Final Track

My general focus was trying to incorporate storytelling, but in music form. Each Part is another piece to the puzzle, that when combined, harmonizes by the end of the track. This Christmas has been rough, and even though it is an exciting time, things do not always go to plan, and that’s okay. This piece gives me a melancholy feel, with hopeful undertones.
My final track was produced in 4/4 meter, at 120BPM, the drums were very basic giving it a very dry feel. The Hi-Hats is where the song picks up some character. To create the bassline, I first created the chords, then had the bass follow the rhythm of the drums. The bass kind of gives the song a trumpet tone, which helps tie in the hopeful undertones. Both the Rhythm and bass, talks about hope and are constant need to move forward.
With the rhythm and bass holding down a solid foundation, I picked Bb Major to help express finding the little things to be grateful for, even though life can be daunting. The key structure is | Bb | Adim | Dm | Eb | in the first half of the track. The other half key structure is | Gm | Bb | Dm | F |. Because I already had the bass going in an ascending arch, I made the melody descend. That way it would portray a kind of sad, but bright, and hopeful undertones to the story. I did use the relative minor key in the second half of the piece, which in a way made it have even more happier undertones.
The audio track is track 10, Female Vocals (Dos/ Las), I wanted a set of vocals that was bright and happy, but also a set of vocals that had a sadder feel to it. I sung the vocals myself. Which was slightly difficult because I was sick while making this track. The 2 synth tracks are tracks 6 and 7, Lead (Melody) and Chime Swell, they follow the same rhythm pattern as the drums, but in a descending motion. Even though the Melody and chime swell can be sad, it has bright happy undertones. Following the theme for the overall focus of the track. The sampler track is track 8, Q-Sampler_PVO, I left the cutoff at 54.3, and the Env Depth at +44.6 %, then move +2 notches on the coarseness. This gave a nice kind of O’s in the background of the second portion of the track, balancing out the female vocals.
I used the Limiter on all the tracks and the DeEsser on track 5, Pad (Chords). The Limiter sort of helped level out the loudness of the song entirely. But I still have a lot to learn about that. I hope to make time to play around with it some more. For the time-based effects, I put an echo on tracks 1, 3, and 7. which are tracks Kick, Percussion (HiHat), and Chime Swell. And then I put Space Designer on track 10, Female Vocals (Dos/Las)