Assignment 1 : Pre Production

For this final project, the concept I have in mind revolves around creating an acoustic lo-fi cover of an Original Pilipino Music (OPM). The song will feature a natural rain ambiance as part of the atmosphere, if weather conditions permits for live recording. Otherwise, a pre-recorded rain track will be used to simulate the desired audio texture. Musical scoring will depend if I will be able to learn to use GarageBand to create the music from the choices of musical instruments, otherwise, a pre-recorded music will be used. 

Since I do not acquire vocal performance skill, I will collaborate with a friend who has singing experience to perform the vocals. I will be responsible for the technical aspects, including music composition, instrumental arrangement, recording, and post-production.

The objective of this project is to produce an artistically arranged Lo-Fi acoustic music that will blend music and natural ambient sound, enhancing the emotional depth of the OPM song orignally sung by Ariel Rivera with the title ‘Minsan Lang Kita IIbigin’. In addition, this project also aims to exhibit technical understanding of music production, audio recording, and collaborative work in a DIY (do-it-yourself) studio setup. The signal flow for this project will be inflow, meaning that all sound elements, including vocals, instruments, and natural ambiance, will be captured via microphone and will pass through an audio interface and finally to digital work station (DAW), Garageband, for post-production.

I will be using a basic but fully functional setup. The equipment will include an unknown brand XLR condenser microphone, that will be connected to an unbranded audio interface. To minimize the plosives and background noise, I will either use a pop filter or a windscreen. Logitech G333’s earphone will serve as the monitor, which has the capacity to provide accurate sound for mixing decisions.

Composing the instrumental, operating recording equipment, and performing post-production will be done by myself, while my collaborator will contribute to the vocal parts of the song. Either MP3 or WAV format with 44.1 KHz, 16-bit metadata will be the final output. For safekeeping, the final output will be backed-up in an external hard drive and Google Drive.

• Recording Location: My condo unit with minimal acoustic treatment (curtains, furnitures)

• Hardware:

  • Condenser microphone with XLR connection

  • Audio Interface (unknown brand)

  • Windscreen/Pop Filter

  • Macbook Air 2022

  • Logitech G333 in-ear monitors

• Software:

  • GarageBand for recording, mixing, and editing

• Backup:

  • External Hard Drive

  • Google Drive

• Output Format:

  • WAV/MP3 (44.1 kHz, 16-bit)