PA5020 Songwriting Cw1 - Production log

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I was struggling with my creative process on this project, I felt as if my mind was overwhelmed with endless techniques and possibilities, to the point of me overstimulating myself. As interesting and helpful as it was to learn music theory in depth it also made me stumble and overthink things because it got my brain working and growing in ways I was not sure I was ready for. My authentic stream of waters was running dry, I was lost in translation it just felt too mechanical. For weeks I was not moving forward, I just kept finding a block within my project. 

 

Aware I was running out of time I decided to start again from scratch. I achieved this by seeking inspiration, in my old message achieves to reignite old emotions I once felt to find raw emotions to produce a new concept. I then began to write freely, by putting myself back in the shoes of my formal self. I wrote the chorus first which was riffing on the idea of feeling tired and stressed, I dug deeper into those feelings by creating a concept around their ideas. My past relationship was the main catalyst behind my telling the story of how those emotions made me feel. The melody came to me quite quickly I had the melody before I had the majority of my lyrics written so I knew I wanted to separate my song into three melodic parts. The verse is the pre-chorus and the chorus. 

 

When it came to producing the backing music, I sang along with the metronome to get the timing right. I decided my track was an R&B soul song because of the raw emotional vibe and because it is about my heartbreak. The beginning of my song started with me singing melismatic adlibs to gauge the listener's interest, leading them into the first verse, which starts with a signal of chimes. The key of my track was on a Minor scale of C#. My first chord was played in C# E G# the second chord was C E G# the third chord was B E G# the fourth chord was B D# G# all chords were triads played in two octaves. The chords used in the chorus are the same as the verses and the pre-chorus. To give my song a smooth atmospheric tone I doubled up my chords to an ambient Soft pad plugin sound. The melodies stay the same in the pre-chorus however, I added a bass guitar and drums to give my song a groove. For my drums I did some research and listened to love by Keisha Cole, I believe I can fly by R. Kelly and Justin Timberlake 

all over again. Once I knew what I wanted I made sure it was in time then I placed my drum beat down. 

Within my piece, there are transitioning FX that take you from the chorus to the second verse to the pre-chorus. I wanted to implement a dreamy angelic feel, I then got a fellow student to help me with the harp melody that I sang to her and she translated that into music. The harp sound makes an arpeggio sound within the scale to add polyrhythmic melodies In contrast to the main melody I feel this develops the sound further. Within the song, I wanted to show the back and the fourth confliction of the emotions felt by changing the dynamics of my voice in the pre-chorus to mimic a sad and angry contractional effect. I also matched lyrical and musical stress when I panned my vocals in my pre-chorus and changed the dynamics of my voice. The lyrics conveyed confusion as did the singing. I made sure I did a panning effect once my track was produced to make the listener hear the confusion from left to right physically in their ears so you can hear the anger and the hurt at the same time. I also used rhyming, in my first pre- chorus “You said you needed space, your heads in a wired place”

In my verses, I wanted there to be a build-up in dynamics. To deliver this I started in my lower range then repeated the melody but dug deeper with my lyrics in the next part of the verse in the octave or the first part to seamlessly transition into my pre-choruses pitch. I wanted my chorus to dominate the song so I put a reverb fx on my chorus and layered my vocals to make the voice sound richer. My song was a story, I wanted the verse and the pre-chorus to develop as the song went on. I was keen to utilise the techniques I was taught such as writing from my Point of view. I used examples of this in the first line of verse 1 “Octobers the worth month, that’s when my life fell apart” I also repeated the same line of my verse in the next part to add emphasis and productive repetition. My verse development was diving deeper into my explanation as to why Octobers the worst month.