I composed a song using both mixolydian and Ionian. They serve as an interesting contrast to each other as while Ionian has a warmer undertone, Mixolydian has a slightly cooler one. Using these together, I was able to shift the mood of the song, and for the darker mode, since I picked a moderate one, I had gentle swings. I experimented with the drums a lot, often switching different pieces of my drum rack such as the snare or some of the effects until I was satisfied with the sound. I used onemotion to create melodies for my chords and help with the bass. For chords, I used a series of 6 different chord progressions to make a melody, and for the bass, I just played 5 chords throughout the song. I also spent a lot of time on extra effects and samples to enhance the song. I added some synth, more drums, and various other sound effects like people talking.

I mainly learned about how to combine two modes together. First, when I tried to combine these modes, the sound was terrible as I not only switched modes, but I also switched keys. To switch between modes, I maintained C# and it was a lot nicer. I also learned how I can easily incorporate 3rd party softwares such as Onemotion into an Ableton song as it can help create nicer chord progressions. This was the first time I used vocal effects too. They were subtle, but interesting to add in. I couldn’t add them anywhere into the song as that would throw off the song completely. So, I strategically placed them to help with transitions.

During the creation of this project, I tried improving upon many of the skills that I learned throughout the year. First, I focused on separating the right sounds such as drums from chords in order to bring out the most of each instrument. I also took advantage of the use of the same instrument twice. Since the same drum kit was used twice in the set, I occasionally overlapped them, allowing me to have drums in 2 different places at the same time. I used that effect during the beat drop of the song. This helped make the transition more impactful and smoother. I did a better job of not over saturating my song with excessive noise. Previously, I had included far too many instruments at the same time, leading to the melody getting thrown off. Instead, I included different sounds at different times, meaning I would play chords when I wasn't using base at times. 

This was the first project that I got to use the launchpad for. Launchpads are a more generalized mixing and recording tool than push pads as they can be used with more kinds of software. They serve as an excellent complement to the push as I used the launchpad to record the sound, while I used the push to mix it. A new technique that I implemented was recording instruments separately. I started with the drums and progressed to the percussion, base, chords, and extra effects. Doing this, I was able to get higher quality transitions, and a much nicer melody. 

For this project, I created a short song that is built around the drums. First, I created my own drum beat in the form of AABA, and I accompanied this drum beat with a drum loop that I found in Bandlab. When I first started picking drum loops, it was really hard to find one that matched since I was using a country drum pad. So, I switched the drum to the Steve Jackson drum kit which made it sound much better when combined with other drums. After getting my drums to sound nice together, I worked on boosting the sound of each drum. With my drum beat, I added a Graphic EQ, driver, and a space maker. These effects served to boost a lot of my lower sounds and make the sound clearer overall. The driver did something interesting though. I changed the sound of my symbols which made them produce a nice sound but not pop out as much. For my drum loop, I used a bass boosting preset which I altered slightly in order to bring out the lower drums sounds more. This track had a lot of deeper drums which needed to become more pronounced. After getting my drums together, I worked on adding chords. Per the assignment, these were meant to add some ambiance to the drums, but I found a few nice chord progressions. So, I used a few different chords to turn this into more of a song than it was originally intended to be. I used panning to help transition between the chords as they progressed by fading each chord track out to the right and bringing the other track in from the left. This added a subtle level of extra detail. Finally, I played with the volume to ensure that nothing would be too loud or flood out the other sounds. 

I learned the importance of drums in a song. Since we built the song around the drums in this project rather than simply adding everything in at once, I found the drums to dictate the flow of the music. I was also able to balance the sounds much better as a result of this as the chords were not the primary focus of the music. Furthermore, I learned a new music pattern called AABA. This is similar to the ABA pattern, except it adds an extra A section that alludes to the B section to keep the listener on their toes. An extremely important feature that I was introduced to was the use of effects. On a single track, these make a relatively small difference, only enhancing certain sounds, altering others, and pushing some sounds back; however, when applied to many tracks within a song, effects make a massive difference. They allow me to put emphasis on individual beats that I need to make clear, and they allow me to alter an entire song to fit a more niche genre. 

In this Project, I learned a lot about a famous blind musician, named Joey Stuckey. His song which we focused on is called "Blind man Driving" which pokes fun at the idea of a blind man driving as that idea is insane. I was given an unedited version of the song to edit in which I had to pan different instruments, move them back and fort, and make some other edits to improve the quality of the song.

The major new element of production which I learned about during this is the use of compression. I used comression on bass and drums to make the sound pop, improving the listening experience. 

In this project, I learned about a producer who has unfortuneately been forgotten by many. Her name is Delia Derbyshire, and she was the the creator of the doctor who theme song. She utilized many new techniques in music production to get funky sounds that were unheard of at the time. 

So, I tried to replicate that by making a remix. In my remix, I aimed for a song that would portray doctor time traveling back to when rock and roll was popular. I used an electric guitar, drums and firecracker sounds to achieve a different version of what Derbyshire originally created.

  In this project, I drastically altered what was a horrible song into something much nicer for a game company. I created a song for slower-paced adventure games. These are games where the character would just be exploring places and doing tasks and think that it would go better with slower-paced games since the song itself is pretty slow. I could see a piece like this being used in a game like Forza when the character is just driving around the map rather than racing.

    Through this project, I learned a few big things. First, I learned that it is much harder to fix a mix rather than to just create your own. It may be more difficult to fix a mix because the producer is trying to preserve the original idea of the song while trying to make it actually sound good. I also learned more about fx and reverb, and I learned how to change instruments in a mix. This could be changing an instrument's octave, or it could even be a complete change of insturments. For example, I learned that I can change a honky tonky piano into a bass which sounds much better.