I started to work on my script. At this point, I would say that it's 50% done. Tomorrow I will be fully finished with it, so I can film on Tuesday and Wednesday.
There's a bit of a small problem. My friend that I texted to act as my friend in the opening hasn't responded yet. I am praying that they respond. If they don't, then there's always just asking the neighbor or my brother but that's not ideal.
Today I figured out how to create a vocal chop. I learned how to use a built-in plugin, called Simpler. It allows for sample chops to be made. I put in the song files for my friend's song. I went away with trying to find some interesting sounds, and I found a couple. I added some pitch bends to make the samples more interesting since they don't last long. I pitched them up by a semitone to match the relative key of D#minor that my song was already in. To be honest, I should have started out with the vocal chops and built the rest of the song into that, then made most of the rest of the song and fit the vocal chops into it. It's still doable, but I could have achieved a better result from that. I'll have to see until I finish the song to see if the end song is good with the vocals.
I also added some little adjustments to other aspects of the song. I made the lead/synths flow more with them lasting longer and being less sparce in the mix. I removed the hi-hats from the drums because they didn't make sense and stuck out like a sore thumb. Not a big fan of those, and they pulled too much attention to them. I also modified one of the percussion sounds because it pulled too much attention as well. With this the other parts are mostly cleaned up.
In the opening, my friend is gonna show a video of the DJ set that will be taking place. I decided to reach out in advance to find a video of Fred Again's Boiler Room set. I found a handheld video on Instagram. I reached out to the original poster, and thankfully, he said yes!
I'm gonna repost this onto an Instagram story. This will make it seem like this was taken on a random fan's phone that my friend is gonna show me.
Also here's the full video. I'll trim the video so it only includes the "drop".
Today I created the drums. I wanted to model them after drums used in ambient productions like the ones by Burial and Four Tet. The drums are moody and were mostly inspired by Burial's Untrue album. I followed along with a video I found on Youtube, but I changed some stuff. I added some reverb because my percussion sounds were too piercing. I wanted the kick drum to be mostly "stable" because it sounds like a heartbeat. I found an organic drum pack, which I used most of the drums from. The video below has a snippet of my drums.
Music production is going well so far! Today, I have made the main synth/lead. I'm not sure really what to call it. For creating them, I used a plugin on Ableton called Vital. It uses different shaped sound waves like sine, square, and triangle waves and modifies them to create new, original sounds. On Vital, I found a really interesting preset. The effects applied like compression and distortion make the synth sound almost like a distorted guitar in a grunge rock song. It gave some very interesting texture to it. There was some reverb and delay on it, which made it sound too echo-y and the phase shifter almost was like a wah-wah pedal. I changed the distortion settings to be a hard clip, which increased the "harshness" of the distortion and decreased the dry/wet percent, which reduces the overall volume of the distortion effect compared to the original sound. I didn't change the compression effects much, just decreased the amount of low frequencies. I added an equalizer filter that removes some high frequencies. I added a little touch of glide to make the notes almost glide into each other. Below are some screenshots of what I did.
I want to automate the decay, where I start the song with the decay being very short, making the synth sound more like plucks. Over 8 measures, I increase the sustain time, which makes them fade out less and sound more like synths compared to plucks. The effects will be more noticeable with more decay time.
I got the storyboard done! It definitely isn't the best storyboard, but it does the job well. I was planning on making it digitally but I found that storyboard websites aren't as versatile for what I want and it was jankier compared to just drawing it on paper. Turns out storyboardthat.com doesn't have a good graphic of an upright piano, which is the one I have.
Today, I didn't have time to finish my storyboard. I was out shopping because tomorrow is my birthday! So instead I want to talk about some of the songs that influence this.
Recently, I've been getting more into an electronic/synthpop artist called Porter Robinson. His song dullscythe (that's the correct spelling) features a lot of "random" sounds that don't make sense in the beginning. Later in the song all the elements come together to make a masterpiece. One element, the panning of the beginning piano melody from right to left repeatedly could be used in my song. It's important that I don't overdo it, because it could sound bad in a bad way, and not bad in a good way like in dullscythe.
In a lot of electronic songs with vocals like Follow by Martin Garrix and Zedd, Mumbai Power by Skrillex and BEAM, and Language by Porter Robinson, the first "verse" is purely instrumental. The second "verse" has vocals. I really like this song's structure, and I will incorporate it into my song. When the kid is originally jamming out, the song can be instrumental. In the last scene with a friend getting the kid out of doing internship work, I can put some vocal chops or normal vocals. Also, I got permission from my friend to use their song! I'm just chilling with this for now.
I've been looking everywhere for some good royalty free electronic music, but it all seems cliché and not really what I am producing. Also asking for permission can take a lot of time, time that I don't have. Instead, I have decided to make my own little song! I know what you're thinking: you are making your own music? Do you even have the tools? And yes, I infact do. About a year ago I got Ableton, which is a digital music workstation that actual producers like Skrillex use to make songs. I have some rough ideas laying in the "recycle for a new song" bin that I made but haven't been made into a full length song (they're just a 4 measure motif) so I can expand and develop multiple ideas together to make a coherent song!
One thing I don't have are vocals to make vocal chops. My friend (who is also in my Media Studies class) makes music that's genuinely so cool. I asked them if I can use vocals from their song to remix them into my song. If they say yes, then I'm chilling with the song. If they say no, then I'll have to find royalty free vocals, which will be a bit challenging, but doable. Speaking of vocals, I was thinking of sampling vocals from a copyrighted song, but I can't do that because the song is copyrighted. Samples for other stuff, like drums and ambient pads are easier to find.
Unless I find the best electronic song on No Copyright Sounds, I'll stick to making my song. Also the storyboard is almost done, so I should finish it by tomorrow hopefully. Homework has been pushing that off.
