Thursday 30th September:

This week after making a new song at the Metronome rehearsal rooms the other day, Jacob Warren, Isobel Gaiqui, George Curran and myself came up with an idea to record that track called Sixteen which is a song about reminiscing the times of young love at sixteen. We went into the live room to set up the drums because George wants to play with it while also getting it recorded on Logic Pro.

Afterwards, me, Isobel and Jacob headed back to the Metronome control room where we have added the channels for each of the drums including the kick, snare, overhead, toms and cymbals. When George was ready to practice, I hit the record button and he played with a drum kit to match the song's tempo. A gripe I had with George's drumming is that it will get out of sync at some point in the track and as for me recording, I have to make sure I tell George he wants to keep going rather than stopping because his timing and accuracy needs to be improved during the recording process instead of stopping the recording.

Following the recording, we need to sort out the instruments and vocals for the song because the last time we did it at rehearsal, we have been putting a lot of confidence with the track by remembering the lyrics, increasing our flexibility, getting the beat on time with some support, refining our stage presence and perfect communicating. If Jacob, Isobel, George and I can redo the song on Logic Pro this time around with the instruments and vocal parts, we will then be able to mix and master the song on that DAW program because we can get the perfect audio quality by using those studio techniques (equalising, compressing, reverberation, modulation, imagery, distortion, utility) after recording each part on a musical instrument or on vocals.

Thursday 7th October:

This week, Isobel, Jacob and I were setting up the microphones and guitar in the live room to lay out the instruments and vocals that we're going to record for our rehearsal song Sixteen. I remembered what each cable will go to on a channel from memory because I have been writing them down on my notebook implying that I will never forget what will go on every channel.

Following the set-up, Isobel and Jacob did their own thing over in the live room while I'm back in the control room recording every single part on Logic Pro. The thing with producing is that I have to always get the parts recorded on a digital audio workstation while handling the channels and inputs by either turning them up or down or from left to right accordingly. The reason why is that I want to get a good audio quality of the recording because if I can do something about the drums, guitar and vocals using a Allen and Heath Zed R-16 sound mixer correctly, the mixing and mastering will become flawless without making a mistake.

After Isobel and Jacob got done recording their own bits, it was time to undergo the mixing process. I have been cutting the silent bits while also sorting out the channel and input knobs to the song because most of the recordings were done in live audio rather than using MIDI instruments on a MIDI keyboard. If I want to get decent sound quality out of it, I will remember to sort out which input knobs I want to control with the sound mixer in terms of dynamics, reverb, modulation, imaging, delay and distortion.

Thursday 14th October:

Today, Jacob, Isobel and I did some more editing with the instruments and vocals on Logic Pro and I did some more production techniques with the Allen and Heath sound mixer. Jacob commented that he wasn't too happy with the drumming that George did because it became repetitive with the same drumming style and he had no option but to re-record the drums and put them on Logic Pro.

When Jacob came back to the live room, he was setting up the drums by putting in each channel separately:

Kick drum: Channel 8

Overhead: Channel 6

High tom: Channel 2

Low tom: Channel 7

Mid tom: Channel 3

Crash: Channel 4

Snare: Channel 5

After that, Jacob put on his headphones so that he can hear what's going on in the control room as I'm talking to him. Jacob played the drums while I was recording the drum pieces through Logic Pro; I kept stopping when he wasn't playing because I was told to keep it recorded and let Jacob continue. What I should've done is to let the recording of the drums continue instead of getting them stopped because if I try to stop the drums and not go onward with them, the recording will go back to the starting point rather than taking it from there.

Following the re-recording of the drums, the editing process continued and we used an adapted tempo to calculate the song's beats per minute because we need to determine what the tempo should be for the song. Also, Jacob, Isobel and I suggested that the time and measure should be at 6/8 differentiating from the usual 4/4 bar measure because the 6/8 tempo has an offbeat feel to the drums and the instruments in the track's entirety. Along with the song's bar measure, the tempo is set at over 100 BPM (sometimes going up or down) and the metronome click has been altered to one single click rather than doing the clicks repeatedly.

By the time Jacob and Isobel were finished, it's up to me to do the rest of the song by recording some additional music instruments on the MIDI keyboard. The reason why was that I had originally wanted to play the keyboard live differentiating from the Logic Pro session, however because I did the majority of the music production, I want to go to the one next door and record those other musical instruments that way on a MIDI instrument.

Thursday 21st October:

Today, I have been going to the control room next door to record a couple of additional music instruments on Logic Pro using a MIDI keyboard. I have an idea to do some orchestration with the woodwinds, brass and string sections because I want to give them new life to the track by creating a full-on orchestra that consists of flutes, violins, bassoons, saxophones and trumpets.

For starters, I interpolated a piano melody line by recording all three of the Yamaha Grand Pianos simultaneously from the low range to the high range because I want to put in some harmonisation between the three pianos along with several other musical instruments that'll be doing a similar thing. Alongside the recorded musical instruments, I want to put in some instrument-specific techniques there also, with the instruments putting in some dynamics as well as modulation and reverb with a touch of tremolo and vibrato.

Some of the instruments can be used as harmonised riffs while some of them interpolate a solo line during the break or outro of the song. For example, the use of saxophones occurred in the instrumental break where one saxophone played one verse of the song, acting as a solo line before the rest of the saxophones joined in, culminating into a harmonisation riff. The reason why it did this is because I have to do a solo piece in the instrumental break with the sax before building up to the second verse, not to mention the trumpets are on there for the supporting melody line.

Thursday 4th November:

This week after the half-term break, I continued working on Sixteen re-recording the vocals and guitar in the live room, this time from me and Jacob due to the absence of Isobel Gaiqui. This is because Isobel isn't feeling well and she doesn't want to do the vocals to Sixteen while she's sick. Following the re-recordings, I went on Logic Pro to edit the song, omitting the silent bits and putting in some equalisation and compression with the guitar and vocals halfway in.

Also, the tempo ultimately decides to set itself at 95 BPM with the same bar measure at 6/8 because the tempo looks a bit slow and it would fit well with the timing and accuracy as I edit those pieces together. Due to the song's new tempo, I had to remove the rest of the guitar bits and keep the repeated riff played on the guitar for the rest of the song. I also made some adjustments to the vocals because I want them to be on time with the guitar and drums too, no matter if it's on time or not.

In the end, the editing process was almost finished and I have nothing left to do but to add the finishing touches in the song with a lot of equalising and compressing involved. All I need now is to make some track stacks and some minor changes before I can create a proper mix of Sixteen.

Thursday 11th November:

Today, I continued to work on Sixteen in the control room after doing some editing with the drums, vocals and guitar because I need to add in a track stack while also filling in some equalisation and compressing with the instruments and vocals. The drums in the production seems to be a bit repetitive and it needs to be adjusted in the intro and first verse because I have been adding in an automation feature where it fades in to the instrumental break rather than looping it through the majority of the track.

I also created some track stacks for the woodwinds, brass and strings sections because I like to put them in simultaneously without doing them separately. Plus, I have been adding in a Bus channel for the orchestration sections creating three reverberation effects for the instruments and vocals accordingly, especially the orchestral bits.

I was happy with the final mix of Sixteen because amongst the equalisation, compressor and reverb, it sounds like a proper studio version that will be put on an upcoming Confetti album. There are times where the beat will go out of sync alongside the vocals and guitars, however apart from the timing being off at some point, I mixed and mastered the final version of Sixteen and I would like to do it again in the future if I need to with the contribution of both Isobel Gaiqui and Jacob Warren.

Thursday 18th November:

Today after making a song at rehearsal the other day alongside creating a studio version on Logic Pro yesterday at college and at home, I have decided to mix and master my next song Forbidden in Love which is about unrequited love. Taking on the topic of EQ and compressing, I decided to lay down the dynamics and put them in every single instrument along with the vocals and electronic drum machine (Julian: After Party) because I want to get the best audio quality of that song when it gets edited on Logic Pro.

In order to do that, I must turn the equalisation and compression volume up or down so that I can hear them clearly without colliding the volume levels altogether. I sat down with a teaching assistant discussing on what needs to be done with the song in terms of the audio quality such as refining the sound of the instruments and omitting those that don't fit nicely with the instruments.

For example, the Electric Buzz synthesiser needs to turn the compression up and the equalisation needs to be tweaked a bit. The reason why is that the muddy frequencies are interfering with the volume of the instrument, therefore adjusting the volume levels of the EQ and compressor because it needs to have a prominent role with the rest of the instruments that have solo lines like the Almost Harpsichord and Shooting Star synthesisers.

Another example is the Rise Above piano where it also has a melody line in the chorus, verse and bridge. Sadly, it doesn't seem right with the other musical instruments as I intended to mute the piano entirely because the music sounds better without that instrument.

Furthermore, the musical instruments that played throughout the intro and first verse are gone leaving only the Poor Reception and Calm and Storm synths intact. The reason why because I want to save the rest of them for the second verse as well as its final chorus of the song before it fades out.

Another thing are the velocity of the strings and violin because when I started recording them, the notes range from loud to quiet by using the tremolo and vibrato techniques. Because of that, I had to bring up the piano roll and made some adjustments to the octaves as well as highlighting the notes to make them sound louder and clearer.

Thursday 25th November/Friday 26th November:

Today, I did some more mixing on Forbidden in Love, this time focusing on the DeEsser module other than equalising and compressing because the DeEsser helps me get rid of the hissing frequencies while mixing the song accordingly. After I mixed Forbidden in Love at home yesterday, I went over to the control room next door where I continued it on from there. Once again, a teaching assistant was by my side navigating on what I should do for the next two hours related to the bult-in DeEsser because I don't want to have no hissing frequencies in the vocals while reducing the S and T letter sounds in the threshold and max reduction.

I worked on the lead vocals first because I recorded them first thing before doing the backing vocals and ad-libs. I had to use the threshold, max reduction and frequency to balance the vocals without having a single hiss on them. The DeEsser will become a running theme to my vocals because I can't sort out my vocals while the frequency is hissing in the background therefore reducing each of the volume levels and doing a similar thing with the backings and ad-libs too after the lead.

Afterwards, I created a track stack for the vocals and did some equalisation, compressing and DeEsser methods the same way I did with my vocals separately because I have to hear if they are intelligible without the hissing frequencies. Because that my other vocals are set on Bright Vocal, I had to mute the other built-in features like the delay and the pedalboard because when I started recording the vocals, I've noticed that there was a lot of compression added in one or two more dynamics rather than a sole compressor and thus, I decided to remove the extra features that were originally included in my vocals due to the impacted muddy frequencies that were interfering with the volume levels as well.

Yesterday on Friday morning, I did yet more mixing and mastering with Forbidden in Love, this time adjusting the equalising and compressing with the electronic drum machine and adding a separate Bus channel to make a reverb effect i.e. a large hall/church reverberation. Amongst the adjustments of the EQ and compressor, I have also put in another Bus input for the strings and violin so that it will also have the same reverb effect with the drums and vocals in a large hall/church setting.

Thursday 2nd December:

Today, I continued working on Forbidden in Love on Logic Pro. In this session, I have been creating some Sends to make a reverberation and delay effect of the instruments and vocals. I have also adjusted the equalisation of the reverb send because I've cut out the low frequencies into the effect.

I have been modifying the stereo delay effect into my vocals because if I send too much vocals into the echo, they will start to sound muddy due to the low frequencies in them.

Thursday 9th December:

This week, I've continued working on Forbidden in Love on Logic Pro X. The first thing I did was to lower the cutoff in the kick drum of the After Party drum machine because it reduces the high frequencies to make it sound powerful in the track's production.

Another thing I did was change the velocity of the volume in the Electric Buzz synth (P for piano roll) and used the pencil tool (CMD) to redraw a note that was omitted while playing the song back. The reason why is I want to put the first note somewhere in the rest of the notes without leaving it silent. Next, I transposed the notes up to twelve semitones because the original transposer of the song sounded obscure and interfered with the low frequencies of the volume.

Finally, I have been omitting the two notes from the Electric Buzz piano roll because when I recorded them on a MIDI synthesizer, it sounded good at first, but the timing was off in the next part. It was at this point I had to move the notes carefully due to the outcome that they will be synchronized properly, however all they did were to drag them to the left a few inches away from what was originally recorded. Meanwhile, I was changing the lengths of the notes on the Electric Buzz synth, extending them accurately without them getting out of sync.

While I was using the ES2 feature, I have been adjusting the sound of the Electric Buzz synth to create a phaser effect because I wanted to adapt the sound of the Electric Buzz and made some changes to it by altering the levels in the cut-offs, envelopes, pitch and oscilator. After I used the ES2, I tweaked the volume levels of the Electric Buzz by pressing X to bring up the mixer along with all the other instruments so that they won't inhibit the frequencies through the course of the track.