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The plan:

To make an original for my DAW track and a cover for my Live track

Components I want to include for DAW
- clean guitar with reverb
- synth drones
- vocal harmonies
- a recurring motif on guitar

For my live track I want to do a cover of a song where the drums stick out to me.

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Beginning the DAW.

Because I can’t play guitar or bass, I worked with a friend on a starting point for these two components.
We managed to incorporate the instrumental ideas I had - the introduction contains a reverby guitar lick playing by itself, and this lick returns in the pre chorus as a motif to open up the track and contribute to the higher end (as it is quite a bass driven song). Here is a clip of the guitar and bass so far:

Next I will be adding drums

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This week I added drums to my demo. I decided to make them quite simple due to the complexity of the bass pattern already taking up a lot of the space.
I used my electric drum kit and programmed midi drums. I just used the ‘Four on the Floor’ Logic drum preset.
Around week 6 I will go to the studio and replace these with studio drums.
Attatched is the demo with the drums I tracked:

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Today I was listening to ‘Your Loves Whore’ by Wolf Alice and I decided to cover this song for my live track as I love the drums in the song. The snare is mid tuned (the way I like to tune my snare) and punchy, and the bass drum pattern is complex at times which I think will challenge me. I also love the dynamic changes.

Next week I will get a band together and get practicing.

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This week I started practicing ‘Your Loves Whore’. I booked a rehearsal session at Small Pond with the band I have gotten together (Riley singing, Pedro on bass, Dan on  guitar). I’m really happy with this band as they are very talented musicians and lovely people.

We all learnt our parts beforehand so by even the first run through we were already playing the song the whole way through with little  mistakes.

However I definitely need to work on my bass drum placements, and dynamic changes between verses and choruses.

I also want to get another guitarist as the guitar section needs to be more full.

We played through about five times.

Here is a clip of one of these run throughs.

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I also tracked the pre chorus and chorus vocals for my DAW song today. I double tracked the lead vocal, and double tracked the harmonies, panning them left and right. This is the song with my vocal tracks:

Again, I plan to go into the studio and redo these soon.

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I completed a Gibbs Reflective Cycle to respond to my feedback and decide what my next plan of action is

description:  just received formative feedback

feeling: not surprised by some negative feedback

evaluation: feedback said DAW was too busy and crowded, particularly bass and guitar

analysis: i need to work with a guitarist to simplify the guitar and bass, then go to the studio and record it all. Must be separately recorded to avoid bleed.

conclusion: I must have more faith in my own skills because I thought it sounded crowded but didn’t want to doubt guitarist’s musical ear.

action plan: mix the song better, track rest of vocals

- track some synth

- record studio drums.

- simplify bass and guitar

- record it all at studio (small pond or b electric)

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Today I started working on simplifying my song, but decided that it was better to just scrap the whole thing and start again.

I worked with my boyfriend who plays guitar, and we came up with a much more simple guitar part.

We also added a ‘warble’ guitar motif that plays in the intro, and repeats every pre chorus, utilising Dayglow’s motif method to lift the track dynamically.

The guitar parts are attached.

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Another rehearsal session for live track 

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Another rehearsal session for live track 

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Charlie has been hired as rhythm guitar! And it’s so much better now, feels complete and much more full.

My kick pattern is improving.

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Today I tracked vocals and drums on the song.

I found this much easier than on my last demo, because we left a lot of space for the vocals to sit on top of the mix.

I added some vocal harmonies where it seemed necessary to add a bit of a lift.

The drums were self explanatory to me. I hopped on the kit and did what I thought was needed - Closed hats for verses, open for pre chorus, ride for chorus to create dynamic changes. Four snare hits accentuate the unison parts in each chorus, which I think does a really nice job of breaking up the repeating chorus melody so it doesn’t get boring.

Attached is the full demo (minus the bass) but we are going to record that at the studio.

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This week we went to the studio and tracked everything we had done.

I made some changes.

Firstly, the guitar motif has changed to more of a siren sound because I think it sounds far more effective and natural in the pre choruses and intro.

Secondly, we added bass, which we didn’t actually get round to tracking at home. Here is a clip of the bass we tracked.

At time of writing the studio track is all recorded, and now just needs to be properly mixed.

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Mixing

What I did:

- Played with the levels - had to turn gain right down on every track as it was way too loud

- Added some effects - compressor, reverb, expander, spreader, exciter,

- Added a slight echo to the guitars to create atmosphere and make it sound as if in large space

- Put a spreader on the overhead drum mic to make it sound wider, to achieve the large space sound.

- Added reverb to the harmonies and main vocals

- Added a synth to add some texture, inspired by Dayglow.

- Added chorus to the synth to make it sound atmospheric

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Final rehearsal before live performance 

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Final rehearsal before live performance 

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I had some critical feedback from my lecturers

They said that they really loved the song, but there are times when I could be a bit more tight with my playing.

I took this into account and did another run through, trying my best to stay completely in the pocket.

When I got home I did some rudiments practice to enhance my technical skills, and played the song a few times, fully concentrating on my timing and sticking technique for optimum tightness.

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After having completed both the Studio Track and the Live performance, I have some things I would improve on next time.

Most of this is live performance based. I love my live performance, I love the song, my band’s contribution, the dynamic changes and the little pauses in the verses.

What I could improve on in my opinion is the beginning beat, as my kick pattern was a little off on a couple of beats. I will make sure to look on youtube/websites for some complex kick exercises, to practice my right foot control.

Also at times I found my drumming to be a tiny bit behind the beat, and not as tight as I would like it to be (which is the feedback I received from my lecturers) so I will make sure to continue working on tight, in the pocket drumming to improve on this.

A final thing I would like to improve on is my fast fills, like in the bridge section where I move the beat onto the floor tom and do some small tom fills between bars. Some of these went very well, but some need work. Watching myself, I’ve noticed that I tense my shoulders when I do a fast fill, and stiffen my arms a little, which is certainly not an ideal technique. However my shoulder tension when playing has vastly improved over the years, so hopefully with more regular practice, particularly with faster exercises, I can work on getting them loose and relaxed even when playing quick fills.

For the studio track, the only thing I would change is not adding effects at the Studio. We worked with the engineer on a certain sound for the guitars, and added some distortion in the studio. These regions were then bounced and sent over to me, and weren’t able to be changed back to their original un-distorted form, which is what I wanted as I decided to try and replicate Dayglow’s clean reverby guitar. Still, I worked around this and I’m happy with how the song turned out.
If I am to work on it further, I will probably add a bit more vocal harmony, some more synth for layering, and perhaps more powerful drums with more creative fills.