Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Project 5- The Vocoder



So, I was really basically just running out of time with this project. I decided to just add some bass, even if I wasn't completely happy with it. I chose a bass sound and used a riff machine to make a pattern to put in the background. I "threw the dice" quite a few times until I came up with one that wasn't so busy that it would overthrow the rest of the piece, but not too simple either. I had tried simple sustained bass in the background and it wasn't working. In my opinion, this doesn't really work either. For one thing, it clashes with my drums. It also seems to choppy to really gel the whole song together, which is what I wanted my bass part to do. It also sounds a little louder than it did in FL Studio, which I'm not terribly happy about. Even with all of that considered, though, it sounds better than it did without the bass. What I was looking for was some really strong "glue", and I ended up with scotch tape holding my piece together. Scotch tape is obviously better than nothing. This piece was really difficult for me, mostly because I got too wrapped up in something that wasn't working. I got too far along to start over, so I had to make do with what I had started. Anyway, this is how I created my song, because I feel like I can do better posts when I do it all like this, rather than in little pieces after working each day. I started with getting my voice from freesound. This is probably where I started to lose enthusiasm for this project, because I couldn't find anything I liked. Eventually I settled the creepy guy asking if you wanted a cup of tea. It amused me. Kind of. Anyway, I downloaded other tea-like sounds while I was there (stirring sound, pouring water). Then I started with sytrus, and made up my own little melody. I was very proud of myself, it was the first time I didn't rely on the chop tool. This is the melody you hear for most of the song, along with the bass. I decided this wasn't right for the intro, though, so I used The sound of the tea pouring and a simple little melody (orionstring). I added the vocals I had created using the vocoder where I thought they would sound good. I though this was hard because they sounded like I had placed them randomly no matter where I put them. Then I added in a couple other little details (the stirring sound, a couple bell sounds that you can't really hear...)because it sounded pretty monotonous (or maybe I just have a short attention span). I kept creating drum patterns that didn't work with my piece, until I finally decided to use tom drums. They had a deep enough sound to complement my sytrus sound. They sounded good originally, but now that I've added the bass they don't really flow the way I wanted them to. Anyway, I added a fade in at the beginning and a fade out at the end. Eventually, I ended up with this.

1 comment:

  1. After reading your post, I was convinced that the loop wasn't going to be up to your usual standards, but I was wrong.

    This is very good.

    I like the groove, and the different vocal processing you used. All of the sounds are well balanced and your synths all complement each other. I like it a lot.

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