So a lot of thoughts went around my head when trying to decide what I wanted to do for my last project. I finally came on the decision of trying a kind of mash up compilation of one of my favorite bands Republic of Loose. I decided to pick three of their best hits and sample then to try create something new and interesting. So, I picked the steady song, shame and comeback girl as the songs I wanted to experiment with. All of these songs are listed below in case you fancy a listen, they're great songs. Anyway so in the end everything did not go exactly quite as well as I wanted it to. I felt the first two samples worked out quite well but when it came to sampling the third song comeback girl I hit a brick wall. No matter what I did I couldnt get it to sound the way I wanted it to. At this point I had already composed over half the song so I figured I'd just have to make do with what I had done. In the end it didnt work as well as i hoped but I feel that I learned a lot from the whole experience. I even found myself with a greater appreciation for guys like girl talk. Regardless of the criticism guys like him get what he does is not at all easy even if its not entirely his own work.
Anyway, let me talk a bit about what went on in the song. I worked primarily in reason but ended up finishing the piece in logic. I figured reason would give me a better handle of using the samples I wanted which ended up working out quite well with Dr. Rex. I used recycle to divide up my samples which I put into Dr. Rex. So the song starts off with a hip hop drum beat in redrum, I had 3 drum loops which came in as the intro progressed. I then added in a nice synth line in logic using the synth bells. I then let the drum beat drop temporarily and started to bring in one of my samples. After this I then brought it all back together with the drums, synth bells and a few samples of the song blended together which I feel worked out really well.
After this piece runs out I brought in a new drumline in redrum with a unison effect. On top of this I added a subtractor with a flanger effect. I really liked how this worked into the sample I used as I feel the sample had a type of sound that ran really well with the flanger. So as this particular section ran out I started trying to work on the third song but to no avail. It just wasnt working for me and it ended up wasting hours of my time before I realized that my hopeful plan wasnt to be.
So for the third section I tried to keep the idea the same even without the samples I wanted. I kept a similar drum beat as the earlier section and put in a nice effect with some of the pads in logic. On top of this I threw in a guitar instrument in some form of an attempt to keep the idea flowing from earlier in the song.
Overall I can honestly say that I'm not as happy with this project as I'd like to be. I felt I had a good original idea going into to the project and put in a lot of hours in trying to make it work. However in the end it wasnt to be. I even toyed with the idea of scrapping the whole thing and trying to do something simpler like a trance song but I figured that I liked my idea and I feel that for the better part of the song it worked out quite well. Anyway thats about it for me. I loved this class and its gonna be a shame to see it go. Cheers for everything Matt.
So here it is, let it run for a few seconds before it starts,
Also the songs themselves,
