The video from our latest production seminar @ 125 Adelaide St has been recorded and uploaded for Fidelity Fixation. Using the previously introduced guitar (Fender Stratocaster Custom 72) I was featured as the session guitar player to add some melody to this speaker busting bass track!
I will present a brief explanation on how the track was built from the ground up. The next tunes to uploaded will be examined in greater depth focusing on specific parts of the production process.
Reaper is the digital audio workstation used for the song "Speekah Flex," the interface is displayed on the screen by projection. Cockos is the developer of this ground breaking audio software, they employ an "honest business model" that is enhanced with regular updates by a team of passionate engineers. It is amazing that you get all these free updates for this incredibly intuitive and ever evolving software for an insanely low one time cost.
This "honest business model" as defined by the companies website, invests capital exclusively for the function of improving the software directly; They do not invest most of the R&D budget into marketing campaigns and piracy protection like other brands of software. This honor system has kept the price point very low and consumers are very satisfied and often express beaming product reviews to fellow audio professionals.
Cockos offers a discounted license of $60.00 for producers making under $20,000 with the software; a commercial license costs $225.00 for studios making over that amount. This clever and surprisingly fair price point policy is just another example of how Reaper is designed with your everyday producer in mind, keeping the playing field fair and accessible varying levels of users.
Now that we have a background on the software used for the session, here is a breakdown of composition:
Step 1 - The track was started with a brand new Reaper session loaded up on an empty template.
Step 2 - First four stereo drum tracks were created and then we asked students to come to the front and select drum samples for our new track. This was a very interesting experience having four different individuals compose the drums, they worked together quite well!
Predominantly the rhythms were selected from a huge bank of drum loops on our production hard drive. With a little bit of looping and layering we finalized a booming driving drum track with a glitchy breakdown.
The drums were mixed to taste by inviting class members to the front to do some sweep and cut EQ'ing which left us with a draft mix for the drums.
Step 3 - Now MC Pucona just arrived and he is itching to spit some lyrical content on this track! He conducted a group survey asking each member of the class to select a word, he wrote each word down on the white board to be the foundation for his rhyme (You can see the words on the white board behind me playing guitar). He hit the track hard in one take dropping his signature flavor on the mix!
Step 4 - Collectively again the class came up one by one cycling through different synth patches to find the perfect match for the beat. We had all kinds of wobble synth bass and ethereal textures that were recorded on the fly. The synth layers gave the track some movement, some low end you felt in your rib cage as it played back on the sound-system.
Step 5 - Next up was me on the guitar laying down my part of the tune, playing seventh style chords shapes to fill the tune out with some funk elements. This is where the video ends.
In upcoming posts we will explore additional elements of production as we dive into a new song. Hope you enjoyed the video!
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