Reflection

Composing 

Composing was alright. I first got my idea for my melody on my chorus and pre-chorus already in my phone. I had to start with a blank canvas and finding which instrument to start with was tough at first but slowly I had ideas for my fills and rhythms and also finding the preferred sound for my song. The writing process was fairly easy because I had the melody already in mind. It is just how to make the lyrics means something so that the people could relate. I got some of my instrument inputs from my classmates which helped me improve some of the parts. My reference song was Wait by Maroon 5 but I think now its more like the song Skin by Rag n Bone Man. I still kept the same song form from  the song Wait by Maroon 5. JJ helped me with my drums which lifted the song more with the drive from the drums. It is a lot of decision making in this process and I had to make it fast to move on from a part of a song. 

Producing 

Producing was a little tough in terms of making decisions on which instruments to keep, adding creative ideas and implementing personal creativity to the song. It was supposed to be a week long project for me to produce Wesley's song but because of the delay on recording the vocals, I only had limited time to produce the song. Communication and research was the main thing in this process, I had to ask Wesley what is the main focus of the song and which part of the song does he envision it to be based on his reference songs. When I first got the project, there weren't any vocals for the instrumental melody line (Vocal Chops) and the vocals I have gotten were only for the first half of the song. First I had to do some research on Youtube for tutorials on vocal chops. Figuring out the vocal chops was challenging, I had to pick which words that I wanted to highlight from the song and also figuring out how to create a melody out of those vocal chops. I finally got the melody for the vocal chops after a bunch of trial and errors, and sent it to Wesley for confirmation which he loved it. I had to copy and paste the vocals from the first half to the second part of the song and flex time for his verse because the vocals started off too fast. I also added flex pitch to his vocals to pitch some off notes. I added fills like synth, strings and a piano effect in his intro and last chorus. What I learned from this experience was to communicate and to accommodate mine and his ideas to his vision for the song. 

Mixing 

Mixing was fairly easy. I learned how to do the New York compression which was very useful and also the different types of compression. The volume and panning for the instruments was a little challenging for me and I need more hands on practice because each instruments and drum sets must have its own place in the mix and I had a hard time panning the instruments to find its place in the mix. In the mixing process first I had to arrange it and stack it into a folder then I had to to add gain, EQ and bussed out the compression for the drums and bass. I added Reverb and Delay for some of the instruments and vocals by bussing it out to an aux track. Lastly I added different submixers/submasters by bussing the grouped instruments and vocals to an aux track to mix it as a group and to make it easier for the mastering. In it, I have added Linear Phase EQ, Compression and more.