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Week 13 - Mastering 2

Other than the actions I took in the previous post to max gain, in the post, I'll share in further detail how I mastered each song and also combined them.

Zhi Le's: Boosted the middle frequencies to make everything sound more bright. Cut off noise in bass. Also decreased everything by -5.0dB (right bar) because his on the loud side compared to Alphonse's.

Pre-EQ modification

Post-EQ modification

Alphonse: First striking difference was the volume. So I boosted it across all frequencies. To show the contrast, there's a screenshot of all 3 sound waves later.

Zooming into Alphonse's piece. I boosted the bass as I think it was a nice bass and gave the song more depth. I also liked the instrument that is doing a panning sound (the arpeggiated one I think), but it's very soft compared to the melody, so I decreased the high frequencies as well.

Pre-EQ modification

Post-EQ modification

Vincent's: Vincent's song was also decreased across the board to better match Alphonse's volume. Vincent's bass was also too boosted, some frequencies peaked a lot (see screenshot), so I reduced the bass frequencies. Also discarded some of the random top frequencies, taking care not to chop off too much because his song has fillers that use that frequencies.

Pre-EQ modification

Post-EQ modification

And now here's how I combined them (will talk about the three versions but two main ones will be posted):

This is the first version. Zhi Le -> Alphonse -> Vincent. 

The reason is because Zhi Le's was the most upbeat and energetic, hence I wanted to start with his and get the listeners engrossed and hyped up first. Alphonse's was kind of like a cooling down after a party kind of vibe (but still at the party) so I thought it would go well after Zhi Le's. As for Vincent's it was a clear finale song because of the soothing touch (the 'ooh' voices, the slow/very few notes of flute on the melody line, the shimmery sound, and the way it loops). It was calming and suitable to wrap up the playlist. 

At first, I put the songs back to back with no overlapping (version 1). However, I really did NOT like the way Alphonse's song comes in after Zhi Le's with a long and slow introduction. 4 bars of only drums, bass comes in next 4 bars, panning fills come in next 4 bars. Then only verse starts. 12 bars of intro was to long given the sudden drop in energy from Zhi Le's song. The long time it takes to build back up to a middle-energy range did not sit well with me. I overlapped 4 bars so there was still some intro to the chord progressions (4-8th bar), and a bit of the panning sound which I liked.

From Alphonse's to Vincent's, I added a 1 bar break because both their songs ended on the dot. Anyway, here is the playlist merged as one song because of the overlap/breaks so I can't put it into a playlist (version 2).

However, I am not sure if we are actually allowed to do an overlap... And I wanted to play around with the songs more. Finally, I decided on this arrangement:

Alphonse -> Zhi Le -> Vincent.

The reason is so that I can keep all 3 songs as their original form without cutting any parts. The order is inspired by the standard story telling form! Namely, Introduction -> Climax -> Resolution.

As mentioned above, Alphonse's song has a long and steady introduction. Therefore, it is appropriate as the first song. 

Old energy level: starts on a bang -> steadily decreasing.

New energy levels: steadily increases from nothing -> peaks -> steadily decreasing

While the introduction now is less energetic, I think it's a good build to Zhi Le's and Zhi Le's piece serves as a good climax tying the songs together. The energy is more balanced through the playlist, not concentrated and over with the first song. With that, here is the final playlist.

Week 12 - Mastering

Things I did for mastering:

Put songs into 3 different tracks

EQ -

• Roll off bottom end: we can't hear the 20-30 Hz frequencies (subsonic material) but muddies track. So remove them.
• Adjust the EQ across 3 songs. Alphonse was too soft compared to the rest. All three songs had a lot of sound in the higher frequencies to I didn't want them to be too loud too.

Compression - for peaks:

• Threshold reduces signal
• Keep meter within -2 to -3 so as not to chop off too much sound
• Ratio about 1.4
• Tweak make up knob to make up for the sound that we just cut away with 2-3dB
• User a Multimeter to keep track of the overall volume and make sure it never peaks above 0 !

Limiting - allow max gain:

• Set ceiling to just below 0
• Up gain until the most we can

Will rearrange the pieces again next week and post the playlist!

Final Mix

PRODUCERS!!!! You can get my file from this google drive if we didn't manage to exchange details in class (click here) Thanks :)


This is the version I'll be sending to my producers for mastering! :D Well, unless there are any negative comments on the 'new melody line', I'm open to changing that part.

All major changes detailed in previous post : Week 11

Enjoy!
   

Week 11

CHANGE IN FORM

First and foremost: Found out my verse sounded more like a chorus and vice versa. Hence, I will be changing the naming from now on (however, original order of themes were not changed)!! Thus my form has also been changed to:

Intro | Intro | Chorus | Verse | Verse | Chorus | Verse | Verse | Bridge | Chorus | Outro
(each part is 8 bars)

I'm not SO sure about the naming (e.g. I'll consider the second 8 bars as still the introduction but actually it is very much similar to the Chorus, without a clear melody).

More importantly, learnt that after introducing new ideas in the bridge, I cannot just end the song abruptly. A mash of the chorus and verses was placed after the bridge, then I slowly removed instruments through the Outro, leading to the same end with the xylophone playing 1 note :)

***

Now on to what else I did this week:

SPREADING OUT OF SOUND

Learnt that we should not apply Stereo Spread (shortcut: X!) on lower frequencies. I spread the fills and rhythms out, but kept the melodies centred. However, I did not know how else to spread the sound out and it still sounded very cluttered. Other than the bass, everything else was playing in the mid-range frequency.

During project review, Dr. Hess showed me how to solve that problem: transposition. We moved the classic trance instrument (instrument playing the arpeggiated melody) an octave (I think?) higher. And that not only added interest in the higher frequencies but also removed a huge chunk from the middle frequencies. Perfect.


MORE SPREADING OUT + CLEANING UP

Initially, I had the classic trance playing throughout the song as I thought I needed a common theme throughout the whole song to tie it together (back when I was struggling with the very bipolar sounding sections). However, since I have fixed that weird sound with a consistent bass, it was not necessary to have the classic trance playing throughout. Dr. Hess suggested to remove it from the 'chorus'. This also makes the piece MUCH cleaner and easy to follow -I'm keeping the removal.

However, with the removal, the flow from verse/chorus was a little abrupt so I did the reverse cymbals trick suggested,  which I learn from here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LVjn-vggAk


CHORUS MELODY
Finally, added one more synth that carries the melody in the chorus section. (Simple melody that is of the same theme as the arpeggiated classic trance).


ETC.
Chorus drums: had this really weird 'doink' kick bass sound. I finally figured out how to remove it but I don't really know what I was altering. In the provided drummers, under the "Kick, Snare & Claps" bar, I reduced it from 6 to 5, and the ugly 'doink' sound was gone. But what was that changing?

Anyway, I will post my music up soon :)

Week 8

Song: Draft 5
Mixed up the bass. And I changed the bass to have the same chord progression throughout the song. So hopefully it's less bipolar sounding.




Mixing
Reverb
Compressor -> Drums and Guitars
Delays
EQ

Side-chain compressor on a pad -> pumping sounds

Side-chain compressor kick drum on a bass guitar -> cuts off compressor on guitar for a brief moment for drums to come in (share frequency space so that they can both sound 'equally' loud).

Week 7

Week 7 updates!

I tried to make the 2 sections match a little bit more with more common themes in both sections. I don't know if it works or if it became too noisy. I removed/softened most of the "old themes" from way before event he first draft so I could add those new themes. Do I have to change the chord progression totally?? :O

It's really interesting though how we create a sound or two at the start and end up not using them at all.... Yet, the piece actually stemmed from those removed themes. Even though it sounds nothing like the first idea, writing one part led to the next, which led to the current, where it was only right to remove the starting themes.

***

I added a second bass to have greater depth at the lower freq, and just more power in my piece.

Then I worked on the EQ. This is probably the most amazing part in terms of hearing the change of sound!! I realised most of my instruments were going way over the dB limit and by simply changing the EQ, I actually had to decrease the volume controls back into the "normal -3 to -6 dB range". In fact, some are going way below -6. will that cause other kinds of problems?

The bass and xylophones especially became much clearer and like what I wanted.

***

I really like my group mate's Tze Yuan's dance piece so I'm happy I got to learn some effects from him. Like using Big Room GB to create drum hits and adding MIDI FX. I haven't figured where to put drum beats, and my music is getting full already, so I don't know if I still want to add kick drums for a more 'dance' feel. Hmm... Anyway this is what's up for now (draft 4 because 3 was not good).

P.s. Going to listen to it after a day or two and decide if it's too noisy and if I should remove the effects...

P.s.s. Andddd I changed the ending :) I think it's interesting like this but if it is too weird, please let me know. Thank you!