Hello to everyone and thank you for stopping by my Wix website. Here you can take a listen to my final track project that I titled ‘From One End to The Other’. It’s just above this descriptive article and is just shy over one minute in length. For this project it was required that we choose one of two project tracks that we had done throughout this month; Track 1 from week one or Track 2 from week two. I decided to go with Track 1 and there are a few reasons behind the choice. My first reason was that the composition idea was primarily influenced through watercolor jazz, a genre that encompasses a soft and slow approach to the listener. I wanted to create a second section of the song that would be partially opposite of that. Think of night and day. Where the first half utilizes the sounds of acoustic instruments the second half takes advantage of synthesizers and sampled sounds. It goes from a smooth watercolor jazz song, to a more upfront - but still calming to listen too - dance track. Let’s go ahead and get into the meat and potatoes of this song, starting with the rhythm section.

 

For the rhythm of this entire song, I wanted to be polar opposite between each section. The first 16 measures of the song you hear an elegant acoustic drum kit consisting of a kick, snare, hi hat, and a ride cymbal. The second 16 measures consist of the same acoustic kit, but instead of being in the spotlight of the music, it sits underneath the sounds of an electronic kick, snare, and a synth-created percussion line. I could easily get away with the electronic drum sounds carrying the song by themselves, but I wanted the foundation of the acoustic kit to anchor the attack presence of each drum transient and to help make a correlation between the two sections. Though the tempo stays the same throughout the song at 91bpm, the feel of the song changes drastically as a cymbal swell creates something of a portal from one genre to another. Once you’ve entered the portal you will also notice the bass line becoming slightly different in sound and presence. The first 16 measures introduced a more upfront acoustic bass guitar sound that became more of a walking path for the song than any other instrument, but beyond the portal you hear that the bass line is not the only form of a low-end frequency that carries the music anymore. The combination of the kick and bass line share in the duties of creating that walking path for the song, and utilizing certain mixing techniques allows both low-end instruments to give each other space to be heard.

 

The key for this song is shared between the two sections. The acoustic section of the song is played in the key of A minor and the chord progression go as followed: Am Dm Em G Am Em C. The electronic section of the song is played in the relative key of A minor, which is C major and the chord progression goes as followed: Cmaj7 Em G Em Am Em Dm Bdim7. When it came to creating the progression, I wanted to keep the same structure throughout, with only changing the chords being used. Just as the drums were opposite of each other from one half of the song to the other, the harmony instruments were doing the same thing. In the acoustic section I went with a beautiful electric piano with the Deluxe Classic setting. This gives off the perfect watercolor jazz vibe that I intended on going for from the beginning. After you’ve went through the portal, however, you can hear the same piano working through the progression but instead it works as a lower foundation for another harmonic instrument, the Infinity Pad. The Infinity Pad runs through the Alchemy plugin and provides the song with that airy dance feeling that most dance song listeners are common to hearing. With it being layered on top of the acoustic piano it gains a fullness to its progression and once again puts the bass line in somewhat of a backseat. The melody that is sprinkled on top of the harmony chords are; once again, opposite of each other to a degree. I utilized the beautiful sound of a tenor saxophone to walk listeners through a short 8 measures of bliss. It’s almost common law that if you listen to a watercolor jazz song you are supposed to hear a saxophone playing some sweet, sweet melodies at some point. This is no different. The style of melody used is mostly motif melodies, but in the second section of the song you can hear some falling melodies as well. Just like with the harmony instruments I utilized synthesized sounds to create a sound that can be used in tandem with the saxophone for the melody of the dance section. I used the ES1 plugin to mold a more aggressive sound that can transform the saxophone into a more electrical instrument that carries the song more into that direction. I would like to think it worked out in the end.

 

The additional audio used in this song included some Apple loop samples, the previously discussed synthesizers, and my voice. There are two tracks in my mix that utilize Apple loop samples, one being a percussive bongo sound - titled World Drums 02 - that is featured in both sections of the song, and the other being a vocal layer that is only heard during the melody. The vocal layer - titled Next Level Vox 02 - was processed through the Sampler plugin, which gave me control over how the sound was perceived. There are two accounts of a synthesizer being used to shape a soundwave into what would be a percussive asset and melodic asset to the second half of the song. As I discussed in the previous paragraph, I used the ES1 plugin to shape the sound of the melody to further transform the saxophone, masking its traditional sound in a sense. For the percussion I used the ES P plugin. I only needed something to act as small run-on sound that added a little more to the electronic sound of the drums. For the recorded audio, you can hear that I used my voice. I did not have much of an idea in mind for what I wanted to do with my voice, so I used the space to merely thank you all for listening and to root for all my classmates as we progress towards our graduation days.

 

Processing for the entire song was fairly straight forward. Almost every track was given a compressor and EQ plugin and was also directed to an aux bus with a time-based effect. The drums were mixed with the idea that they were the backbone to the composition, which is why they were routed to the reverb aux bus channel. This gave the drums more depth and presence in the song, alleviating any need to crank the volume up too high. Since the bass wasn’t the center point of the song, I routed it to the chorus aux bus channel to widen the sound and compliment the harmony chords by filling in its lower-end frequencies. The harmony and melody instruments are meant to draw the pictures so sending them each to the reverb and delay aux bus channels gave them more meaning in the mix. Talking specifically about the melody of the first half of the song, I utilized automation to strengthen the delay on certain transients of the saxophone so that it had more impact to the listener. This idea was carried over to the second half as well, but it wasn’t a primary focus for that melody. My voice was not also meant to be a primary focus, and therefor was given the normal compressor and EQ treatment that it would usually go through. It was then routed to the reverb aux bus channel for a little more depth, just like the drums were. After all the individual processing, each track’s output was routed to a submaster track where it was given a final compressor and EQ treatment. This was just to make sure there were no obvious peaks in signal or faulty frequencies that ruined the overall mix.