(22/05) My artistic vision for my final project was inspired by my 10-month old baby who loves to giggle. I recall in class Damian talking about a previous student making a music track out of clapping sounds and I knew I wanted to follow in a similar path. Hence why I chose a single sound source which is the sound of a baby laughing. I sourced the recording from a youtuber who uploaded the sound of his baby laughing. It was the perfect raw material because it was of high quality sounding source and there was no background noise like air or breathing. The URL for the sound source is below:

My artistic vision for this piece is a creating a visual of a baby singing and playing around to nursery songs played in the background. It was easy picturing it but putting the work in would require skills and hard work. I set out a plan for the piece as in the rough sketch below.

(02/06) Today I worked on my final project. I wanted to create a happy mood where the baby is playing is having a good time. I wanted the surrounding to be groovy as well. For the foreground, I used the baby’s laugh and added double effects to some parts of the track. Also, I transposed some parts to have a layer of voices for the baby’s laugh which is seen in the A section and A’ section when the baby sings along to the song. For the middle ground, I used the 2 songs which are baby shark and a spring-themed song which was in the Garage band Library. I loved the summer vibe that the two songs added to the piece which was what I was after. I used a combination of flute, rigged piano sounds, violin for the higher sound and guitar pick and cello for the bass line in the BABY SHARK song. I added beats from the GarageBand Library. For the first section A, I used Aurora Beats with a pop twist and added snapping sounds and sound effects to create interest. For the contrasting section, I wanted a showcase the skills that I have developed from this course and so I went for a different themed song. I created sound effects like a cork pop sound, snap sound, warp effects, boomer fx effects to make the background. The middle ground used the spring-themed musical and the foreground included the baby’s laugh. It was challenging to create this section particularly when I had this section on loop and tried all sorts of fill ins for the background. I came across the ones that I wanted and so the next challenge was putting them in suitable intervals and that made sense with the beat and sound of the baby. I used loop effects for the baby’s voice because I thought it was creative and I also reversed played the last part of the baby’s laugh for the contrasting section. I found out how to do when I experimented with the laugh. I also found out how to transpose the baby’s voice using the edit “scissors” icon. The contrast section is pasted below.

The A section is pasted below.

(10/06) Due to unexpected events, I had to delay my the finishing of this project. Plus today I have not felt really in sync with the piece that I was doing. At first I felt that I was doing the right thing and now I feel that I might have the wrong vision because of the comments that I was getting from my friends when I showed them my piece. However, I took their critics constructively on worked on the areas like the A section which got a lot of comments. I might have overused the baby’s laugh so I had to find another creative way to use it. Which is why I did not overly use the baby’s singing to the song but had some gaps in between. Also, I struggled with getting the right effects to create the atmosphere that I wanted which was something warm, bright and happy. I added some bell sounds and made the notes higher for the last section, added more layers of instruments and did panning effect to create dimension. For warmth, I added more bass lines and kicks for the punchy effect. The final section is as below:

To create more fun, I added latin drum beats to the A’ section and still maintained the baby’s laugh pattern to create familiarity. I thought this was important to distinguish between the foreground, middle ground and back ground.

(14/06) Today, I feel so stressed out. I listened to my track and I felt that it still wasn’t good enough. This made me question even more my artistic vision and whether it was the right thing to do. I then realised that it is not my artistic vision that was wrong but my techniques that I was doing so I researched more on youtube on how to create interesting music dimensions and found the clip which showed how to create panning effect to make your music 8D. I immediately wanted to try this because I had been fascinated by 8D music since it was out. The panning effect though had to be done on the phone using the Kinemaster app.

(16/06) For the panning effect, I used the Kinemaster app and followed the instructions set in the video above. It was not that difficult as I thought it would have been. For panning, I had to complete first my garage band project and export to an mp3 file. After this, I opened the file on the app in my phone and did the panning effect by adding two copies of the song. I made the first copy to sound on the left speaker and the second copy to the right speaker. I then used the volume envelope and altered the volume of the copies after every 4 second interval. For example, I lowered the volume of the first copy for the first 4 seconds of the video while I increased the volume of the second one for the first 4 seconds and the transition takes place every 4 seconds. This is pasted below:

This project has really transformed me into a music digital lover, and I could never have been able to explore this side of me if I hadn’t taken the risk. This is truly an eye-opening experience and I am really looking forward to creating more interest and bettering my skills. In the future I would like to create more dimensional music techniques that I may have not yet mastered at this stage. All in all, I am grateful for the journey and the challenges that I have grown out from.

(16/04) Today we were allocated to our group for the recording assignment. We allocated our individual tasks and mine was to get the zoom recorder from the library.

(22/04) Today’s weather was perfect for recording – not too cold and not too hot. It’s almost as if nature had a part in planning this day as well. I was confident today was going to be a good one even though I had not yet mastered using the zoom recorder. In fact, I had never come across one zoom recorder in my entire life. This was a challenge. I spent the entire night last night watching youtube videos on how to use it and nervously waited for the next day when my knowledge would be put to the test. Anyway back to this perfect day, I arrived at the Sydney Conservatorium and made my way to Room 3078 to join my other group members. The room was practically small (not enough space to move around) and equipped with a piano, sitting bench and a music-score stand. The only thing we brought was the zoom recorder and a camera stand but the problem was we could not get the recorder in a standing position. I wasn’t sure what was missing from the camera stand but my other group member managed to find another position for the recorder that was suitable to use in our recording session. He laid the recorder flat on the stand and tied it with a string. Then, we experimented the recording quality from different angles. First, we placed the recorder just beside the piano and tested the built-in microphones on the recorder. We saw the sound waves moving up and down and getting bigger as we placed the recorder closer to the piano. We first tried out Spot A but the sound was not the good. Then we tried spot B and got good wave forms so we recorded a full take on the piece by Yiruma called “River flows in you”. For the second take, we tried spot C and recorded the full piece length and found that it was too loud and cannot be used. So we shifted it back to spot B and took the following takes from there. In take 5, there were sounds of footsteps captured by the recorder during recording so we had to ask the pianist to play this section of the piece again so we can cover it when editing. We got the material we needed by 2.10pm and by this time our we were very exhausted, including the pianist himself. It was a fun experience working with other students in this recording assignment as we got to understand each other’s personalities as well as being patient with every takes.

(29/04) Downloaded the software Audacity and looked through youtube videos on how to use it. The videos helped me a lot to know the basics and how to operate the software. I referred back and forth to these videos for guidance.

(10/05) I have just started working on my recording assignment as there were heaps of other assignments to do in my other course. But anyway, today I managed to study how to read the music sheet and follow along with the recording. It was important for my editing so I could refer to the edit points on my music sheet. I found several edit points that were off key, lots of clipping sounds, some thud sounds, some areas were a bit off beat and the end part I had to do some fading to it. I did manage to work on the thud and air nose from the background. I went to the noise reduction option in the effect bar and highlighted the area that I wanted out of my track. This took quite a long process at first but I had the hang of it later.

(16/05) I am again late for this assignment. My life is a mess right now and I am just trying to find a perfect excuse to my lecturer today on why I have not finished. I guess I will try my best to complete this as soon as possible so that I can just submit it and make my lecturer happy. Anyway, cross fingers that I get this done with.

(28/05) I am revisited my assignment today because I had just finished my other big one in my other course. Today, I completed most of the work on editing. I highlighted my music sheet so that I did not get confused with the bass notes and the higher notes. I was following the higher notes for editing and circled the areas that needed editing.

(30/05) Today I complete my recording assignment. I had 7 edit points which I did to the best of my ability. There were some areas that I did have to split and shift a bit in front because it came to late in the recording. If you refer to my music sheet two days ago these areas are on page 2 with 2 long strokes. The ones circled were the edit points on the recording. And here below is the screenshot of my work in Audacity.

(12/03) My artistic vision came to me naturally today. It was to make music that would make a person cry or be emotional. I had this idea from today’s class where Damian played for us a track by the great Paul Mac that had a spooky and uncertain vibe to it. Why not make the opposite of this spooky sort of music? Being an emotional person myself, making such content was what I am interested in.

(19/03) Today I aimed to at least complete a rough plan for my music assignment. We learnt this week about layer cake orchestration – a term produced by Damian himself that distinguishes the different layers of a music track. I have roughly sketched a plan for what I wanted to include which is the sketch below.

(22/03) I have no idea of what to do for my music track. I have fallen behind schedule and I don’t think I can change my artistic vision now. Still in search of the perfect melody.

(26/03) So I am not a professional at garage band but I needed to learn the basics over again. I had no idea of how to create tracks on garage band and I used to think it was all made by MIDI keyboards. Little did I know there was more than that, and thanks to this two youtube videos, I now have a better idea of how to use garage band. Techniques like using pre-made loops, using a drummer beat as my kick, and eqing were in the video. Below are the urls for the videos.

(30/03) Finally got a Melody. I was sitting in the park and wondering what tune I want to sing. I sang the first note and then followed with other notes, experimenting till I got the final one that I liked. I recorded my voice in my phone so that I can edit it later.

(01/04) Worked on my music assignment in Garage Band. It was very difficult what to do first so I referred to the notes by Damian on the simple song workflow. I watched a youtube video on how to add a chord progression and base line. Here is the urls that I learnt from:

(i) Creating a chord progression: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksWL2hqv- Lw&t=27s

(ii) Baseline: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLNEnQuDvik

(04/04) From where I left off, I kept adding lead instruments and middle instruments plus the background as well. From the notes, I edited the lead instruments, adding reverb and compression to make it sound more filling and less sharp because I was using a acoustic guitar string for lead instrument. I did not really want to add effects to my middle-ground instruments which are a combination of the violas, cellos and basses.

(06/04) I needed to do automation at the end so that I could find a smooth ending to my overall track. I learnt this from a youtube video by Pete Johns (https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=automation+ipad+garageband). With the automation, I got rid off the weird ending. I also added a drum+cymbal after the Contrast section to highlight the differences between Section A and Section A transposed.

(21/04) I was somehow late for this assignment apparently owing to poor time management. I had thought I would be able to complete within the timeframe that I had set however other commitments popped in and I was behind schedule again. I did manage to get it done before the 3rd day late. Hopefully for the next assignment, I will improve in my time management. Otherwise, this first assignment really awoken my inner ear and my interest in Digital Music.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton