AudioAssignments1179 – Assignment Bank

Girl mixes an Unconventional Instrument With Funk Rock, You Won’t Believe the Results!

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This is my response to the Being a Music Producer assignment, worth 4.5 stars. The assignment was to record myself playing a musical instrument, and then record a second musical instrument over the top of it. I picked bass and melodica. I decided to push this significantly farther than the assignment actually called for since music is a pretty major hobby of mine. The assignment never said I couldn’t add a couple of midi instruments to the track and do some production work on the bass and melodica, so I went ahead and did that. I will say, the rhythm isn’t as accurate as I would like, but if I gave this the time it really deserves, I wouldn’t be able to finish the rest of my assignments in one week’s time! It would also probably be at least twice as long and have many more MIDI instruments. You can never have too many MIDI instruments!

I did everything in Reaper, my digital audio workstation of choice for almost everything. The drums were created with a handy little plugin called drumatic. It is great for really electronic sounding drums.

I added noise reduction, equalization, a bass booster and a compressor to the bass in that order. From left to right, the plugins I used are also shown in that order. For anyone who doesn’t know, compression in music production is a process that alters the volume of a track. The loud bits are “squashed” down and the quite bits are amplified to give the track a more consistent volume. The section where the bass isn’t slapped uses the same plugins, except without the bass booster.

I also did some production work with the melodica, albeit not as much. I added noise reduction, reverb, and a compressor. The plugins are displayed in that order in the picture below. The compressor I used on the bass is actually a modified version of the compressor I used on the melodica that is specially designed for guitars.

The last track is a pad that plays chords. It was created with a plugin called Hive. I swear, this plugin isn’t actually as complicated and confusing as it looks! I started with a built in preset and tweaked it to better mix with the other instruments. These software instruments I mixed with my own playing are proof that the singularity is already well in progress.

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Saved By The One – Original Recording

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This Audio Assignment can be found here: http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/being-a-music-producer/

Lyrics:

“Sitting in the dark

I peel my bleeding heart

Laying here alone

Deep in the ocean

My heart sits torn

In a trench full of wishes

With a soul that’s too worn

Just a man who is breathing

Yet living like he’s dead. (x2)

Pondering what to do

I had a friend sit me down

To tell me great stories

Of a man of many glories

And Jesus was his name

Many miracles did he bring

He Taught the lame to walk

The deaf to hear

The blind to see

And the dead to life

He knows what’s next

Putting me up to the test

Bringing me to him

For the rest of my life

When I look up to the sky

I remember the reason why

I live the way I do

Putting my fears aside

To follow you, to follow you

This is his command

Be strong and courageous

I am always here

My love is eternal

And it is yours”

Commentary:

This is the second song that I have created for this week’s Audio Assignments and luckily for you, it does not include any of my rapping. This song also portrays my Character Dossier’s transition from before and after forming a relationship with God as Faith is one of the defining characteristics that makes Sterling who he is. Producing this song involved playing an ukulele for the background and of course me singing. This had to be the most awkward recording that I have ever made only because people were outside of the recording booth and being really nosy at the time I was beginning to sing haha. I would’ve sang more confidently but my shyness got the better of me, but for the next time I ever record anything, it will not happen again.

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Here For You – Original Recording

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This Audio Assignment can be found here: http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/being-a-music-producer/

Lyrics:
“Midnight
Driving away without headlights
I need to breath but it’s too tight
This stress inside of my mind
So much to do but no time
Places to see but I’m not free
No ones here to miss me
Who am I
Why am I
How am I
Living right now

Can’t do this no more
might die on this floor
Maybe I can sleep here
Away from the words that bring fear
But
Someone is telling me
Just follow me and be free
got more to see
More to be
More to hear
So listen here
I’m not a drug
I’m not a beer
I’m the reason
for your atmosphere
Breathe in
Breathe out
I’m the rain to your drought
got everything you ever needed
Gave you life
through heavy bleeding
So don’t you see
I care for you
Don’t die cause I died for you
All of this
Because

Midnight
Driving away without headlights
I need to breath but it’s too tight
This stress inside of my mind
So much to do but no time
Places to see but I’m not free
No ones here to miss me
Who am I
Why am I
How am I
Living right now

I used to say this until I met a man
Who came in my life
And told me his plan
Of how he’s gonna be
My right hand man
Not for today
But everyday
For eternity
And now
My dirt is clean

My life was empty
But now it’s full
And Jesus has saved me
and because of that
I am now free.”

Commentary:

This week I decided to do the “Being A Music Producer” Audio Assignment not one more time this week, but two more times. This is one of the two that I have recorded. I figured that it would not matter if I repeated the same assignment over and over again as long as I make a totally new song every time.

For this song Here For You, it references the experiences of my Character Dossier, Sterling James, where it speaks of his life before and after following God. As it was previously mentioned in other posts that Christian Faith is one of Sterling’s main characteristics, I felt that it would be interesting to express this topic through two different types of songs. This song out of the two that I have made this week actually includes myself freestyle rapping lyrics from the top of my head as I played a soft guitar strumming in the background to add to the mood.

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“Being A Music Producer” Assignment

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This Audio Assignment may be found here: http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/being-a-music-producer/

This assignment basically asked to record multiple tracks of audio in order to produce a little diddly. I decided to approach this little project my covering the song Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen. I began by playing an ukulele to begin the base for my rhythm. Because I am not so musically talented like many of my friends, I needed to sing very lightly to keep the tempo consistent. I then created another layer recording a louder ukulele to blend with the the first recording, and personally this sounded really cool (considering that this was my first time)! Following the instrumentals, I finally added a vocal track of myself singing accordingly to the song (excuse my lousy singing). To end my audio concoction, I played around with my audio-editing software to add some reverb and an amplifier filter! And voila, it all resulted in this short little audio cover.

I am very new to this form of media, but I am sure that I will catch on in future as this interests me a lot. Onward to the next audio assignment…

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Into the Bamboo Forest…

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This is my third and final audio assignment. I did a gong and flute mash up. It’s supposed to represent the cool down period of my tiff with audio this week in my DS106 course. Thanks.

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Guitar Hammers

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So this is story is kind of short. My father taught me how to play guitar. I took separate lessons, but he really got me into it and taught me the cooler things.

The actual notes are just varitions of the G-chord. You sort of move your fingers down a string and then hammer it. I don’t know the actual notes… :/

The “song” here is a drill her taught me to hammer notes on the strings. You pick on string and then hammer your finger down and that makes the second noise. This was just a little song that goes up and down to learn to hammer notes.

I recorded the guitar portion with Audacity. For the thuds you hear, I rerecorded with headphones on. When you knock on a guitar it makes a cool noise. This noise kind of reverberates inside of the body and even gets a little noise from the vibrations of the strings.

I didn’t edit anything because frankly, I was just suprised my microphone even picked up the guitar. See, guitars usually need a special pick up. Thanks to Mr. Gibson we can actually pick up guitar with specially made pickups. I wish I had one that worked as audio on for my computer!

I know it isn’t perfect, I haven’t played in a while.

I hope you like the clip, but mainly I hope that you like the story of my father and I.

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Audio Assignment

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So I don’t think anyone would be surprised to find out that I chose the “Being A Music Producer” audio assignment. The objective of this assignment was to record two parts of an audio track with any instrument (obviously guitar for me!). To begin with, I laid down a rhythm backing track. This was actually part of a song I’ve been working on (so sneak peak!!). Then, I laid down an improvised solo on top of the backing track to add some “spice” in :)

I uploaded it to SoundCloud, so you can check it out here–it’s just a small 16 bar snippet but you get the idea:

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Being a Music Producer

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So far 8 people have completed this assignment.
It has 2913 views.

Submitted by: StefanieJ

Record two parts with any instrument. Make it interesting rather then perfect. Record the first part. then use your headphones to listen to this part and while listening employ your microphone to break in the second part. Think also of using your voice or tapping with your hands on the table or …

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Blue Guitar Blues

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Following one of Alan Levine’s calls for the ds106′s dailycreates I created a photomontage according to tdc551:

I’ve Been Down So Long…

Take a Photo that represents the essence of Blues music.

The dailycreates often surprise me and I have to think for a while how I can add something interesting to them. With this assignment it was not like that, but I remembered while reading the assignment text some photographs I have once taken and uploaded to my Facebook account. These pictures altogether have in common that they describe my first time living in a big city, which is Berlin. I am from Lübeck a town where anyone tries to make the cityscape nice for tourists who like living in a kind of dollhouse for some time. This way Berlin may be more exciting, but also often more shocking.

Still, the meaning of the photomontage is more general. For me it has a dense symbolic meaning. In sum it means not being able to unite two positions like Eros and Logos or passion and intellect or just me and a friend. Blues music seems to be able of comforting me in this dilemma.

As it is I currently also play a little piece on my new guitar, the Blue Guitar Blues by Thaddeus Hogarth, which he wrote for guitar beginners.

For the recording I first recorded the strumming part, then the picking part and while listening to the strumming part. You can do this in Audacity.

You can find an assignment idea according to this here.

The making of the photomontage:
I’ve taken three photos and loaded them as layers in Gimp. I scaled, cropped and placed them. To avoid hard edges I used a soft eraser to make the transition between the photos less visible. Having finished that I used the Colorize filter in the Color Menu. Then I applied a border filter which you can find in the so called FX-foundry.