Baby Steps Composition Process

Composition Process Diary

This is the page where I'm going to document my process of writing my composition which is based on the baby steps I wrote on the "Baby Steps Assignment" page.

Baby Steps Evidence

I completed the baby steps at the piano by recording myself playing as well as writing down the notes/chord progressions I'd written.

Here's the recording of me completing the baby steps of the first two activities on the piano:

Here's the audio of me playing all three parts I've written from the baby steps activities:

Here is a photocopy of the notes I was writing as I was playing:

First Activity Process.mp3

Second Activity process.mp3

All three sections progress.mp3

I then played what I'd written into SoundTrap, using a MIDI keyboard. Here is the audio of that:

Here are is the notation, written in Sibelius:

Writing a melody

I've been working in Cakewalk to write this composition, as this crosses over with my technology project as well. Most of the time I've spent on the composition so far has been figuring out how to get the piano backing track to play in Cakewalk! But now that I've figured that out, I've started on writing other parts of my composition.

The main thing I wanted to get started on was the melody. I really want the song to have a main solo vocal melody. I've been trying to write one for a week or so and it just wasn't working, but I sat down today and started humming along with the backing track and came up with some ideas. Here's the audio of that:

After that I sat down and started writing some lyrics. I didn't write enough for the whole song but it started me thinking about the type of song and the theme I wanted to go for. The song sounds happy but also perhaps slightly nostalgic, so I started thinking about writing lyrics that were about having experiences with people in the past who hurt you or drained you but taught you life lessons - mainly to make sure you don't allow those sorts of people into your life. I also wanted to explore the idea of caring too much about what other people think of you and what you're doing with your life, and that the song is kind of a way of shaking off those expectations and not caring how people will perceive you, and just living life the way you want to. After I'd written some lyrics, I recorded what I had (and hummed some melodies when I didn't have lyrics) into Cakewalk, mainly to help myself remember what I'd come up with. I'm planning to write all of the lyrics and re-record the vocals properly later on. Here are the lyric sheets and the recording from Cakewalk:

Plan for my composition

I just wanted to record what my overall plan is for this composition before I start writing and recording layers.

I've already laid down the piano part and this is the main instrumental part of my composition. I'm planning to finish writing the main vocal melody and then recording that as well.

The other instruments I'm planning to add are drums, bass guitar, perhaps synthesiser, backup vocals and brass. All of these except for the brass instruments come as VST instruments with Cakewalk so I'm going to be testing them out. The bass guitar will just follow the bassline of the piano, the drums I'm going to program in myself with a swung, almost jazzy kind of style, the backup vocals will most likely be harmonies or "chorus" vocals and I may use a synthesiser just to add some extra effects or to fill out the bass. I'd also really like to add brass, especially during the "stabs" in the bridge. However, Cakewalk doesn't come with brass instruments so I'm going to try to find and download some free VST instruments and try to get them working - this will be a good experiment for my tech project too! That's the vague plan for the moment, once I get all or most of those parts into my composition I'll start adding effects and perhaps some more parts but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it!

Adding Instruments

I've made some progress! I've now added bass and drums to my song. I've also added me playing the melody line on the piano just to help me remember it so I can add lyrics later. Here is how the track is sounding so far:

It was actually a longer process to getting to this point than I thought it would be. The first instrument I added was the bass guitar - I tried playing along with the piano track that I'd initially recorded on my MIDI keyboard loaded with a bass guitar sound but I couldn't get it to line up. Then when I looked at the piano roll for the piano track I realised it was because my bass notes weren't consistent - some were on the beat and some were off but there wasn't a pattern to it. To help the bass line up I decided to change the bassline in the piano so that the notes were alternating being on and off the beat - that made it a lot easier to follow with the bass guitar. In the verse and bridge the bass guitar follows more or less the same rhythm as the piano bass notes, and in the chorus the bass guitar plays the root notes of the chords on each beat to give the section more drive.

After adding my bass guitar I tried to add the drums. Cakewalk comes with some sample drumkit beats so I listened to a couple of the swung jazz beats to get a feel for what I wanted in the song. However when I listened to the sample beat played along with the track it didn't sound like it lined up. Turns out that when I went into the piano roll again for the piano track that the chords were all slightly off the beat rather than exactly in time, which meant that adding drums sounded strange because they were precisely on the beat. So I went back into the piano roll for the piano and changed the notes that needed changing - I had to do it manually because when I tried to quantize it the piano rhythm I'd played sounded very unnatural. Then I used a combination of my MIDI keyboard and also drawing on the piano roll to create a simple drum beat. I tried to keep it simple in the verses and bridge and then make it more interesting in the chorus. I'll probably add some drum fills in later but for now I've just got a basic drumbeat.

Progress Report!

I've been working on the composition for a couple of days now and to be honest, I've been having a lot of issues with just getting the technology to work. One night I sat down to work on the composition and my laptop refused to load and play the music and Cakewalk kept crashing. I've also had issues using DSK Brass - the plugin hasn't been loading or saving the sounds I loaded it with when I reopen the file. I've also just had weird input/output issues where the mic or keyboard haven't been making or recording sounds. Most of the time I deal with this by restarting the computer but I've also had to copy tracks into a different track, uninstall and reinstall DSK brass and other troubleshooting. I don't think there's any issue with Cakewalk itself - it's more likely that the brass plugin is dodgy or my laptop is getting overwhelmed with the amount of audio data and decides occasionally to have a meltdown.

Regardless, I've managed to get some stuff done! I've changed up the drum part a bit so that the patterns change slightly in each section and added some fills to make it more interesting. I've added some clicking in the bridge I recorded using my mic and then panned hard left and right to make a cool auditory effect. I've also added a simple saxophone part in the second and third verses just to make the verse a little more different. I've also added quite a lot of instruments into the bridge and it's starting to sound perhaps even too full and bass-y compared to the rest of the song.

My next ideas for the composition are to try adding more brass/sax in the second and third choruses and perhaps even in the verses so that the full sound of the bridge doesn't come out of nowhere. I also need to figure out some lyrics for the main melody, record them and then start adding vocal harmonies. After that, I'll see if I want/need to add any more effects - at the moment the only effect I've been using is reverb. I may also re-record some virtual instrument parts with real instruments - for example the saxophone I could easily do as I have one and I can play it - unlike brass!

Here is my composition so far (without any melody):

Melody and Lyrics

So after a lot of listening and humming and getting frustrated I finally figured out a melody and lyrics for my song! For a while I just had a melody with not many lyrics which I submitted as a draft for my composition class at uni. I recorded the melody by playing it on the piano so that I could remember what I wanted it to be - here's what that sounded like:

After figuring out the melody the next thing I had to do was write some lyrics. I found the process of writing lyrics waaaaay harder than I expected it to be. When I think about how I've written lyrics before they tend to just flow when I have a melody in mind - I find it really hard to write a melody or lyrics in isolation with each other, which made this a really difficult process. I had to walk away from it quite a few times because I was getting so frustrated! But I finally have some lyrics. I feel like they're really cheesy but it's the best I could do! So here are the lyrics:

Verse 1

Cmaj7

Don't know what to say to you

F/A G F9

You make me feel like I've got something to prove

And I'm done with your games

F/D G7(add9)

If that's all that there is then I don't wanna play

Chorus

Dm7

So I'll keep running

And I'll keep laughing

Cmaj7

And I'll keep dancing

G E

And I'll keep living my life

Dm F9 E

And it's not perfect but it's good enough

G E

Ohhhh

Dm7

I'll keep running

And I'll keep laughing

Cmaj7

And I'll keep dancing

G E

And I'll keep living my life

Dm F9 Gsus4

And I'm not perfect but I'm good enough

Good enough

Verse 2

I used to care about what people thought

'bout the girl that I was and if I measured up

But you can't please them all

So save some heartache and give it all up

Verse 3

And you want someone who'll wallow in misery

Well best keep on moving cause that ain't me

Cause I won't dim my light cause you're blue

And I won't be pulled down by someone like you

Chorus

Bridge

(Scatting)

Gadd4/B C9/G F6

Gsus4 G7

Gadd4/B C9/G F6

Gsus4 G7

Chorus

There we go! The bridge was originally going to have lyrics too but when I recorded some rough vocals where I just sang the melody I improvised some melodic ideas and I ended up really liking the sound of it so I just kept it like that! I think it makes it an interesting and contrasting section to the rest of the song.

Finishing Up

We've reached the end!! I've finally got to a place where I'm happy with the composition. I've done a lot of little things to finish it off which include:

- Recording the main vocal line

- Recording vocal harmonies

- Adding brass and sax to the second chorus

- Quantizing the sax solo at the very end

- Balancing the levels of the tracks by changing the automation throughout the song

I've listened through a couple of times after fixing everything up and I'm happy with how it's sounding overall. I feel like if I knew more about music production I could fine tune it even more but I'm happy with what I've achieved with it. This was the first song I started to produce in Cakewalk and I've definitely learnt an incredible amount from the beginning to now - and it's also shown me how much more there is to learn!

So here is the final track:

And I also recorded an audio commentary on the song:

And here is a link to the full score: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Vf4r8kcMYPgvQctA5Um_MXNyj71ZTa_o?usp=sharing