This week's session was aimed at understanding the way in which music is arranged and produced, section by section. During today's session, Zubin went through different key features of drum programming and the way in which drum arrangement can be reflected on different types of music styles and genra. We were also required to apply what we had learned in today's lecture and develop the beginning of my drum pattern, which can be seen on my project 1 page.
The way in which I personally started off by creating a drum pattern was by finding similarities between all the chosen Conan Gray songs and applying what I could find to my project. This technique enabled me to come up with and create a reference drum pattern that can now be further developed in next week's session. At the same time, however, one of the issues I faced while composing my drum pattern for my chosen track was that it sounded like it was going completely offbeat. After conducting research on this issue, I realised that it was due to the changes in grid layout that I was skipping beats/bars. When working through my drum pattern session, I also decided to remove and add different parts of the drums to clearly identify each section of the song. I personally believe that this session was extremely productive, as drum creation is one of the skills in which I am not entirely confident. This lecture gave me the opportunity to learn and develop my drum production skills.
My next steps before next week's lesson will be to finalize my drum section for my project and conduct external research on Conan's Gray bibliography. This research task will allow me to fully understand what production skills he uses in his track that I can implement in my production. In terms of the transferable skills that I personally feel were best reflected this week, they were critical thinking and discovery. I was required to critically think and discover ways in which I could recreate the song "Blinding Lights" drum pattern in the style of Conan Gray. I was also required to understand the techniques and methods used in Conan Gray's project and apply what I had learnt in my own production.
Before starting a project in Ableton: Go to preferences-- Record/Launch/Warp-Auto warp long samples--> off
When duplicating specific sounds in a midi clip, select the whole bar and then cmd+ D.
To select individual midi notes, use Shift + left click.When programing velocity for hi hats (used to add realism, movement, and energy)
To get a more realistic feel for your drums, change every fourth closed hi hat in a bar to an open hi hat sound.
Use Ableton's saturation to add gritty drive to your drum sound chain. Increase drive and reduce volume to balance the increase in gain. (sounds good on natural drums if done right). The Drum Bus plugin also has a transient control knob that you should use to find the sweet spot for tight, punchy drums. (Be careful of long tails in your transients that might interfere with other sounds.) research saturator and drum buss plugin.
Use an 8-K band equalizer. The EQ boost at 5.5kHz brightens and livens up the sound.
Sub-rumble and extraneous low frequencies
If the sound is too muddy, it's a problem at low-mid. Start at 300 hz. Filter sweep for annoying frequencies in the 200-400 hz range. Identify and make a small cut. 300hz is the sweet spot "rule of thumb"
To save a drum chain: select all effects in the chain (using the shift key)-right click-group-save by hitting the floppy disk icon.
Use sends to add texture and swing to your drum rack, use effects like chorus and flanger, and experiment with your drum chain.
Who is Conan Gray:
Conan Lee Gray is known by the name of Conan Gray and is an American singer and songwriter. He was signed to Republic Records in 2018, where he released his debut EP Sunset Season (2018). Raised in California and Georgetown, Texas, he began uploading vlogs, covers, and original songs to YouTube as a teenager.
His Career & Achivements:
2013 – 2017
Conan Gray began making videos at the age of nine and launched his self-titled channel in January 2013 at the age of fourteen. Covers, original music, and vlogs characterized his channel. His channel began to gain viewers and subscribers at a very quick pass due to his voice. Conan moved to Los Angeles in 2015, where he studied at UCLA. He maintained his web presence by adding original pop tunes to his portfolio. Early tracks such as “Those Days,” “Lovesick Boys,” and “The Other Side” were more stripped-down, with his voice, ukulele, and guitar serving as the key instruments. Conan released his first single, named Idle Town, in March 2017, which gained millions of listens and views on Spotify and YouTube at a very speedy rate.
2018 – 2020
He signed a record label with Republic Records in 2018 whereby he released his track named “Generation Why” in October of that year. He released his new very first EP named “Sunset Season” in November 2018, which had five songs: Idle Town, Generation Why, Crush Culture, Greek God, and Lookalike. The EP earned excellent feedback made it to number two on the Heatseekers Albums billboard.
2020 – present
On March 20, 2020, Conan released his first full-length studio album, named “Kid Krow”. The album was made up of his hit songs such as Maniac and Heather and reached number five on the US Billboard making him the largest new artist in the United States. After his big launch successes and with the start of the COVID pandemic he then released the track named “Fake” with American artist Lauv in October 2020.
His Infuences & Target Market
Taylor Swift is a major admirer of Conan Gray’s. His favorite artists include The Dixie Chicks, Lana del Rey, and Adele, but Taylor Swift is his number one lyricist songwriter, and he refers to himself as “the biggest swiftie.” In terms of Conans’ target market, his are normally along the same lines as “Shawn Mendes” and “Justin Biber”. Conan aims to target the ‘Generation Z’ and more specifically ages 12 to 18. His music is known to be part of the ‘Dream & Indi Pop’ which is something common to catch the attention of the newer and younger generation.
Ableton Live 11 Overview - YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufqAXSbNIuU.
Ableton Live 11: What’s New? - Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAisG2rrH_Q.
Ableton Live Ultimate Course 09 - the Grids - Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLDkQ7WAtB0.
“Conan Gray.” Conangray Wiki, https://conangray.fandom.com/wiki/Conan_Gray.
“Conan Gray.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 11 July 2021, https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conan_Gray.
How to program realistic MIDI Drums (today ... - youtube. (n.d.). Retrieved 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cQaqUVafKo
MusicTechMT. (2020, December 29). Ableton Live Tutorials: Sequencing drums in arrangement view #ableton #drums. YouTube. Retrieved 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UglPiZx0yFY
Prezi.com, https://prezi.com/hfitiwjg-oss/httpsiytimgcomvi8od5cojlh4qmaxresdefaultjpg/.