Story time: worked my semi-perennial job helping at my family's Shakespeare program over the summer. Every Saturday, we would hold little open mics with the students - some kids would do songs, some would do monologues or tell stories, etc.
Towards the end of the first week's open mic, one of the students got up and told us how stressed and scared she had been since she got to the program. She didn't feel like she was talented enough to be there, and that someone else should have been picked instead of her. Then she told us that she would really like to sing a song, but had never sung in public before, so she would sing facing away from us.
She sang a song that I don't remember the name of, and, of course, she fucking crushed it. Lots of tears all around.
The next week, she said that she wrote her very first song, and would like to share it with us. She sang it a capella, and immediately afterwards, I asked her if I could record it with her. She said yes, and we spent some of our little free time over the next few weeks talking about music and where she wanted the song to go.
Long story short, I recorded her vocals and some synths and totally forgot about the song until this morning. Finished it up and here we are.
More of a summer song than a rainy fall song, but ah well - it'll come back in style soon enough.
thenewgreen, steve, zebra2, kantos, @all the cool kids
Great stuff (: Are you moving down chromatically around 0:15? the voice leading sounded so good, but my ear is inexperienced. Hope you don't mind me asking - what program do you use? I've been learning ableton for the past month as a way to flesh out all the songs I never finish. It's so overwhelming (but exciting) to think of how much I need to learn when it comes to producing/mixing.
I am indeed! Also moving chromatically up at 0:52 ish. I am happy to talk shop! I use Reaper and love it dearly, mostly because it's just what I know best at this point. I've been using it for about 4 years, and because I'm a stingy bastard I still use almost exclusively built-in plugins for EQ, Delay, Compression, etc. I messed around with Ableton for a little bit - I found it to be a great place to work on ideas and get creative, but I was just so used to Reaper that it never really stuck with me. If you're looking to make some sort of electronic music, Ableton is definitely a good pick. Also, if you are interested in making electronic music and happen to have $250 to spend on something musical, I highly recommend the Arturia Microbrute, especially this particular package. This is what I use for basically all my synth stuff, and it's awesome. The Microbrute itself is an awesome way to learn the basics of synthesis in a hands-on way (plus it sounds great!), and it also works as a velocity-sensitive MIDI controller. The real beauty of this package is the synth library they include with it - there are something like 6000 presets, including some really lovely electric piano/organ stuff. All that being said, I recall that there are some nice synths built into Ableton, so the above recommendation may be irrelevant. ------------------------ What sort of music do you like? Do you have anything you've been working on that I could listen to (maybe PM me?) Always happen to meet another musician on here! In closing, here are two somewhat goofy but very useful videos you may find interesting:
I like the dated aesthetic of those vids! Ha. Really excited to dive into the mixing video especially. That microbrute does look really nice for learning what's what on a synth. Unfortunately, I'm saving up for a gig-worthy set of keys so I don't really have the budget for it. I mostly have been using a cheap vst I bought from pluginboutique, as I liked the electronic options on there more than the Ableton Lite core sounds. (I suspect I'm using them wrong, as I'm not finding too many on there I like at all.) With my original stuff, I've always gravitated towards danceable, light-hearted pop and rock as well as instrumental piano music, but I do plan to get more familiar with the workings of synths in the future. For now, I'm having fun with the hybridx64 vst and directly playing keys into ableton with the Focusrite Scarlett. I'm trying to ease my way in to the whole process, and I have my eyes set on learning mixing techniques and philosophies right now. For example, I'm mostly happy with this arrangement now, but I still feel pretty lost on how to get the sound to a higher level of quality. (EQ this, compression that.....) Some tracks seem to be uploading to soundcloud much quieter than what I'm hearing through ableton. I'm really digging your score music, especially Clown Magic! Love those strings.
Purdy!! I think you should make it a duet. Would be really compelling with another voice there. As if two people are singing the same sad song longing for one another, separately. You know, looking out of their apartment windows singing across the city...