River - Music Creation Overview
The music creation process was one that, again, I thoroughly enjoyed. Music has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember, and being able to impart that into our project was a joy.
For the main theme, I made a simple recording of my bass guitar, which was plugged directly into Audacity with no effects or filters, apart from a noise reduction filter applied after recording. This was based of the Dies Irae chant, except changed into a major key to make it a less sombre and menacing. This was relatively quick to record and was done within a few minutes.
What wasn't done in a few minutes was the cover that I performed of Helplessly Hoping by Crosby, Stills and Nash. I first discovered this song while watching Annihilation, and when thinking of music for the Amy's House scene, this popped into my head and I immediately consulted our group and asked their opinion on it. They all agreed that it was a good idea, so I went ahead and recorded it.
For recording, I used an external lapel mic that I had plugged into my PC. As I didn't have a pickup for my acoustic guitar, I used a bit of blue-tack and stuck the mic at the edge of the sound hole. This worked surprisingly well, except for the background hissing noise. This was to be expected from a fairly low-quality mic.
It was requested that I recorded at a slightly slower speed than was in the original recording. However, I was struggling to keep in time while recording when going at a slower speed. To overcome this, I recorded it at the original speed and then slowed it down in Audacity to the desired BPM. This sounded much better and it was a lot easier for me to play.
Then came the hard part. In the original song, there is a 3 part harmony. Of course, there is only one of me, so I had to record my voice 3 times singing the different harmonies. To help me, I used this site to help me listen to the harmonies separately and then sing them correctly. I also couldn't really monitor my input, as there was a slight delay between when I sang and when it came through in my headphones. However, after numerous attempts and a little bit of editing, I finally ended up with something that I was happy with. The final result can be heard below:
For the main theme, I made a simple recording of my bass guitar, which was plugged directly into Audacity with no effects or filters, apart from a noise reduction filter applied after recording. This was based of the Dies Irae chant, except changed into a major key to make it a less sombre and menacing. This was relatively quick to record and was done within a few minutes.
What wasn't done in a few minutes was the cover that I performed of Helplessly Hoping by Crosby, Stills and Nash. I first discovered this song while watching Annihilation, and when thinking of music for the Amy's House scene, this popped into my head and I immediately consulted our group and asked their opinion on it. They all agreed that it was a good idea, so I went ahead and recorded it.
For recording, I used an external lapel mic that I had plugged into my PC. As I didn't have a pickup for my acoustic guitar, I used a bit of blue-tack and stuck the mic at the edge of the sound hole. This worked surprisingly well, except for the background hissing noise. This was to be expected from a fairly low-quality mic.
It was requested that I recorded at a slightly slower speed than was in the original recording. However, I was struggling to keep in time while recording when going at a slower speed. To overcome this, I recorded it at the original speed and then slowed it down in Audacity to the desired BPM. This sounded much better and it was a lot easier for me to play.
Then came the hard part. In the original song, there is a 3 part harmony. Of course, there is only one of me, so I had to record my voice 3 times singing the different harmonies. To help me, I used this site to help me listen to the harmonies separately and then sing them correctly. I also couldn't really monitor my input, as there was a slight delay between when I sang and when it came through in my headphones. However, after numerous attempts and a little bit of editing, I finally ended up with something that I was happy with. The final result can be heard below:
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