In this blog I will be discussing the progress of my major project for AUD210. What I’ve chosen to do is collaborate with Matthew Osborne who is in my class and we have decided to produce a two track EP from scratch based on one of our favourite artists, Disclosure. I’ve never written anything from scratch before so I’ve been super excited about this collaboration project.

The two tracks will have different styles each, one very laid back around 80bpm with a 16th note synth-pop feel and the other a more up-tempo garage based track around 130bpm. The Disclosure tracks we have referenced whilst producing ours are ‘Super Ego’ and ‘You & Me’ both by Disclosure. We had actually discussed collaborating like this earlier in the course so this project is a fantastic opportunity to finally get together and do something we are both extremely passionate about doing.

So far I’ve absolutely loved every part of producing these two tracks. We’ve had a fair bit of file sharing and ideas that have gone back an forth between us as we both find when it comes to the crunch we are more productive in our own spaces at home rather than together, which is good because all the best parts are made on our own then when we get together we can focus more of arrangement and combining our work rather than the intricate musicality details which can often take a lot of individual concentration. For example, when I was writing the lyrics and chords I needed to be on my own as it was a challenging process for me that required intense focus. Of course once I had written a ‘story’ so to speak I shared that with Matt and he would then provide his feedback on what he liked or didn’t like about it, what works etc. The same goes for any other musical samples we’d created individually.

In terms of how we’ve got to where we are now with the status of both tracks, well they are coming along really well and I’m fairly excited about these little babies of ours to be honest. Firstly Matt sent a drum beat to me which was a fantastic first step and definitely his forte, drums and effects. From there I had a great loop with a similar feel to reference track and I could start getting creative with it. I played around with a few minor 7th chords in the key of F minor and after having a good play around came up with a progression that I really liked the sound of. Added an arpeggiator in Ableton to the ‘saw beep’ chords and bam, the feel was suddenly there. This was the exciting part, watching it come to life. This was the step that opened the creative doors for me. All of a sudden I could hear melodies in my head, firstly one, then two, three, four and five usable melodies, no words, just melodies.

Then it was time to attempt the lyrics, which was quite challenging in itself for my first original song. I sat there staring at the white piece of paper in front of me thinking where do I begin. I think writing lyrics is something that needs to come from the heart. Anyone can throw a few rhyming words on a piece of paper but I wanted meaning in the words, I wanted it to represent a state of mind, I wanted it to tell a story. Whether I’ve achieved that or not I’m not sure but I simply wrote down what came to me and after a couple days I finally had something that resembled the structure of a song. Two verses, a pre-chorus, chorus and a bridge.

The next challenge was actually fitting the words I’d written to the melodic phrases I’d written without it sounding too lame or complex. The idea of our project is simplicity with quality not quantity when it comes to the sounds we’ve carefully chosen. After changing a couple words around within the song I was happy, so was Matt.

Matt and I recorded vocals last Friday in the studio. Doing vocals myself has made it easier for Matt I think as it’s not like we had to work with an outside vocalist for the track and didn’t have to worry about teaching a vocalist the melodies I’d created etc. The recording process was awesome, Matt and I work so well together and as a vocalist he was brilliant at communicating and I think he really got the best out of me that day. So here below is a short demo of our track ‘Reaction’ at one of my favourite parts of the song, you get a good idea of the powerful Juno synth sample we created and recorded ourselves as well as the break down into the bridge section of the vocal stems.