Asterism

Full Moon
Dev Blog #14

5 May 2023

Producing a Song

I've spent the last five weeks fairly solidly recording and mixing the tracks in Asterism. It sounds like quite a short amount of time, until I remember that I was gradually working on composing them and putting them into a midi format before that since around the summer of 2020. In that time I also learnt more about how music production works and how to use the software to put music together. For this blog I'm going to write about all the iterations I went through for the track 'Contours', which started about three years ago.

Sometime around the start of lockdown, I got back into playing guitar and writing music after maybe 10 years of not really doing it at all. I was fairly out of practice and when I picked up my guitar again I had to spend some time retraining my fingers where to go. I took guitar lessons from when I was 11-13, and spent most of my spare time as a teenager learning songs from bands I liked, and sometimes writing my own. I've never really learnt music theory though, so I generally spend a lot of time trying out different combinations until I like what I hear. Perhaps it's inefficient, but I enjoy the process. One downside of this approach though is that I don't have a very good memory for things that I've written, since I mostly rely on muscle memory. I write down guitar tab or record myself playing / singing tunes so that I can come back to them later and work on them more or use them as inspiration for new tunes. For this type of recording, I just use my phone's default 'Voice Recorder' app, since I want something quick and accessible.

This is the earliest recording I have from 2020, which is pretty shaky in places while I was working things out and just has me humming along for the vocals. I wrote it as a different song initially, but later re-used the vocal melody as the bridge of Contours.

Later that year, we moved up to Scotland and temporarily lived with my in-laws while we were sorting out our new house. At the time my brother-in-law, Tom, was also writing a lot of music, and he introduced me to a DAW (digital audio workstation) called LMMS. LMMS is great - the interface is a bit clunky sometimes, but I found it a bit less overwhelming than other DAWs the first time I opened it. Also, it's free. I'd never seen a DAW before, and had no idea what the process was of getting the sound of your guitar into the computer. Turns out you need an interface, so I got one called iRig 2 from IK Multimedia to test out some recording. My first recordings were ok, but didn't come out very clean and it actually put me off recording a little as I didn't have any idea what I was doing. I decided instead to make midi tracks of all the instruments in LMMS. To do this I had to learn what VSTs are. VST stands for Virtual Studio Technology, although I only found that out today when I looked it up. More importantly, they are plugins that allow you to add synthesised sounds, samples, and effects to midi notes in your DAW, which allows you to write digital music. There are a lot of free VSTs available, which is great when you're starting out in order to find the sounds that you like.

In LMMS, the main VSTs I used are:
Guitar and bass from Ample Sound (specifally Guitar M and Bass P - because I came across those first and then stuck with them).
'Synthopia', 'SynthDrums' and 'Electric GuitarZ' from DSK Music. As a note, something I found out later about these is that they only come in 32-bit, which means they don't work in Ableton (which I started using later on) without converting them with a tool like JBridge.
And then these two amazing synths which I use on everything - VK-1 Viking Synthesiser from BlamSoft, and Tyrell 64 from u-he.
I also discovered that Valhalla have some free effects plugins, which are incredible and very spacey. The main one I use is Super Massive, but I also downloaded Space Modulator and Freq Echo.

I also used a couple of apps to help figure out chords and melodies. 'Oolimo' is a great app that lets you analyse chords from notes on a fretboard, or search chords and see what frets to play. 'Vocal Pitch Monitor' simply tells you what note is being played from the microphone. Together with the VSTs, I was then able to recreate tunes I had written, and also found that composing directly from the DAW was enjoyable too. Once I got the hang of the interface it became very quick to experiment with melodies and instruments.

This is 'Contours' in LMMS, along with the exported audio of the song:

For the next couple of years after this during my spare time, I spent time writing ideas for songs, composing on instruments and in LMMS and trying to improve my music skills. I took part in a free music production course I found through eventbrite that gave me a better base knowledge of how to use DAWs. Around that time I also started the free trial of Ableton, which I think is better for recording than LMMS. I wanted to try out recording again, so I bought myself a new interface (Focusrite Scarlett Solo) that's a bit more robust than my other one, and spent a couple of days recording the guitar and bass of Contours. I also borrowed a microphone from a friend and did a first pass recording of the vocals, and then updated the synth and drums using some of Ableton's built-in instruments. This version is the result of that:

After this, I very much wanted to improve my singing, as you can kind of hear that I wasn't very confident in this version. I (slowly) followed a singing course on Udemy, which again, gave me a solid understanding of the basics, and helped with my confidence a lot.

I got myself some new equipment too, and now am currently using a Rode NT1-A microphone and t.bone micscreen LE for recording vocals and Sennheiser HD25 headphones, as well as a beautiful Manson MBM-1 guitar which I love very much. The only non-free plugin I've used for my music is Guitar Rig 6, which felt like a pretty good investment considering how powerful and versatile it is, and it's been very fun to use!

Using my new equipment and what I'd learnt about music, I re-recorded my vocals and tweaked the instruments in Contours. I also had some great advice and support on the production of my tracks from a friend, Henry, who helped me to look at things like EQ and panning in the mix.

And that's about up to date! Here's the current version of Contours, which although isn't too dissimilar, is certainly sounding more polished than the previous one!

Contours is a song I wrote for my husband, and coincidentally (I mean, I don't control when the full moon is!) today is our first wedding anniversary, so I'm glad I was able to write about the process of writing and recording it today!

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