Final Project

Final Project - Sean

EDIT: Imeem has recently changed how they host songs, and you can only listen to 30 second in the player. You can click "Play full song here" on the player to hear the full song.


Our final project was to be a 4 minutes piece in any electronics style using at least different programs.

I couldn't really decide on just one style, so I decided to mix a few. After having listened to Aphex Twin in class, I really got into his music. I love the dark ambient melodies with hectic break beats over the top. I wanted to try something similar trying to mix ambient and a more drum and bass style.

I started off my piece pretty slow at around 120 BPM with really soft synth with some phase. I then through in some textural pieces over the top. There is still no strong melody at this point. At about 50 seconds, I bring a drum beat in and a little after a minute I drop it out. This was to prepare the listener for an increase in tempo. After a short rest and a volume swell I bring the beat back in at 170 BPM with strong chords done with choir voices. This is the more "drum and bass" section part of the song. I then have my first melody and although the timbre may not be appropriate for the genre, the melody seems to itself to trance. I then layer the melody with a a synth which gives it a more trance feel.

I then drop everything out except some drums beats for 4 measures. I use another volume swell to move into the next section. The drums stay at a high tempo but the chords are more ambient. I use a lot of texture and avoid any strong melody except for a slow pitch bent line. The drums then drop out again and the chords and texture continue on. For the second repetition here, I used recycle to manipulate a sample with someone speaking. I broke the piece up and moved it into Redrum. I then used a few clips that were not decipherable but still sounded like a human voice. It is far back in the mix but I was going more for texture than anything.

Most of the layering drop out except for the really soft synth that I used at the beginning. I then put half measures of drums beats with silence for the second half together to built back up into a full beat. After four measures of a full beat I use a few effects with drops in pitch which make the music appear to slow down, which it does. With the use of the effect I bring the tempo back down to 120 just as it was in the beginning. I am still using just the soft synth right after the tempo change. After one repetition I bring in some more textural sounds. These are very effects due to volume and panning movement.

In terms of instrumentation, I used logic for all the sequencing and for most of the instruments and effects. I used Ultra Beat for most of the drums as well. I used Reason through Rewire for a few sounds along with Redrum. I tried using Sphere to manipulate a few sample, but I was not able to do anything interesting. I then decided to use Recycle with a voice recording and then put it into Redrum.

Overall I am pretty happy with my project. I did exactly what I wanted to do. I was getting a little frustrated with the earlier project but after spending some time with the software, I become a lot more confident in what I could do.

Blog 5

Blog 5: Review a selected track of your choice. All genres are welcome. Describe how the music works in terms of its instrumentation, form, use of technology, etc. This entry should be at least 3 paragraphs long.

I want to talk about a song by a band called VersaEmerge called "Theatrics" which is the intro for a song called "The Hider". I only recently became interested in this band, half probably because they have a female vocalist and second, because the guitarists use some cool effects.

The song actually begins with a low drone sound followed by piano playing over the top. There is short pause, the piano drops out and strings come in and play the same melodic lines. Bells are also used for accents. There are also some ticking sounds near the end of the intro, which creates an anxiety and build up for the song to begin.

This is a very smooth build up into the song. I would have normally expected the song to jump right into full gear. The song actually comes back down and starts with soft vocals with more bells. Electronic drums come in the background to start building the song back up for the rest of the band to come in.

The band come back in full force with a very cool lead line. The lead guitar uses some effects to make a the tone very smooth, almost keyboard like. The bands also come in on the chorus which is a powerful effect.

A verse comes next which again involves an awesome guitar effect. The guitarists uses a fast delay and palm mutes on the strings to make it very staccato. The drummer also uses a dance type beat with an open hi hat. There is a prechorus and then another chorus.

After the chorus is a solo section with the guitar doing a short and simple lead line. Vocals come back in for a bridge section with keyboards in the background to change things up a little. The band then drops out except for the lead line and vocals for the first two measures of the chorus. This effect is also used in dance music to create strong dynamics. There are also backing vocals that act like a synth pad in the background.

The vocalist has a very strong voice, but I also thing the song writing is strong as well. The lead guitarists uses lots of cool delay effects through the other songs as well. Synths are also present in many other songs. In my opinion, Versaemerge really stands out in this style of music. They are a newer band, so we will see where they go.

Project 4

EDIT: Imeem has recently changed how they host songs, and you can only listen to 30 second in the player. You can click "Play full song here" on the player to hear the full song.


Project 4 was to create a 2 minute track in a certain style. I chose to do mine in the style of trance.

I am not completely satisfied with the project. I feel like it is Trance lite, not quite as heavy and driving as what I would have liked.

I used the Snoman book to help me with the essentials. I started with a nice simple drum beat to drive the piece forward. I first tried using ReDrum but could not find a kit I like. I then opened up the drum program in Logic Pro and used the Trance Remix kit. The beat itself is 4 to the floor with 16th note high hats, and snare on 2 and 4. I really wanted to overlay a snare and a clap, but the kit didn't have a clap so I used two snares to really make it snap.

Next I recorded a bass line. I used Rewire with Reason for all my sounds. I found a really smooth tone in the subtractor that I thought would sit in the mix nicely. The bass just plays on the up beats where there is no kick.

Snoman then suggested to write the motif rather than a chord progression. The key to trance is to keep it simple. I think I achieved my goal since my friends are humming the melody after I show them the song. I then added an arpeggiator over the top to add a little more texture. I ended up adding delay to thicken it up a little.

Before I went into another repetition I would use a drum fill, using the snare and hi hats, to signal a change. The next section had a very similar melody line but with a different tone. In order to keep it interesting, the next section had a new melody line. The new melody repeats and I add in new chords.

After a drum fill, everything drops out except the arpeggios and the lead line from the beginning. By dropping so the bass and drums have a really strong on the dynamics. It then goes from the slowest part to the heaviest part when the drums come back in with the bass and the altered lead line. The arpeggios continue on after 8 measures along with a kick drum and slowly fade out.

I am pretty happy with the song structure, but I do not feel as if I really encapsulated the driving feel of trance. I need to listen to more trance music to get a better feel for it.

Trance - Sean

Final Project Proposal

I am sure many ideas will change in the process but I have tried to outline what I intend to do for the final project.

I have a lot of ideas floating around for the final project. After listening to Aphex Twin in class, I have really gotten into his music. What especially intrigues me is the use of ambient music, soft sustained synths and melodies, with the use of breakbeats more generally found in drum and bass. In this project I would like to dedicate some time to emulate his style. As of now, I don’t know how to do the break beats but my buddy used some in his last project and I hope he can show me how he did it. I figure I can get some interesting sounds out of Radial.

I would like to incorporate other styles as well. I am especially interested in the trance and its ability to engage the listener with its simplicity. I want to spend some time with the Snoman book and try to create really tight sounding drums as described in the text. Creating drum sounds can take a long time, especially when dealing with compressions, noise gates, filters, envelope filters, and other effects to really nail the sound.

In general I would like to spend more time dealing with effects as well. One cool effect I saw in order to make ghostly voice was to reverse a track, put reverb, and then reverse it back. I want to find interesting combinations and tricks to get different sounds. I also want to include some samples which I can edit in Recycle.

I want to try to alternate between the two styles and then try to blend them in the end and a big climax. This will be very interesting compositionally since ambient music tells a story and trance just changes every 8 measures or so. I am not sure how I will do it yet, but I will experiment with it.

Blog 4

I was perusing through people's blogs and came across
Alexandra Welches's

What caught my attention was the filter sweep on the bass synth line and the squeaky lead line. It is very playful and fun. The drums were simple with a 3 kicks on the beat and then the 4th syncopated with a snare on 2 and 4. The piece continually progresses with each repetition. The synth bass drops out and a soft synth pad comes in. A quieter more complicated kick drum accompanies the first with hi-hats coming in as well. Following another repetition, the hi hats drop out and a new lead line enters. Next repetition the hi hats comes back with a new synth pad. Eventually everything drops except the lead line and a new voice sounding synth pad. Then everything comes back accompanied by the synth bass with the filter. It ends on a deep chord on the voice sounding synth.

These changes occurred with each repetition of the lead line, so it feels like it is constantly moving forward. She played around with dynamics by dropping parts of the drums while maintaining a lead line with pads. It is obvious Alexandra put a lot of effort in to this project.

Assignment 3

Assignment 3 was to write a minute long clip in Reason using drums, bass, harmonic pads, and a lead line.

I began by writing a drum line using Redrum. I found a hip hop type kit and just started with a simple bass line. I tried to involved the entire drum kit to really texture the drum sound. It ended up being jungle beat although maybe a little slow. I also threw a light chorus/flanger on the beat. There is also some delay on some of the sounds as well as panning so the sounds bounce between the speakers.

I then added a simple bass line using Thor. I tried a few different beats but I was having trouble with the timbres being in the same frequency as the lead lines I tried to write. The bass line ended up being very simple and I was able to work off of it to make a cool lead line.

For the lead line I used the subtractor through the RPG-8. I just used simple octave, root-third, and root-fifth combinations. I tried a few variations of note combinations between 3-1, 4-2, and the number of octaves. I believe I ended up suing 3 octaves and 4-2. In order to get the sound I wanted with the octave I needed to lift up the keys and press them again to start the arpegiator again. I used slight reverb and filter to give a little more texture.

The harmonic pads were very versatile since they were polyphonic. I used the subtractor to find the sound which ended up being "Release pad". I placed a single note at the beginning of each measure. The harmonic pad had a slow attack and decay which gave a nice swell effect. I used the harmonic pad in to change the feel of the song. Although the beat, bass, and lead line stay the same the harmonic pads creates different tension through the clip

Reason.aif - Sean McCusker

Blog 3

Since we are on the topic of techno and house, I thought I would talk about some of the instrumentation that is used in those styles.

The first one is simply a drum machine with a built in sequencer. On a previous post I showed a similar drum pad, but that was simply a midi controller. This drum machine has all the sound built into it. You can assign sounds to each pad and then play them as demonstrated in the video below. You can even upload your own sounds into the drum machine so that you can access them. These are the essentially what the DJs in the 80's used to make beats for house music.



After watching the Kraftwerk video for Robots I started looking into vocoders and talk boxes. I also realized I didn't really know the difference between the two. A talk box is generally used for a guitar an involves a tube that is placed on your mouth. When you play a note of the guitar you can create vocal sound with the pitch that was played on the guitar. Here is a good example of this. Although he is not makes words, he is changing the tonality of the pitch with his mouth. (There is a tube connected to the microphone)




Talk boxes can also be used with synthesizer. This is a microkorg which is an awesome synth for the price.



A vocoder uses a microphone in order to make the given sounds as seen in Kraftwerk's video of The Robots This could be played in real time where you speak into the microphone and the words are the pitch you play on the keyboard. Another way to do this is to record a given sound as a sample. When you play the keyboard, the sample is then played back at the pitch of the given key, as seen in the video below.