BEAT DISSECTION EPISODE 2: RAIN

LAST TIME

Last time we took a look at some of the pros and cons of sampling vs writing a melody

You can read that here! Today we're gonna be focusing on actually breaking down an entire track... Well at least half of it midnight will be covering the other half.
Let's get into this!

RAIN

That right there is the collective mind of @midnightshade15 and myself.
It's been awhile since we've made anything together and most of the time when we were actively collaborating, we were just practicing. Learning off of each other! having a friend who's willing to try things with you is fun and interesting because you never know what's gonna happen.... And when you guys learn what you're doing it's even more interesting because at least you know whatever you'll make will be decent! ...At least decent...

HOW THE MELODIES CAME TO BE

Well first off, we need to choose a scale. What is a scale? A scale is a set of usually twelve notes that sound nice together so you can play your melodies and harmonize everything. What is harmony? Harmony are the other notes around the melody to kinda help shape it some more. You typically harmonize using chords. A chord is a set of three or more notes that sound nice together!

I had @midnightshade15 give me a note and BPM. A BPM is how fast or slow everything is playing (fun fact: the lowest BPM a human can perceive is 33!), it stands for Beats Per Minute. Midnight set the key at G and the BPM at 120. From there I chose a scale, The Major bebop scale (it's very jazzy)!
I don't have a picture of the scale but here's a picture of the entire project:

As you can see I had to minimize some things to get everything else on screen.

I wrote out a melody (that you can hear at the very end of the track and bits and pieces throughout) which I don't remember the notes to.... And rendered that out to a .wav file and sent it over to midnight to play with, he came up with the other piano pieces and wrote out the drums. We were going for something a little more layed back on the drums so that way it's not over crowding anything plus it gives space for vocals and it's a laid back thing anyhow so why not!

WHY LAYERING IS COOL
Layering is a great tool that every producer should be utilizing. Why?
Because layering things on top of each other and barely messing with the other thing that you layered on top of your original idea gives more room to play! It leaves a constant for easier transition. Most people leave hi-hats as a constant (I'm guilty) but we felt the need to switch it up a little bit, it was fun.

I think layering is an important tool that some producers neglect and everyone who makes music should be layering things more often. It gives you a sound sandwich! Instead of pulling that resonance knob on your VST up why not find another/design sound that'll give more resonance, plus make a cool sound that you wouldn't really be able to recreate! The kick drum is layered, the melodies are layered. I love me a sound sandwich! (Put some mayo on that bi**h and you're good to go YUM YUM!)

You wanna know what else I think is important? Reverb.
You may not notice it but all my tracks are practically drowning in reverb. Reverb is all around us anyway! Whenever you step into a room there's reverb, reverb is the reflection of space between you and the sound bouncing all over the walls, and it can make for some pretty cool effects, like the flute that sounds like it's in a cave!

THE HOOK

The hook is a small eight bar section, each one of those squares is one bar which is made up of four beats which has no transition into it but has a transition out into the next verse which doesn't change much. Kicks fall out of the hook for four bars and there's some automation which controls a low-pass filter. A low-pass filters job is to let ll the low frequencies pass.

Here's some footage of a low-pass filter talking to some high frequencies:

TO BE CONTINUED

Yes, unfortunately I have to stop talking now. 😞
But that's okay because you'll be able to learn more about RAIN on @midnightshade15's profile once he posts about it! It should only take a few hours for him to write everything out..
As much as I wanna keep talking about RAIN I gotta leave him something to write about!
Once his post is out I'll be editing this post to hyperlink his post in the beginning!

Thank you steemians for all the support that you've shown me! I love you all!

DON'T FORGET TO:

Thanks for the read, honestly!