TRACK 1: Listen To Her Words

Songwriting

The main idea this song carries is about ‘finding yourself’ and growing to the idea of self-acceptance. I actually began to write the lyrics for this song when I was on my own and bored at my part-time work. I can’t say it was exactly a moment of feeling inspired, more that I needed to somehow evoke actual emotion after having to continuously fake an overly happy smile at the family theme park I was working at. I always like to write lyrics that generate visual imagery, therefore this song was written with themes of nature in mind, also involving more abstract subjects so listeners can interpret the words as their own story. Once writing the essential lyrics, chords and melodies to the song, I began to form the instrumental with piano and synth layers and eventually beats and percussion.

Production influences

Beats and percussion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L17e4-VXV7g – Breakaway, Lennon Stella

When it came to creating a sound palette, I knew I wanted ambient pad sounds to evolve the ballad style (70 BPM) of this track, however, also combining this with a more pop influenced beat. This is common in modern pop music whereby artists (such as Lennon Stella, Nina Nesbitt, and Sabrina Carpenter) use drum machines with gritty hi hats and high cut claps to give clean cut rhythms and repetitive grooves. I produced similar drum loops of my own, in EXS24 in Logic Pro, with the use of quality instrument samples from online sample provider ‘Goldbaby’ (http://www.goldbaby.co.nz/).  Nevertheless I still combined these percussion sounds with some live drum samples I recorded in the studio, in particular the kick drum, snare rim hit, and crash cymbal. This was to ensure I had the desired atmosphere in my track and create the right balance and blend of live sounds and samples. These are takes from the drum sample recording session:

Vocals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoZPVMEsbeQ – Young, Vallis Alps Although there are various complex parts to this track, the vocal is continuously powerful and stands out in the entire mix. I wanted to recreate this sense of space for vocals in all of my track mixes, in order to replicate this dreamy and nostalgic vibe that I feel when listening to ‘Young’ (produced by duo band member David Ansari). I discovered how to achieve a similar effect when editing the vocals in my second track ‘Watching Fires’. Having learned these editing vocal techniques, I could apply the same to ‘Listen To Her Words’.

EDITING AND MIXING

Bass: I discovered a simple synth bass sound which needed some editing to blend smoothly within the track and also build up the low end. With guidance from lecturer Patrik, I found that the key plugins to achieve this with were EQ and compression. I cut the high end as I did not want intrusive buzzy tones, then I boosted quite a lot in the low end around 150 Hz so it filled out low frequencies in the track.

The use of a compressor with a high ratio and a longer release time of 220.0 ms made the bass volume sustain longer and feel more controlled. I then enhanced this with the use of a multiband compressor whereby you can compress certain bands of frequencies to boost particular tones (I gained a better understanding of this plugin with help from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AohfN4HU8Mo and https://macprovideo.com/article/mixing-and-mastering/mixing-tips-understanding-multiband-compression). Whilst bypassing the other 3 bands of frequencies, I only focused on the lows at 20 Hz to 72 Hz, and this gave extra dynamic and body.

Synth pads: To balance out frequencies across the track, it was important that the synths did not make my mix muddy and cluttered. To avoid this I made sure to cut the low end and then boost the mid and high tones. This process of EQ also brightened the track.