Final Track Project

As I reflect upon this creative process of this composition, I can identify the various elements as they came about. My inspirations included embracing the sounds of the environment around me as I worked this piece in my local coffee shop. I needed an escape from the regular monotony of my apartment after getting off work. Being around my fellow human beings allowed me to reach inside and step outside of my comfort zone of just strictly engineering or rapping. 

 

The rhythm of this composition is the same throughout all sixteen bars. I found it to be a challenge to try and change up the drum beat in the middle of the track and was spending too many hours trying to get past that first component, it took away from valuable hours that could have been spent focusing on other parts that required equal, or more attention. The bassline, however, did see a slight change. The new key in starting at bar 17 meant that it had to follow the new root note pattern This made the groove have a sudden shift after the break of bar 16. 

 

The harmony started with chords in the scale of C Major; I V vi IV (C G Am F) and transitioned to the relative key of Am I V vi IV (Am Em F Dm) on bar 17.  I started with the chords playing through full bars, yet after the switch, I changed it up to chords on beats, to two chords per bar, coming back ending on one chord per measure. The tempo remains the same, yet the mood of the chords is shifted from joyous and happy to a dark type of mood.  The melody had a similar change going from the C Major scale over to the minor scale, with the beginning 16 sounding exuberant in contrast to the last 16 which sounded a little more anxious. 

 

The first half of the audio track is simple four bar audio loop called Jazzy Rock Drums, that was pulled from Logic Pro’s stock loops section and placed on the start of bars five and thirteen. The recorded audio that I added on the second 16 bars is my own vocals. I simply threw the first few words that came to my mind while the track was playing in the background. “It’s life, I’m Living it.” I chopped up the audio and split it into four parts spread out every four bars or so. 

 

The processing that was added to this composition includes dynamic and time-based effects. I added the dynamic effects of EQ and Compressor on the recorded audio to clean up a little bit of the erroneous frequencies and sounds that came with recording live audio. I added time based effects; Chromaverb sent to Bus 6 on the harmony and recorded audio tracks (Track 5, 11) and a Delay sent to Bus 7 on the recorded audio Track 11 as well.