WEEKLY
REFLECTIONS
Term 1 - Week 9
Ive chosen my song! I was going to do a song from La La land, one of my most watched movies of all time, but I decided that I would much prefer to cover a song from one of my favourite artists Kali Uchis. The song is called 'Killer', its got a nice chord progression and some little accented notes that I think I could pull off on the saxophone.
The two concepts I've decided to change are the texture and structure. The original is very dense in texture so I decided that my cover of the song would be slightly less dense while still staying true to the original sound. In terms of changing the structure, the original structure is: intro, verse 1, pre-chorus, chorus, verse 2, pre-chorus, chorus, outro. Im getting rid of the outro because it has way to many parts for me to figure out and because I think it finishes off nicely with a chorus anyway. I'm also changing the instrumentation to further modify the structure.
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Term 1 - Week 10
I've decided on my instrumentation; the saxophone will be providing accompaniment. the pad synth will provide the chordal accompaniment, vocals will provide the melody. I would've liked to use a real piano for an accompaniment but since I don't have access I will be using an electric piano.
I'm starting to play around with recording software that I think might work. I plan on using garageband though I still haven't decided whether to do it on my Ipad or my Desktop computer. The Ipad, although I have more experience with, is proving difficult to record with. The Desktop computer is completely new to me so I would have to learn from scratch however i think this is what i will have to do.
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Here is a look at my first attempt at recording. There are no saxophone parts yet as I plan on recording those next week.
Term 1 - Week 11
I've started notating my arrangement on noteflight. I've only done the intro so far but it lays out the way for the rest of the song so most of the rest of the process will be working out the vocal parts and along with a little copying and pasting. I also created a graphic notation of my plan for the cover (see below).
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The biggest challenge I faced this week was recording the saxophone parts. It is very hard considering my recording setup being a crappy mic plugged into my laptop. Its very hard for me to blurt out these high notes quietly without being incredibly flat. so i basically have to decide between very out of tune or ear piercingly loud. Turning down the volume of the saxophone track in garageband, although somewhat helpful makes the recording sound unnatural and airy causing an unintentional shift in tone colour. I'm sure I can figure out how to deal with this in the near future.
Holidays - Week 1
I've continued on my noteflight and I am powering through. I aim to be done by the end of next week before school starts again. Otherwise this week I've been relaxing and enjoying the holidays.
In terms of last weeks problem with recording the saxophone, my brother who is a recording artists has given me permission to use his recording setup. Im very excited and can't wait to start recording next week.
Holidays - Week 2
This week i have finished my noteflight notation! I also decided to add a drum part to my arrangement because without it it felt like there was no pulse and overall it felt sort of empty.I updated my graphic notation to include this
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I also did all of my recordings on my brothers laptop using logic pro x. He showed me the basics and then I recorded all of the parts. The microphone quality was much better than anything I could've done without him. This solved the problem with the saxophone recording being too loud and overall I really enjoyed using his set-up. To record the electric piano and pad synth parts I used musical typing and I used a software instrument to record the drum parts. the parts were fairly simple and I could've probably done it with found percussion but I felt that the software drums gave it a nice polished sound.
Term 2 - Week 1
This week I am editing my cover. I added some pitch correction on my voice as well as some reverb and echo to get a nice full sound. My brother is helping me with the editing process because I'm still new to the whole logic thing. Now all that is left to do is to put the finishing touches on my composition so I can call it done!
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this assignment has been a great chance to learn a new skill that I can hopefully apply to other assignments in the future and I really enjoyed it!