Throughout these past 8 weeks (about 2 months), I have been working on 3 different songs. One of the tracks I have produced is Lo-fi, another is R&B and the last is Emo/R&B. The reason I chose these genres is because they are all very distinct in their own ways, for example: Lo-fi utilises environmental sounds and low fidelity notes/chords. This creates a sense of realism because it shows the imperfections which producers/artists still meet. Whereas R&B utilises drum machine-backed rhythms and pitch corrected vocals. This gives a more luxuriant effect making the track sound more ear pleasing and professional.
I chose to create a Lo-fi track because I have always listened to Lo-fi to study or to destress. When I done research on this genre, I found out that 86% of listeners have seen an increase in their productivity while listening to low fidelity music.
“Outside studies confirm that this kind of music is helpful to students and even adults in the workplace. One survey discovered that 86% of the listeners have seen an increase in their productivity and in their study habits”. Lo Fi Music: A Secret to Focusing During Study Sessions - Hyde School. After I found this out, I had a look on reddit which is a platform where people of the same interest have discussions and debates about certain topics. Utilising this helpful platform, I discovered a discussion post captioned “What kind of people listen to Lo-fi music?” which someone named “U/view02” put up to find out if people listen to the genre without an interest of study or focus. This is the research he/she gathered:
U/view02’s post:
After he had published this, he had comments such as:
“VincoNav925” uncovered that a high percentage of distinct people listen to Lo-fi which made me think of creating a track of the sort so I could publish music which I know people would listen to and enjoy.
I then though about “Matejoojuu’s” comment and wondered how I could manipulate Lo-fi to be Hip-hop/rap.
Once I decided that I wanted to do Lo-fi for one of the genres in my project, I sat with Kai (Fadedwave) and spoke about creating a track. As Kai created the instrumental “Stroll,” I started writing lyrics. I wrote about how the distinct sounds made me feel. They made me feel as if I was taking a peaceful slow walk outside. This is when Kai thought of the name "Stroll". It also created an image of floating around in space because of how de-stressing the low fidelity chords are which corresponds with looking into empty space. I then started thinking about how peaceful a stroll is supposed to be and how the setting of space can manipulate that blissfulness sense. after these lyrics, I then talk about flying in a rocket and being able to see the stars and Mars. These lyrics set the image of the earlier lyrics meaning the listeners can create their own story from imagery.
his is how Stroll turned out:
Instrumental:
Instrumental & vocals:
Although I enjoyed working on this track, I did not look at it as a song in which made sense as the lyrics were too cliché and by that, I mean they were not telling a story. I went to fix this by writing new lyrics, but I had some unfortunate news about a family member. This news inspired me to write brand new lyrics behind a dark Lo-fi instrumental and create the song “Alyssa.” https://soundcloud.com/user-410283914/alyssa?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
I started my new track by writing down notes on my feeling. Here are the notes:
After I wrote the list, I started writing them feelings into lyrics and began with explaining what had just happened "When I heard what happened my heart dropped". The reason I start the song off with this is because the listeners will get the sense that I am telling a story.
What went well was the creation of “Alyssa.” This is because it tells a much clearer story compared to my earlier Lo-fi “Stroll” and the track Alyssa is also relatable for the listeners.
This would have gone better if I worked on even more lyrics instead of the track being a total of 1 minute and 25 seconds. Although the track is short, it is also compendious and is like a summary of the unwelcome news I had. If I were to have it more than a verse the way I would have gotten around this would have been by listening to relatable tracks such as: sad lofi songs for slow days (sad music mix) - YouTube. From 2 minutes and 14 seconds. After I wrote these lyrics, I asked Kai if he could create something of the sort, and so he did.
We started this by finding backing vocals which corresponded with the lyrics I had wrote. I wanted these backing vocals included in this track to act like an introduction. This was to create tension within the build-up towards the verse. The backing vocals expressed a lost and alone aura as it declared, “Where is everybody” “I don’t know their all gone.” I wanted this sense of forlornness as it foreshadows the aura which my lyrics express.
The reason creating this instrumental went well was because me and Kai sat and spoke about the mood of my lyrics and thought about how we could manipulate that mood into an instrumental.
This is how it turned out:
It could have been improved if we had created our own backing vocals which said something more meaningful. The reason we did not is because we did not think of doing so.
I have compared "Alyssa" with a Powfu track "I hate waking up". This is becuase I was inspired by the way he exposes his message by complementing the mood with his vocals/lyrics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWhgUxpvIJM. Just like my song Alyssa, this is a depressing Lo-fi track which expresses thoughts and demons. In Powfu's song, he utilises a low fidelity vocals as an introduction to this song. This singing section goes on for the first four bars and sings "When the sun, widens its eyes, I no longer know what's going on in here". These lyrics foreshadow the emotion and mood of the song. In similarity, me and Kai also utilised low fidelity female vocals as and introduction to our song. However, we made use of these vocals differently because the female doesn't sing but is intensely questioning where people have gone: "where is everybody" "Their not here, they're all gone" "Oh please tell me where they've gone". In analogy with Powfu's song, these lyrics foreshadows the sense of death and loneliness throughout "Alyssa".
The next song I created was called “Gold.” This is an Emo R&B song which me and Kai worked on. https://soundcloud.com/user-410283914/goldlillinfaded/s-ex6qrxNRe2E?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
I was inspired to write this song by listening to the year 2011 R&B tracks such as “Look What You’ve done” by Drake. Drake - Look What You've Done [Take Care] - YouTube. This song inspired me to write the song “Gold” because the chorus which is at 1 minute and 25 seconds and 3 minutes and 4 seconds. The part of the chorus which inspired me was the repetitive “Look what you’ve done.” Although Drake ends his final “Look what you’ve done” with “For me” which gives the impression that the woman he is talking about treat him well, it sparked my mind to go the opposite direction and create a scenario where the woman treats the man badly. I then started listening to more present songs such as “Numb” by Christian Gates. Chri$tian Gate$ - NUMB (Official Music Video) - YouTube. This song galvanised me to write about a relationship because of the lyrics. “Lying in bed with no body to love, my ex is probably out, having fun, hooking up.” These lyrics imply that whilst he is in bed, she is out doing anything which can be looked at as disrespectful towards the man. This sense of disrespect sparked lyric ideas in my head. When it came to writing my lyrics, I was with Kai, so he created an instrumental at the same time. As we were writing the lyrics and creating the instrumentation, we were listening back through these songs and picked out aspects and listened to how they were structured. This helped us spark more creative ideas for this song. When writing my lyrics, I thought about how being in a failing relationship can feel so I based my lyrics of earlier experiences and utilised my past to remind myself of the feelings and emotions I felt so I could put them into lyrics. I start my lyrics with "she was gold" meaning that the girl was pure and valuable in my eyes. I then instantly say "I lead myself to my own demise" to indicate me thinking "she was gold" was a fault and that she was an unwise decision. Within the next bar, I talk about doing sins and utilising narcotics because of how low the relationship had me "sinning tonight, narcotics got me on this flight". The reason I talk about this is so people can relate to the story behind the lyrics. The listeners will relate to this because the time people abuse or subtly utilise narcotics is when they are going through something such as breakups or bad relations. This relation to the listeners makes them keep listening to the rest of the track. I was also inspired by "XXXTENTACION"
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCM9r1xn6s30OnlJWb-jc3Sw because in his song "Carry on" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0HEsdrrue8&list=RD7JGDWKJfgxQ&index=17, he sends out a powerful message about how he felt he was treat wrongly: "falsely accused, misused and mislead". These lyrics inspired me to write Gold because when I heard this, I instantly related to it. It also felt that the length of the song (1m : 37s) made the meaning of the track more powerful. It shows the humanity within the musician because he is just getting drama off his chest.
This track went well because of the story it told; the story was about a girl who showed nothing but disrespect towards their partner, so they split up and the male is angry and annoyed at how she treats him.
This could have gone better if I made the track was longer instead of being 1 minute and 40 seconds. The reason it is so short is because I was behind schedule on my project work since I did not think I had enough studio time as I still needed to work on “Dumb to Fight (DTF)" as it was not going to plan. At this point Dumb to Fight was not working out so well because my lyrics weren't properly hitting on the beat. We tried to fix this by changing the words and lowering the greatness of syllables.
To evaluate this track, I have compared it to the song "Guardian Angel" by XXXTentacion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrch8Pf_fJU&list=OLAK5uy_m5riLsB5iVpADmWfHmzkFNc8QGBWwBkWM&index=2. Within this song the artist is really powerful with his vocals which puts emotion behind the topic of his lyrics. In similarity, I utilised the aggression from past experiences in order to create realism and emotion the way XXXTentacion did. "Guardian Angel" is a song which is only 1m : 48s which is homogeneous to the length of my track which is 1m : 40s. In my opinion, this gives the song much more humanity because to me, lyric writing is like articulating in music. This means instead of talking and discussing problems with one another, I'll write them down and discuss it with the world in an interesting format. The fact that the track is short, creates the impression that I am ranting and getting a situation off my chest.
I also created a track of the R&B genre with Micah and Matthias which Kai helped mix. This song is called “Dumb to Fight.” https://soundcloud.com/user-410283914/dumb-to-fight-linny-matthias/s-E7QiYktYrGa?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing. This R&B track is about a toxic relationship. I was inspired to do this when Micah notified me that he had been working on an instrumental which he wanted my vocals over. He wanted me to work on this song with him because we both thought about creating something completely different after hearing Bruno Mars and Anderson Paak's album “Silk Sonic.” (2) An Evening With Silk Sonic - YouTube. This album consists of 10 R&B songs. This album inspired us with what mood we wanted the track to be mainly because the song “Smoking Out The Window.” (2) Bruno Mars, Anderson .Paak, Silk Sonic - Smokin Out The Window [Official Music Video] - YouTube. Smoking out the window is a song which expresses the image of a woman using a man within a relationship, this is manifested by these lyrics: “This woman got me paying her rent, paying for trips, diamonds on her neck, diamonds on her wrists and here I am all alone.” This implies that the woman has left the man after he has spent so much money on her. These lyrics galvanised me by painting an image in my head and reminded me of past experiences. After I had ideas for the lyrics, I started writing them down. I then started my lyrics by writing the chorus. “For that girl I was dumb to fight, they messed me up, the drugs I tried, should have just gone on a flight, now they have me loving life.” the reason I start my lyrics of with this is because my experience made me feel as if I was “dumb to fight” for a girl which led into bad decisions. I Then go into my verse which gives the same aura. This is implied by the lyrics “I matured; the way I was treat was like horse manure, couldn’t see through her.” These lyrics mention that I matured which indicates that after the relationship, I grew up and knew she was never the one for me. I then say I was being treat like “horse manure” which creates the intention that I was not being treat with the manner which I treat her in. This gives the effect of realisation towards the listeners because if they relate to them lyrics then they might become aware on how they may have been treated.
What went well about Writing these lyrics was that it creates a story of images in the listeners mind, they are also relatable lyrics if the listener has been through the same type of emotion.
They would have been even better if I could find a higher quality flow for them as they did not sound like they stuck and did not sound as heavy hitting as planned.
Considering instrumental went up in triplets, I could have shadowed that and made my flow triplets. For that to happen, I would have had to readjust my lyrics. The reason I did not do this is because I enjoyed how my lyrics sounded.
After utilising the bottom studio to record in my vocals. Me and Micah spoke about an intro to the track, so I instantly thought about songs which have unique introductions and then remembered hearing the song “Cardigan” by Don Toliver (2) Don Toliver - Cardigan [Official Music Video] - YouTube. The fact that it is a voice message left from a woman to him about her complaining, I instantly had the idea to write a script and have me and a female argue over the phone. Me and Micah decided it would be best to utilise a lecture (Nadine) as she specialises in drama.
Here is how the phone call section went:
The reason I wanted this phone call as the intro was so it could set the mood and aura throughout the rest of the song. The phone call then carries on during the bridge. This was to give the impression that as I was on the phone, I stop listening to her and my mind brings me to all the awful thoughts I have about her, but I wake up during the bridge and start listening again.
After the rough recordings were complete, we decided to export the track up to studio 1 as it had “Logic” and a higher quality microphone which was more efficient to record vocals. I exported this track by utilising my previous research: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0uSC7ygE5M. Firstly, I saved my project and named it "DTF" snd then chose for it to save to "desktop". I then checked all the boxes apart from 'movie file'.
I then compressed the file by holding command (cmd) and clicking the file then choosing "compress". I done this to ensure my project would open properly on another Mac with Logic.
Me and Nadine then rerecorded our vocals in again. Once the recordings were done, I decided to try and mix the vocals. Here is a video of me explaining how it went:
This did not go too well because I did not exactly know what to listen out for so I then asked Kai If he could help me with mixing and he did.
After I was happy with all 3 tracks, I created cover art for "Alyssa" and "Gold". However I have yet to create one for DTF. Thats because I didn't want to made that track public and I am still undecided on what can complement the mood of the track.
Alyssa was the first song I released so I made the cover art for that first. I utilised one of my old photos of me in the studio and edited it by turning the darkness and brightness up. I then made the contrast greater. This was so the the brightest of brights was noticeable. As shown in the cover art placed on the right, there is only a small amount of light exposure; on the microphone and behind my head. I wanted this little amount of exposure to imply that there is still a source of light even in the darkness you may encounter.
With the cover are for Gold, I took a distinct route. This is because I had an idea for this one. Because the song is called gold, I wanted a metaphorical meaning to the cover art. I leant Micahs millions aftershave bottle because its gold and then untidily placed gold jewellery over the top. I done this so it looked as if chains where holding the gold back, implying that her "golden" personality is chained up with gold meaning her personality became even more materialistic.
In conclusion, I think this project went well because I got all three songs complete and they are all very distinct meaning I hit my project aim. Although it went well, there was still some minor issues such as studio time and the fact I wasn't on top of my schedule at all times. Down below I have a screenshot of my original schedule and underneath that I have explained why I wasn't on top of it.
My first week went to plan as I sat and spoke with Kai about what genres and types of songs are popular. This went well because we looked into Spotify and went through both of our "discover weekly" which is a playlist created by this platform. This is a good way to see what music people are listening to now because it consists of 30 songs and each user's discover weekly is different.
In the second week I went of schedule because I didn't go on as many inspiring walks as I intended. This was because it got dark too quickly so when I came out of college, it was dark and I couldn't see much which wasn't good for inspiration. I could have improved upon that by utilising the night time as contrasting inspiration such as looking over water while the moon light reflects off it.
During the third week I got my self back on schedule by going on more daylight walks. I made the time back by cutting out my free time until I was back on top of it. During this week I also sat with Kai and created a lo-fi instrumental which went well because we utilised the key aspects of lo-fi and wrote corresponding lyrics which was my aim. I could have improved this by writing lyrics which told more of a story instead of them being cliche.
Within the fourth week, I recorded in the lyrics which I wrote over the instrumental. During this I had some minor errors because I didn't know how to control the microphone levels. I tackled that issue by asking Kai for some studio help, he showed me how to control the levels and record properly. I also tried to do some mixing on my vocals. This didn't go to plan as I couldn't figure out how to utilise the EQ's properly. I could improve on this by watching a variety of mixing videos.
The fifth week didn't go as smooth because it was the Easter Holidays and I had family around and I also couldn't utilise the studio in the way I intended. To counteract this, I wrote more lyrics and rapped them out loud, the way I would do in the studio. This was to get me prepared for recording my vocals; it also helped with fitting my lyrics to the instrumental.
My sixth week within the project, I was still off schedule so me and Kai went into the college and created a new instrumental of the R&B genre but we also combined emo rap. We done this by utilising trap as a sub genre, then utilising my new lyrics to create the emo rap aspects which is usually lyrics based on depression, loneliness, anxiety, or drug abuse. Once the instrumental was ready to go, I recorded in my new lyrics "Gold". This went well because my lyrics create a story which people can relate to.
In the seventh week, I worked on Stroll and Gold to see if there were anything I could include such as mixing. We looked back on Stroll and let our lecture listen to it, This is when he informed us about the story telling. We created another Lo-fi instrumental and created the song "Alyssa". This went well because the track now tells a story. This also gave Kai the opportunity to release the Stroll instrumental as a beat.
During the eighth week, I went off schedule because Micah had informed me that he had created an instrumental for me which Kai helped mix. I listened to it and then decided to write lyrics over it. This song was Dumb to Fight (DTF). Instead of creating an instrumental with Kai, I wrote the lyrics. This went well because I started thinking about how to structure a story out of it.
Within the ninth week, I recorded in my vocals for Dumb to Fight (DTF). This didn't go to plan because the microphone in the 3rd studio wasn't as efficient than studio 1. To get around that I utilised my previous research: "How to transfer Logic Projects between computers" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0uSC7ygE5M and I exported the track from studio 3 into studio 1.
The final week (week 10), during this week I was back on schedule and finished off Dumb to Fight, I then looked over all 3 tracks, once I was happy with them. I asked my lecturer to look over them. Once I went to release them, I released Alyssa first and made Gold and DTF private. These have been presented via Soundcloud.
Bibliography:
Hyde School. 2022. Lo Fi Music: A Secret to Focusing During Study Sessions - Hyde School. [online] Available at: <https://www.hyde.edu/blog/hyde_school_blog/lo-fi-music-a-secret-to-focusing-during-study-sessions/> [Accessed 13 June 2022].
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