Here is my trance track, entitled "A Night To Remember", my final project for Professor Juraj's Introduction to Electronic Music course. Fittingly, I am posting this around midnight. This has been one of my favorite and most enjoyable classes at Yale, and both Professor Juraj Kojs and my TA, Matt Barnson, have been wonderful and informative instructors. This track is a culmination of the all the things I have learned this semester. And, I am glad to say, I am immensely proud of it.
Working on the musical projects in this course has improved my musical ear, and allowed me to immerse myself in the constructive process of creating electronic music tracks. I would like to describe my final project below.
"A Night To Remember" started out, as all my musical projects do, with a riff. I wrote the synth riff that begins a quarter of the way through the track at the 1:00 minute mark. Then I created, with the ultrabeat drum machine in Logic Pro software, the drum beat that starts off the track.
Next, I resorted to three resources: Rick Snoman's Dance Music Manual, trance tracks that I have listened to (especially Smith and Pledger's "Black", which I recently reviewed on this blog), and Professor Juraj's trance track "recipe" from his lecture slides on trance music and culture. Snoman's chapter on trance helped me develop the drum beat after the drops, my listening knowledge of trance guided my development and arrangement of my track, and the trance "recipe" provided me with stylistic cues like the cymbal hits throughout the track (most notably at the beginning and end), instrument choices and timbres, and developmental ideas such as the buildups to the drops.
I spent many hours moving and subtly changing melodies until a "body" for my track emerged. This process was one of the most difficult parts of the project. Speaking of difficulties, the two most difficult areas of my track were the following: the chord progression in my "trance strings" instrument (synth strings pad), and physically performing the synthesizer melody that comes in at the 2:25 minute mark of the track. I have no music theory knowledge, so I had to play around with the MIDI controller (keyboard) keys while the main riff was playing until I came up with a simple, but satisfying progression that comes in at the 0:33 minute mark. As for the synthesizer melody, I slowed down the tempo of the track and keyed in the notes, but as I have no keyboard playing experience at all, I really had to practice the melody to get the finger motions right. On top of making the physical motions required for the melody to sound smooth, the melody is played on the off beat, compounding the difficulty.
Next, I came up with the introductory bass line that starts in the key of the piece, B minor. My next intention was to work on the drops. I recorded snare rolls by lowering the tempo, and I played around with my instruments to produce as much energy, intensity, and exhilaration as I could for the drops. Since I wasn't able to produce a glissando (which was my original intention), I recorded pick slides from two guitars and added chorus and phaser effects to them. I then recorded a note with a motion sequence synthesizer and I had my drops ready.
As my track progresses, I make slight variation to the synthesizer melodies, add and subtract harmonies, and change up the bass line. The third drum beat was done to accentuate the focus on the percussion and you can recognize because it's the one with the syncopated kick drum when only the synthesizer is playing along.
Finally, I finished the musical elements for my track and proceeded to edit it, mix it, and master it. I adjusted the amplitude levels using the mixer and then fine tuned them with the volume automation tool. I spent a considerable amount of time making sure one instrument was not too soft or too overpowering, listening through different kinds of headphones (the nice ones in Stoeckel Hall and shitty iPod ones), as well as laptop speakers and a 2.1 sound system in my dorm room. I made changes to the track itself by re-recording some melodies to sound smoother, polishing up snare rolls, perfecting the drops, and changing up the drum beat. Then I mastered the track using a preset. Finally, I reached a sound I was satisfied with and completed "A Night to Remember".
I would like to include two screenshots of how the project looked like in Logic Pro software. The shot below shows the anatomy of the second drop.
This next shot shows the mixer and the associated amplitude levels of each track, as well as the effects placed on them.
I hope you have enjoyed listening to my final project, and my other assignments as well. It has been really fun writing and creating electronic music and I will definitely continue doing so in the future (I almost filled up my "www" pantheon space, which is a GB, with musical ideas, riffs, and licks in Logic that I didn't use for any project--some of those ideas I posted earlier in this blog, some of those ideas...well, wait and see!). I am very proud of all of the work I have done this semester in Music 295 (well, on second listen, the ringtones and the RadiaL loops...didn't turn out that well), and most importantly--my blog and my musical pursuits will continue! If you are a fellow Juraj Kojs disciple, I look forward to hearing your track. I saw a couple of people bring electric guitars into Stoeckel Hall, so (especially since I'm a guitar player myself) I'm excited to hear what other people came up with.
