Tanner Morgan

Process of Making “Alone”

By: Tanner Morgan aka TSM

Before I begin explaining the technique used to create the song, I think it would be best to explain the meaning of it and why I made it. I made this song to reach out to people struggling with life and let them know they are not alone. That is why the song talks about loneliness so much, it is written as if it was from the perspective of someone who is struggling and feels that they are completely alone in their struggles. While I currently am not in this state of mind, I have been. I know what it feels like to be alone and I want to let the listener know that they are not. This deep meaning provides an emotion I like to bring to all my songs, and this one on particular I feel is one of the most relatable. With that being said, here is the technique for the making of the song.

The making of this song was a long process, therefor I will be breaking the process down into individual sections reviewing the original loop, drums, vocals, and instruments. So without further ado, here is how “Alone” was made.

This paper contains quite a bit of terminology that would only be familiar to those who understand the production and recording process of a song.

Original Loop

I started this entire process by sampling a free to use loop I discovered online. I found the loop on a website called dripchord and from there I downloaded it and put it into my Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) and began the mixing process. I EQ’d the loop in a few different ways until I found a sound I was satisfied with and then I compressed the loop and put some reverb on it. I also copied the loop into a second channel and panned one channel hard right and the other channel hard left to give it that widening effect you here with many pop records today. The final thing I did was make a separate version of the loop that sounded filtered for the intro and used it to help with the build up into the main chorus. That was the entire process of altering the loop.

Link to the loop: https://dripchord.com/inferior-free-lil-peep-sample-loop/

Drums

When doing the drums, I wanted a trap sound that I believed would work well with the punk rock style melody I had from the loop. There is no secret to the pattern I did with the drums, I simply started with a kick pattern I liked, Then a clap, then a snare, then hi-hats, etc. I continued adding samples to fill in spaces in the drum pockets that i thought were missing. I even tried adding sounds that people would not expect in the average trap beat, such as a bongo for example.

Vocals

The process of recording the vocals for this song (All parts except outro vocals by Maggie Davis) used a different kind of mixing technique I have learned and developed over the last few months. The first thing I did was start with an EQ that I usually use for vocals (remove the low end and lower frequencies around 1.5-2 kHz and a boost of the high end). Then I set up a compressor and some heavy reverb. In order to give the multiple voices effect you here in the final project, I duplicated the track 2 times giving me 3 identical tracks. I recorded the same vocals 3 times, panning one vocal to the left and one to the right and keeping one in the center, giving the widening, multiple voices effect you here in the final product. Then I just fine tuned the vocals and played with the effects until i got the desired sound. For the outro vocals, it was the same EQing and compression process but I simply did one vocal that was fine tuned with a lot of reverb.

Instruments

While the majority of melodies were supplied by the loop I started with, I still tried to add some extra instruments to add variety. I mainly did this During the outro. I added a harp sound generated by a VST in Studio One 4. Then, to add swelling and a build up towards the outro, I added a string orchestra that was also generated by a VST.