Music

When I first sat in front of my computer to start making this track, I started thinking of what types of music I had been listening frequently lately. I’ve been really interested in making moodier R&B music because I have been listening to a lot of artists in that genre recently and went for a party next door type beat with this track. It is definitely a track that is emotional and could be used in a current R&B song or hip hop.

       The meter I went with is the common 4/4 time. I wanted to start off the beginning of the track with not as many drums and make into somewhat of an intro to the song, then from there I started layering on more sounds one at a time. I went with a hip hop sound drum machine to stay in theme of R&B which usually uses hip hop drums then I used very heavy sub bass because subby basses fit very well with R&B music and are used a lot in the R&B artists I listen to.

       The key to the piece is in D minor. I knew I wanted to use a minor chord, so I first started with making the choice of what instruments I wanted to use. In a lot of R&B music they use a lot of dark, wavy, pad synths that are long and drawn out so once I found which synth, I wanted to use I then started to play minor chords until I found a chord progression that I liked, and I hit a d minor and knew that was the chord I wanted to use, the progression goes D,C,A,Bb. When I started adding on other instruments for the melody, I went with the same theme that I did for the harmony and picked darker synth instruments and made my own in the ESP. 

       For the audio I used I threw in a producer tag in the beginning of the song that I recorded for a different version of this song and transferred it over to this song and mixed it in this session. For the synthesizers I used the ESP on the Plucked synth track on number 10 and the rising synth on 11. For the plucked synth I just wanted to add on another layer in the end of the song that could even be used as a loop but for the riser I wanted a cool quick riser FX to make the beginning part more interesting and tucked it in the back.

       When I mixed the song, I turned all the faders down to 0 then started raising their volumes one by one. I used a couple different effects on a couple different tracks in the song. First I used reverb on the rising synth and also added a chorus to the it to double the sound of the instrument being played. I then added an exciter and a bitcrusher to the vox sample to give it effects so it sounded more interesting and not dry. I also added a delay to my tag to give it an echo effect when it happens. The dynamic effects I added was an EQ and a compressor to the high hats and then a compressor on the calm and storm synth. These effects add a lot of character and uniqueness to the instruments and audio in the track.