Bleu Muse

What about filming a music video for Till We Meet Again?

There is no shortcut, there is only hard work.

Looking back at my progression...

To sum up the previous songwriting steps, my suggestions to all of you is to spend a little bit of time to find your own DAW and be patient enough to master it. You will later realise that the time that you spend on familiarising a DAW is really worth the thing. Also, try to do some researches on music theory and its principles along your way for composing if you are new to music.

The songwriting steps that I shared are based on my personal songwriting experience. There is no hard rule in songwriting, like many other creative processes. The important thing is to find a way which you feel happy with, as songwriting should be an enjoyable process.

After finishing the song composition, you can finally move on to the most important while it is also the most challenging part, which is vocal recording. This is the most essential because people tend to get attached to vocal the most in a song while vocalising is also one of the most difficult parts to master. But surely there is something you can do to make this part easier. First and the foremost, get yourself a room which is noise-proof. You never want any background noise to get into your song. Studio or room covered with acoustic foam which possesses sound absorption feature is preferred. Next, get yourself ready with all the necessary vocal recording equipments. For me, I use Shure KSM44 microphone for recording, along with a pop filter to remove breathing sound. An XLR cable is also used to connect the microphone to my Avid Mbox so that the signals can be sent back to my computer. Also, never forget to prepare yourself a good studio headphone for hearing the playbacks of your takes so as to spot out, hopefully, all the unwanted flaws in your recordings at the production stage. Last but not least, is to get yourself or your vocalist ready to record the hit!

It is also preferred to recording the same lines for a few times so as to get the takes that sound the most perfect to you. Singing the same lines for several times also allows you to use them as for doubling effects which will make your sound more powerful and professional. Harmonic backing vocals can also be recorded for making your vocal sounds more dynamic by singing the 3rd or 5th of the chord an octave higher or lower than the original. But backing vocal is a just matter of personal preference and it may not be necessary for some song types like Hip Hop. 

Below I uploaded my studio setup for you guys as a reference. 

Drums is essential to make your song rhythmic and get people dancing. But don’t worry if you have little or even no knowledge about percussions and beat arrangements as DAWs nowadays like Logic include a number of beats and drums plugins that allows users to easily synthesis beats and drummer tracks out of a few clicks. All you have to concern is whether the rhythms and sounds that being generated will match with the style of your song. 

In Logic, I really love a plugin called Ultrabeat, which is a virtual instrument that you can customise beat steps and sounds. The drummer track feature is also a reason why many song producers love Logic as it allows you to adjust the complexity and volume of the beats by simple drag and drop. 

Song composition can be difficult even for those who know how to play the piano, the guitar or other musical instruments, as playing other people’s songs and writing your own songs are totally different.

One of the key features of chord and bassline compositions is harmony. Your melodies, chords and basslines can sound totally not similar, or even each plays their own melodic lines; but they have to sound harmonic when they are being played at the same time while supporting each other.

I would say this part is probably the hardest part for me when I compose Till We Meet Again. Again, I tried to learn the essential principles online then experimented different combinations and compositions on my own. The followings shows you where I learned how to write chord progressions and basslines through online sources. 

If you want to write a song, you probably have little pieces of melodies or beats or lyrics pop up your mind. But what’s next? How to finish a song out of these little fragments? This was also the problem that I faced when I started to write my very first song. If you can play musical instruments and know about music theories, songwriting should be easier for you. But what if you know nothing about music at all and just want to create something that sounds good to ears? There are actually many songwriters in nowadays music industry who had had no prior musical backgrounds before they wrote their earworms. Music background is no longer a prerequisite for songwriting with the advancement of DAWs as well as the emergence of overwhelming music learning platforms.

First things first, be fearless and always try to note down any musical ideas that come up to you, regardless of melodies, lyrics, chords, basslines, beats, emotions or even just the themes that you wanna talk about. Then, fill in the remaining parts of your song. Majority of the songwriters first starts with melodies or lyrics. Some write the melody first, then the lyrics; while some do it in the other way round. For me, I do both; depending on the inspirations that I have at the moment. Some lines of Till We Meet Again first appeared as lyrics on my head, as they are the messages that I want to convey; then I mapped the words with notes series that I feel happy about. Meanwhile, some melodies in the song were written intendedly as they have been looping on my head for a very long time, then I continued writing my thoughts in lyrical form to fit with these notes. 

After I came up with one or a few lines that I am happy with, I started to look into the structures of the songs that I like (mostly pop and EDM). It is not a must to follow other songs’ structures but it is good to use them as templates or references if you have no idea what you should write next and wish to build a strong structure that gets into listeners’ eyes more easily. 

In case you are interested in different song structures, here attaches a screenshot which shows you about different song arranging approaches. 

Stay tuned to my updates, I am gonna talk about chord and bassline composing in the coming posts. 

If you are struggling on where and how to kick off your songwriting journey, you have come up with the right post. Here I am gonna share my ways and sources of how I learned the DAW. 

I used an online learning platform called Lynda (https://www.lynda.com/) to learn Logic Pro by myself. Besides learning how to use the DAWs, you can also learn music theory, studio production techniques or even scopes other than music production in this platform. Exercise files along with the corresponding courses are also available for learners to follow along if you are signed up to be Lynda’s premium member. There are also numerous free learning materials out there where you can learn for FREE. I am not trying to bluff you out but YouTube is definitely a good platform for you to learn ANYTHING! The following attaches the courses that I took in Lynda which I found rewarding and the music production channels that I subscribed to on YouTube which are informative. I hope my personal experience will make the songwriting journey easier for you guys!

I spent 3 months last year to learn how to use Logic Pro X by starting from scratch, including recording, composing, mixing and mastering. The beginning was hard, like the beginnings of everything else; but the sense of accomplishment that I have gained as I gradually achieving more and more of what I want to do is what strengthens my persistence. Learning is always an endless journey and I am still learning new features in Logic till now. 

Coming next, I will go back to the core and talk about how to really write a song.

Finding your own DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) is like finding the right cell phone for yourself. It may be different from the one that your friend uses, but it should be the one that is handy, functional and versatile which enables YOU to complete the tasks that you wish to do. 

Before I started my journey of songwriting, I had done quite a bit of research and comparisons on the DAWs in the current market. There are so many DAWs available and it is nearly impossible to master them all; and more importantly, it is not necessary to. It is true that different DAWs have different advantages (eg. Logic has really cool drum synthesiser, Pro Tools possesses collaborative feature to support the joint effort by different musicians, etc.), but I suggest beginners in songwriting like me can try to learn and master only one DAW first before moving on to the next. 

As a Mac user and beginner in songwriting, Logic Pro X (DAW that is developed by Apple) is undoubtedly a good choice for me with its user-friendly interface and affordable price. It also supports songwriting and mixing of more advanced levels with cutting-edge virtual instruments plugins. 

In the next post, I am gonna share the ways and sources that I use to learn and master the DAW.