For my second rework assignment in DS106, I wanted to revisit the song I made for the “Play DJ & Make A Song” assignment. I stated in the original that I created this song using GarageBand after it came pre-installed on my new iPad. Since then I have bought a new keyboard case and a stylus for future art and animation projects in Procreate, however the stylus also came in handy when moving around sound files in GarageBand. I had previously stated at the time I made the first song that I had no experience with the program. I still have very little experience with it, but I’ve managed to figure out enough so create a remix of my original song that is over three minutes long!

I spent over two hours working on this song, because I had to figure out how to edit sound files without totally destroying them. The basic idea of the song is still the same. I wanted the song to be able to be played continuously on a loop without the listening knowing where it begins and ends. I was inspired to to this after watching a video (that I cannot find anymore, sadly) on how Nintendo’s music for their games and consoles has that same looping quality.

Since I had already made the song, all I had to do was cut and paste sections. I spent a lot of time just listening to it, trying to figure out which instruments sounded good together. I wanted it to have an intro and and outro, and used the guzheng (which is that Japanese twangy sound all throughout the song) as the basis, since I thought it was the most recognizable sound. From there I introduced bass and drums before moving into the synthesizers. There is one section of the song that only has the guzheng and drums playing before moving back into the song. I did this to give it some variety before continuing onto the outro.

Please give the remix a listen! I’d suggest listening to it on a loop. Like before, I experimented with the premade instrumental sets in GarageBand, playing it by ear to create an interesting piece. It has all the same elements as the original, but is now more spaced out and has layers and sections where it sounds slightly different. Please tell me what you think in a comment down below! I’ll also include a link to the original assignment if anyone wants to take a look at that!

This week, for one of my audio assignments I chose to Play DJ and Make A Song. Music has always been a part of my life and ever since I was a young kid I’ve always wanted to write and produce my own song. DISCLAIMER: This song is by no means a serious attempt at songwriting or producing for me but I did love making it and had a lot of fun constructing the beat and writing the lyrics for it – even though you can barely hear them, sorry.

With a catchy, 1980s-style beat, and lyrics to match, I wanted to attempt to capture a little bit of the era in my song. I love electric guitar melodies and punchy drums so I made sure to incorporate those into it.

I first started by opening GarageBand on my Mac and creating a new project. I started off by playing with some digital instruments like pianos and synthesizers but nothing was flowing. I then googled some ways to make simple song beats and learned that GarageBand has a built in looping feature with tons of pre-recorded soundbites. These perfectly timed loops featured guitars, drums, pianos, bass, and everything else!

First, I started with a good drum beat by searching 1980s in the search bar. Once I found a drum beat I liked i dragged it onto the timeline and made it loop forever. After that, I found a couple of cool old school electric guitar riffs and melodies and dragged those onto the timeline as well. I staggered every new instrumental loop, coming in 4-bars after the next until all three were playing. Then, I wrote some lyrics, trying to use the 1980s party scene as a theme. After writing some lyrics, I recorded my voice into GarageBand and added it a couple bars in after the final instrument started playing. I made my two verses repeat twice and voila, a finished novice-piece!

After realizing how many amazing beats and sounds are preloaded into GarageBand, I will definitely be using it on my own personal time to try and make some cool music to jam out to.

With audio programs, making a song from scratch suddenly becomes really, really easy. Programs like GarageBand come with their own loop selection, but if you are using a different program, try downloading bass riffs or back beats and go to town! Or download beats from Youtube- wherever. The challenge is to make a song without recording anything yourself.

Assignment Bank- Audio Assignments

I had a lot of fun making this song in Garageband on my laptop. I just chose some funky beats and put them together in a groovy way.

I used the Apple loops in the program to make this song. It was helpful that I found a collection of loops that contained different instruments and connected together well. It took me a little longer than I thought to make the song, but I am happy about how it turned out.

I have used Garageband in the past to do this kind of task for fun, however, it had been a few years since I made songs with Apple Loops. It did take me some time to even find the loops because the program had been updated significantly in the last couple of years.

The song uploaded to SoundCloud is not the first version that I came up with. I did not save the first version as a new song, rather I just deleted what I did not like and added the different elements to create the song you heard. The introduction of the song is the same, but I changed everything else. I wish I saved the first version as a separate file before I made any major changes.

For the song title, I just decided that the music was pretty funky, and the theme of my websites is squirrels, so there’s my title.

Play DJ & Make a Song

I’ve created several songs, but never posted any publicly. Here’s the first! Let’s make it go viral (psych) – I hope you enjoy:

Behind the Process

Not the first song I’ve made, but probably one of the quickest I’ve turned out. I used FL Studio to produce it, and I can highlight some steps I took to complete this project:

1. Choose emotion to convey (wonder/power)
2. Write piano melody around chosen emotion
3. Layer and play around with some synths
4. What does the sound remind me of at this point? Looking at the stars…
5. Googled: Poems about stars (found this poem)
6. Found this verbal reading of said poem, down-pitched it, and added reverb
7. Importing, effects, editing, and final touches
8. Bon appetit, that’s a spicy accumulation of noises going into my ear holes

Above is the media file to a song that I mashed up from a few of my favorite soundtracks on Logic Pro X on my MacBook Pro. It was Play DJ and Make A Song on the DS106 Assignment Bank. When I was making this song this week on my computer, I wanted to have an apocalyptic theme in mind, so I thought that the song mimicked the cold hearted nature of the climax in the movie iRobot, when the robots took over the city. (5 Stars)

Song Name: Dark Skies

Artist: Me,Myself, and I.