Final Project and Blog

That time has finally come, the end of the semester, when we finally get to unleash all that we've learned throughout this class on our final projects. Our final projects reflect the application of all of the sythesizing, sequencing, and mastering techniques that we've acquired. We are to create an entire song in a genre that we became familiar in the class, that displays we understand the various stylistic elements of a genre, and that meets certain technology criteria. The song is below. It's entitled "Go." Listen while you read.

http://www.zshare.net/audio/5292628683aa4a92/

I thus chose electrohouse, because that is my personal favorite. I sought to create a very danceable atmosphere. The tempo I set stays at a steady 128 bpm which is prime electro tempo. Stylistically, I wanted a synthesized sound that was significantly distorted with Reason's Subtractor. I tweaked the ADSR envelope to have a long attack time, which gives it a very trancey-electro sound. This synthesized sound is very inyourface and has no effects on it. The theme is soon joined by a drumbeat pattern from ReDrum which includes some triphop influences. The bass drum is not a standard "to the beat" rhythm; instead there are some sixteenth fills at the end of each sequence. Soon a very hip-hopish click comes in which has been filtered through a high-pass. This "chime" is syncopated over the beat to give a more triphop feel with a hip-hop sound. Also, I threw in some pads with the Maelstrom module to add a bit of ambiance. There is heard a very hollow, eerie, yet filling chord, mostly due to the ridiculous amounts of reverb I put on it. Also, a rolling chord is heard with a flanger effect placed over it. Eventually a new synthesized theme comes with a much more open beat. The return of the main theme with all the layering finishes the song. Also to be noted is the "Go" theme. I recorded my friend Greg saying go in the most "ghetto" way he could say it. I finally opened this up in Recycle to get the exact slice I wanted. In Logic, I decided to pan the voice a couple cents apart to fill out the sound a bit. I put a bit of a low-pass filter on his voice to make it sounder deeper.

The entire synthesis flow of the song is as follows. Logic Pro 8 was opened up before Reason was, which was running in slave mode. I then began creating the tracks that I needed (I had the entire song planned out before I began with software). I chose to run all of my instruments from Reason into Logic using the Rewire technique. Also, with the exception of the ReDrum module, all instruments from Logic were MIDI controlled with the MIDI controller keyboards provided in the music lab. This allowed for easy synthesis and recording of sound. Also, with my recorded media, I imported it into Logic's awesome sequencer. The same goes for the drum tracks. There were exported into in a MIDI file which was then imported in Logic. You still have make sure that the audio track is wired with ReDrum though for playback.

The final parts of create this song lied in the mastering. Again, I wanted a very inyourface, to the point feel. Thus, once I got the right levels on Logic's mixer board, I proceeded to BOUNCE. Once this had been done, I opened up my final file in Wave Editor to consider whether I wanted to have any post-processing effects. I decided I didn't want any cheesy fading in or out, so all I did was normalize the song a little bit, and that's where I left it. So that's where I'm leaving you. Listen to my song, and think only one thing: DANCE.

That's it. It was good times, so peace!
Alex "DJ DSTRYR" Perez





Write three to five paragrpahs, describing your final project. The blog entry should include information about techniques, effects, software, form, instrumentation and any other areas related to your project.