FMP WEEK 2 (12/03/18 - 19/03/18)

Monday

Today, I have played a progression of chords of my own composition which at the moment I have been practising in D major. At the moment I have written this song which is called "Nueve Letras" that in Spanish it means "Nine letters". This is a song which I am planning to compose in reggae and trap. Today I was aiming to achieve a rhythm of reggae by playing the chords of my song with upbeat-strumming in the acoustic guitar in the following order of chords: D- A - Bm - G - A. The objective of today was to get a practical enrichment of how my song is going to work, however, I need to keep practising.

The last week, I showed my idea of this song to my guitar tutor and he helped to arrange those chords in other position of the guitar, just by using the first three strings of the guitar. The feedback he gave me was with the objective of getting a higher-pitched and sweeter sound of the guitar. To make it sound like if the guitar were a ukelele.

I  have to record this progression of chords with the acoustic guitar in a rehearsal room and using the recording which therefore will help me to start working on the song on logic. definitely, I would like to see how it sounds.

Here, I have attached the pictures of the lyrics for this song:

The lyrics of the song are talking about the distance that separates the love in between two people. The way as the life put a huge gap that separated a great love. I was inspired by a feeling, I had a long time ago because I had to leave my country and the girl who I was in love.

Here are the lyrics translated from Spanish to English:

A word,
the same dream,
They are nine letters,
that has broken us inside

And it has no solution,
more than giving it,
time to time,
to see if I understand
and I do not want to say goodbye ...

I just want you to see that,
despite being so far away,
and forgive me if I offend you,
but I'm not perfect,

And I can not understand, what ...


That distance separates us,
That a word separates us,
We are separated by nine letters that,
I do not want to mention ... (All these four sentences  are the chorus)

When you were with me,
Everything was perfect,
the lack that you make me,
and my feelings ...

They do not die, they have not died
with so many I love you,
with so many words,
And so many memories ...

The lost dreams,
we gave up,
What was it? , what happened? that everything is over ?.

CHORUS X2 (BIS)

Why did you leave
and you do not want to come back?
forever with me,
I will never stop loving you.

This feeling,
 that kills loneliness,
it's that feeling,
of not being able to touch you

You gave me to oblivion,
and you said goodbye
you went so far,
with my heart,
that the weather was strong,
that was so light,
a blow faith front,
fast and accurate...


CHORUS X2 (BIS)

Now that you're not with me,
everything is different,
you are my greatest love,
and I hope patient...

This is your heart and you have your place,
the only thing I want,

is to see you again ...

Tuesday

Today, I have recorded the progression of chords in guitar for this song on logic. I have not known yet which instruments to include in the song. However, I have improved more my confidence about how to sing this song.

Wednesday

Today, I have added instruments to the song to accompany it. It is difficult still to work out the right sounds to get the reggae effect on the song but I am still working on it.

I have added the Reggae organ to give more melody and to focus it into the upbeat as same as the sample of the guitar that I recorded yesterday. However, I have copied the same melody to the Orquesta tuba and the Xtra trombone legato to give more thickness to the song.

Today, It was developed the intro of this song and also, I have done some panning to the instruments and the equalisation. It is really important to equalise those instruments because it will give the right frequencies that I am looking for in this song.

Also, I have put effects on the sample of the guitar and I have achieved the sound of reggae by adding delay, reverb and pedals. It is quite interesting to explore how a recording of an acoustic guitar can be converted in an electric guitar very funky.

Thursday

Today, I have started to record the vocals. It is hard to edit it completely, but I have to equalise the sound of the song and also to start to organise it.

Also, I have worked with Ujwal from Level three of music production who helped me to record the vocals and also showed me how to edit them with a good sound and better quality. As well as, the pitch and the frequencies that were breaking the good melody of my voice.

In addition,  He was so kind and patient about the time of recording, so that, the process of collaborating with someone else is about communication. In my opinion, he was so prepared and he had a really good attitude to help me to achieve what I was aiming to sound like.

Anyway, today was a really good session to complete the recording of the vocals. Tomorrow, I need to continue adding instruments to the song and editing the quality of sound, as much as I can.

This is the recording of the vocals, tomorrow I will use my time to edit the sound in composition class and also, I will try the sound of the vocals with the instruments.

Friday

Today, I have worked on the levels of the song, the equalisation of the vocals and the effects on it, and also I have used what the tutor Olly told me to improve my song. One of the important points of the feedback was that I had to structure better the song, so that, It teened to sound unstructured and I had to fix the fact that the chorus has to be more significant because the feeling of the voice seems the same the whole song. therefore, I have worked out that today in his class and the result was positive because it was implemented new instruments and also a really good change of sound.

This is one the of the EQ that I have put on the vocals, which basically is taking out the bass sound around the recording and also is giving more brightness to the important diction. However, it increases some frequencies and that is why we have to add more EQ to fix as much as we can, to focus the frequencies in the important sound. Also, taking out the bass reduces the frequencies that are played on the stereo out that will affect the distortion at the time of bouncing the final product.

This is the compressor added to the vocals which definitely helped the sound to become clearer and also, it reduced the remarkable breathings that I could listen when I was singing the lyrics of the song. The compressor also helped to reduced bad frequencies that I was transmitting in the chorus of the song because it was giving more distortion to the stereo out.

Also, I have added the pitch corrector to balance the melody of the lyrics, so that, sometimes I was singing out of tune in some verses. However, I was tuned most of the time so the vocals do not sound fake, which is a really important point that makes me feel that I have advanced a lot in the song.

 This is a Space designer used on the vocals, which gives more weight to the sound and also creates more frequencies that enrich the taste of the sound. However, I had to control more the quantity of how much I should add to the vocals, because in excess what it does is that it gives distortion and less clarity of what the lyrics are saying.


Most of this effects such the EQ, the Space Designer, the Pitch Correction and the compressor have done that the vocals sound really different. However, I have added a Phaser, a Tape delay and the gain, complete what the vocals should sound like. Here are the vocals with the effects:

REFLECTION

On this week, I have advanced a lot on this song, but I hope to improve the quality of the sound and to implement new things into the song. I am happy about the work that I made this week and I hope to compose more things for the next week.