much where I ended up going, while keeping focus on how I wanted the drum track to be.
Fast forward to some back and forth discussions with Bill on FB, and a collaboration was born. Bill has a good working knowledge of just not Ultrabeat, but Logic in general. I sent him an mp3 snippet of what I had so far and we went to work on it! The video clip below gives a lil background on how it’s been going so far.
Day 2 – Ok, I have the first two tracks kickin’ off this tune. I know that at some point, I’ll probably chop the vocals up, and some track automation, etc. As mentioned in the audio clip above, I’m thinking of some specific vocal samples to add, if I can find them. For this version of the remix (I will probably do three max), I’ll maintain the original tempo.
I’m using a standard software Apple loop for the basis of the drum track, but may program my own at a later day…I’ll see how the overall track flows….
