Contemporary Production Techniques
Welcome to the CPT page. It's been quite the journey through this program, and in Contemporary Production Techniques a new and exciting challenge was presented in the form of learning a whole new digital audio workstation; Ableton Live 11! Before this month I have never used this DAW, let alone see anyone work with it for music production but this month has shown me so much about it that I feel much more comfortable with recording, mixing, and mastering while using just the stock plugins. Below you will see three different projects that I undertook through the month, one being a short remix, the other being a composition I did to a promotional skateboarding video, and the last being the final project of the month. All these productions were created in Ableton using stock plugins to mix and master each element. Between the second and third song, live drums were recorded using my own drum kit within my home studio. A lot of fun was put into these projects and I hope that you enjoy them just as much as I did creating them. Thank you!
REMIX PROJECT
During week one a remix project was presented to me. the objective was to take elements of an existing song and transform it into something new while still maintaining the feel of the original. While I feel the elements were present in my remix, I did take some creative liberties to jump to a slightly different genre, going from a chill-hop vibe to a more drum-n-bass song. The process was fun and a great introduction into what ableton can accomplish for both producers and engineers alike.
Video Composition project
The following week presented something I've never done before, but certainly was excited to try. being given a promotional skateboarding video of a little over four minutes in length, the objective was to create a song that would follow the video. now, being someone who skateboarded a lot as a teen I knew exactly what genre i needed to go for in order to make the contents of the video shine, so i knew recording live instruments was a must. the first hurdle to jump, however, was to pinpoint a bpm that allowed for downbeats to land at the same time a skater landed their trick, or when a slow-motion scene was active. after careful viewing and calculating i determined a bpm of 133 fit almost perfectly with what was going on throughout the video. once that was mapped, it was time to create the music and to help with all the sudden slow-motion scenes I decided to start the production with drums. as difficult as it was to follow the tempo and the waveform of the video actively during recording, i felt starting with drums was the best decision to be able to paint a much clearer picture of what the song would sound like in the end with guitars and bass. creating harmony parts with an already laid out drum map is quite easy and made the production go that much faster. outside of the guitars and bass there isn't much more to the song that was required, as most skateboarding videos you watch have some form of punk rock playing as the background music, and in punk rock there isn't much more than the essential drums, guitars, and bass. so once those three elements were blended together the end result was nothing more than a rock song that followed the video fairly well.
final project
The following week presented something I've never done before, but certainly was excited to try. being given a promotional skateboarding video of a little over four minutes in length, the objective was to create a song that would follow the video. now, being someone who skateboarded a lot as a teen I knew exactly what genre i needed to go for in order to make the contents of the video shine, so i knew recording live instruments was a must. the first hurdle to jump, however, was to pinpoint a bpm that allowed for downbeats to land at the same time a skater landed their trick, or when a slow-motion scene was active. after careful viewing and calculating i determined a bpm of 133 fit almost perfectly with what was going on throughout the video. once that was mapped, it was time to create the music and to help with all the sudden slow-motion scenes I decided to start the production with drums. as difficult as it was to follow the tempo and the waveform of the video actively during recording, i felt starting with drums was the best decision to be able to paint a much clearer picture of what the song would sound like in the end with guitars and bass. creating harmony parts with an already laid out drum map is quite easy and made the production go that much faster. outside of the guitars and bass there isn't much more to the song that was required, as most skateboarding videos you watch have some form of punk rock playing as the background music, and in punk rock there isn't much more than the essential drums, guitars, and bass. so once those three elements were blended together the end result was nothing more than a rock song that followed the video fairly well.