#creativework3

Process Diary

Summary

With miles, I wanted to capture this precise feeling of happiness in giving up and defeat. Where it is more common to explore sorrowful themes in this part of life, I sought to encapsulate the idea of joy in not caring and running away. I was inspired by a scene in ‘Breaking Bad’, where main character Walter White is under the floorboards of his house and laughing hysterically after finding out the last of his stash of money that he toiled to the bone for was gone. There is a degree of incredulity and absurdity to that notion that I found intriguing. As such, I sought to tell a narrative with the track structure and sonic influences. The first portion of the track - hip-hop oriented - sounds jubilant and free, whereas the second portion - ambient and alternative - is more reflective and longing, and the final portion - rock and shoe-gaze inspired - provides the catharsis needed.

Creating this track was an extraordinarily difficult undertaking for me. I had bold and ambitious visions - to blend physical and lo-fi and contrasting sounds together in this genre-bending, dense, and large body of work. 

Track Background - Composition

The foundation of the track was a riff I heard in my head while on a walk, and subsequently replicated in MIDI. It’s a riff that climbs and falls, and gives me a sense of exasperation and energetic weariness. Around this, I built chords and a bass line to match, creating the first version of the chorus in part 1. Through trial and error, I also worked out a  melody line for the vocals - a bit of melodic rapping for the pre-chorus and then strong belted delivery on the main part of the chorus. My vision was to contrast with the uplifting, bright nature of the tune with the darker, sorrowful narrative told by the lyrics. It’s a technique I’ve seen used by artists before, and I thought it’d be an interesting idea to explore.

The post chorus slows down from the more explosive textures in the main chorus, and it’s here I establish a motif - ‘Count on me, I’ll just let you down…’ - that is repeated throughout the song. It’s the narrator’s admittance of failure and self doubt that is the foundation of the major themes present. 

After the second chorus, we hear the guitar riff I developed in its full glory, providing a sense of closure for this section of the song, and helping transition into part 2. This section underwent the most structural changes in the track - at first, I planned for it to be a indie pop ballad-esque singing portion, and then I experimented with some glitchy, experimental electronic vocals with plenty of manipulation. Ultimately, it became a rap/spoken word section with an emotional crescendo towards the end. It’s here that the narrator reflects on his journey as he embarks in search of those ‘miles’; my intent was to highlight his understanding of himself and what brought him here, thus closing emotions off. I also play with the idea that ‘thieves think everyone steals’ - the idea that his animosity towards other people stems from his distrust of himself; for example in the lyric ‘Evil lies in all I meet, for I see mirrors..’. Despite understanding this, he cannot heal, and further dives into his fantasy.

I knew that a softly strummed guitar was the right choice for this section, juxtaposed against the loud and bright sounds of the first part. I lay the groundwork for the chords with a clean tone electric guitar, envisioning this to be replaced eventually with acoustic guitar, but regrettably I had no time in the end. Over the top of the guitar, I improvised little ornamentations. At the end, I felt it needed something to help underpin the emotion towards the second half, and ended up adding a string portion to accompany the guitar, which I really liked. 

The final section of the track is a shoe-gaze inspired, cathartic send off. I knew after the second section that we needed to bring it home with a big finish, but going back to section A didn’t feel natural. As such, I developed a chord progression that I felt seesawed with the feelings of home and the unknown, which I thought was a fitting ending. Admittedly, this was the most difficult part, as I had ambitions probably far too high for what I could possibly do, and ended up cutting a lot of ideas I had. I felt it was right to have the ‘Count on me’ motif return. I also loved the sound of the guitar riff from the earlier parts placed here but with new chords to underpin it, giving it new life and emotion. 

Track Background - Production (Challenges and Solutions)

One of the challenges I made for myself was to incorporate more ‘real’ elements in this track and bring more dirt into the tracks, spending less time in my DAW and more time playing instruments and recording real sound. As such, it was my first time recording real guitar, and trying to properly record vocals. This proved the biggest struggle for me, as I was adjusting to new gear and fighting a battle with the DAW and plugins to get the sound I wanted. For the vocals, one of the major things I learned from this task was developing a vocal chain. Definitely not perfect, but I went from really flat sounding vocals to warmer, more present ones by learning to use compressors, reverb, delay, saturation, panning and layering. 

In order to thicken the vocals, I used a few techniques. The first was to record multiple takes and stack them under each other, EQing them a bit differently. I used different reverbs and enhanced different frequencies in the takes to give the vocal more body; I used this technique a lot in the verses of the song. I also mixed in a pitched down version of the vocals with the dry sound to give them more depth and brevity. For certain sections, I used the technique of using multiple layers and panning on L and R to create a wider image.

To make them more interesting, I really adored pitch shifting and using a phaser to create a really cool, trippy sound and supplemented my vocals with these layers. The use of autotune is also very prevalent in this track, particularly the first part. I like the sound of my voice with and without autotune, but in certain sections the electronic, bright and glimmering sound lent itself well to the hiphop influences I was after. I also liked the idea of the autotune being strong in the first section, where the narrator is closed off and putting up a pretence, and the ‘mask’ shedding off in the second section, with the natural vocals reflecting a more naked insight into their stream of consciousness. 

Throughout the song, I leaned heavily into the use of delays - I felt that this effect helped fill out the track and was sonically apt. These techniques gave the song some psychedelic colours. I used a few different kinds - a slap delay to widen vocals, lo-fi delays to give the spoken word sections more colour, and stereo delays to help make elements sound more grand. 

In the first part of the song, I focused heavily on layer-cake orchestration to create a rich, satisfying sound. I layered a more textured synth bass with a deeper sub bass to give it more body, and had different instrumentation filing out the middle and top end.

A major change that shifted the scope of the track was removing the guitar riff that was playing during the chorus in an earlier draft. After showing the track to Damian, his feedback was that there was too much happening and that there cannot be two foreground elements. I went back to the track and removed it and though it sounded less busy, it was also empty-sounding. I was able to find a middle ground by creating a simplified version of the riff and placing it an octave lower, to maintain the same cross-melody and rhythm I desired but without getting in the way of the vocals. From this point on, I went forward thinking more about foreground, middle ground and background elements rather than just throwing everything I could in, which made the end result sound more polished. 

The most difficult section of the song to produce was the outro towards the back end. I love shoegaze and rock music but to produce it was a different beast to me. This was definitely the biggest creative risk I felt I took and in the end, I am far from nailing it but I am happy with what I’ve produced as a learning experience for me. It was difficult not only finding the right combination of compression/delay/reverb to achieve that distorted sound but also making it fit with the much more ambient vibe of the section that came before. On top of this, I found great difficulty in finding space for the choral singing portion - when mixed too low, it faded too far into the track, and when mixed too high, it sounded jarring and out of place. 

Reflection - What I Learned

Working on this track was an adventure into undiscovered terrain for me, and I learned so much about different mixing techniques, composition and structure, and improving my workflow. I’ve never worked with vocals on this scale, and as such forcing myself to learn how to bus was crucial in handling such a high amount of different tracks. Learning to automate and dive deeper into fundamental effects such as EQ, reverb, compression and when and where to use them was a huge step forward for me. I also gained a deeper insight into layering; I improved in highlighting foreground and background elements as I made major changes throughout, and learning to cut things I didn’t want to in order to simplify the mix. Furthermore, playing real instruments and recording sound that didn’t come from presets or loops was a huge jump for me and I’m excited to see how I can grow in this area. For my next projects, I hope to continue holding those key concepts strong in my mind and getting better at recording and performing. I’d also love to look into other modulation techniques, like granular synthesis and incorporating more non-musical elements, which I felt were a bit lacking in this track.

Here they are! Two tracks about the trials and tribulations (mostly trials) of getting older. I split my track into two parts:

Song 1: ‘Birthday Eve’ - a musical and thematic introduction into my thoughts on society’s expectations for birthday celebrations. 

https://soundcloud.com/holly-benson-310157495/birthday-eve?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing 

Song 2: ‘Birthday Candles’ - a track that is very near and dear to my heart. 

https://soundcloud.com/holly-benson-310157495/birthday-candles?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

Listening instructions:

Please listen to ‘Birthday Eve’ first, and queue ‘Birthday Candles’ so that they flow directly into each other. They are made to be played consecutively.  Song Credits:

Songwriters: Holly Benson 

Producers: Holly Benson 

Audio Engineers: Holly Benson  

Basically both songs are written, composed, recorded, produced and engineered solely by me! I hope you enjoy. 

I spent most of today putting the final touches on my track, which included: • Making two different mixes of the track, and deliberating on which one I liked the best • Adding some panning details throughout, especially in the bridge piano • Refining string sounds • Adding some wet sounding keys behind the chorus and verses to fill in some of the textural space. • Cutting up some audio clips of me crying in the rain, and layering it over the bridge. • Removing reverb echoes from sections that were intentionally silent • EQ’d the acoustic guitar and some of the drum parts • Added reverb to one of the main vocals, but I wanted most of the vocals to sound dry, so I used reverb sparingly. • Introduced an arpeggio-style part in the introduction and the second chorus • Listened to the song with my eyes closed a couple times, and took note of any minor details I wanted to change. Below are some images of some of my EQs, where my main goal was to remove any obvious unwanted noises.

When making these final touches, I kept my artistic vision in mind: that is, I wanted to make a song that would evoke bittersweet emotions, and feel intimate to the listener. 

Obstacles to overcome:

- Originally, I wanted the two different vocal harmony stacks in the intro song to be layered over each other and staggered, but when I tried this it became too cluttered. 

- There are a few moments in the second chorus where the vocal melody becomes too loud, but I could not find a way to overcome this. 

- The chord progression I originally chose made writing a bass line very difficult, because it did not follow conventional chord structures. I worked around this as best as I could, but if I could turn back time, I would possibly alter the chord progression slightly. 

Vision for the bridge 

I recently finished writing the bridge of this song, so I wanted to record it today. I wrote the melody to the arpeggiated piano part, using a poem I had written the day I came up with the idea for this song.

Audio clips 

Before the bridge, I decided to insert the backend of the audio clips that appeared at the beginning. The second halves of these audio clips finally get round to saying ‘happy birthday’. I wanted to leave this text until just before the bridge, so the rest of the song prior to the bridge could be my deliberation over birthdays, and blowing out candles, and so that the bridge could be the somewhat depressing aftermath of refusing to act happy on your birthday.

Producing the bridge 

In terms of production, I wanted it to feel distinctly different to the rest of the song, so I used piano as the foundations. After a couple hours of messing around and recording the vocals, and the doubles, I wrote a few string parts to accompany the bridge. I thought they tugged at my heart strings (literally) and added a bit of much needed texture.

Randomly I came across this weird string sound which you can hear somewhat in the background of the bridge – I thought this was haunting, so I included it in the introduction as well.

I thought it was time to finally write the drum part for my song!! Drum parts aren’t my strongest point, as I’m not a drummer. Thus, I tried to stick to a pretty simple beat. The final beat that I landed on was the third one I tried….  But at least I’ve got a beat now.

When choosing the kit and sounds of the drumbeat, I like to mix and match different parts from the built-in sounds in logic. This way I can customise the sounds without having to sort through thousands of samples. I do hope to getter better at writing rhythmic parts in the future!

Editing the vocals for the rest of the song

I spent a ridiculous amount of time going through the rest of the vocals, choosing which takes, or parts of takes, I liked best. After countless hours of sorting, I finally chose the final versions for the verses, choruses and all the backing vocals.

When I was editing the other vocals, I used a similar technique to the one I used yesterday, where I created a new channel for each track that would act as the reverb (VERB) channel. This meant that I could be more precise and specific with my use of reverb.

Problem-solving 

Once I had cut each take, and compiled the pieces I wanted, I came across an issue. I tried to use the fade tool in logic pro, however it was not working on my vocal folders. I eventually did some research and found this article:

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/logicpro/lgcpb1998a98/mac

Which detailed how the fade tool in logic does not work if there is a folder, so I had to flatten and merge each track to use the fade tool. This was a very confusing issue, but luckily, I sorted it out!

I spent some time today writing some verses and experimenting with the chords and transitions between the different sections. I recorded a rough voice memo so I could remember my ideas, and listen back to them to choose the parts a liked and disliked.

The link below contains the voice memo that I took during this time. I was sick, so it isn’t the most precise, or the highest quality, but it shows the backbone of my song thus far:

Writing the chorus acoustic guitar part 

Today I wrote what I think will be the main musical motif in my song. I spent a couple hours experimenting on my acoustic guitar, away from my musical technology to create a simple riff. My goal was to create something that would be harmonically interesting, which is why I took no note of the chords or notes I was playing until after I had composed this section.

Writing the vocal melody