In Milestone Three, you're going to complete the execution of the production plan through an initial rough bounce which will give you a chance to get feedback before you commit to the final mix. I suggest you do some self-evaluation as part of this process. As you record the midi and other parts. Ask yourself some questions. Does the orchestration work? That is to say, do the sounds you have picked for the many parts work together? And do they provide the function intended? For instance, in the case of piano or guitar does the part fill in the harmonic progression for us. Does it have the right level of activity or is it too prominent or too busy for the role. In terms of the bass does the sound fit the genre? Does the part work with the kick drum? Does the part make the groove come alive? Does the part guide us through the chord changes by providing root motion on important beats? Do any of the parts sound in the same register? Or do they conflict with each other with the vocal. Are the parts working together or do they fight one another in other words. Or obscure one another. Once you get that sorted out, then you can think about the arrangement. In terms of arrangement, for our purposes. Let's just say that the arrangement is comprised of the instrumentation which we just talked about. Also the order of form elements, including whether to include intro, interlude, solo and where to put everything. A very important issue in arranging is variations in texture. For instance, will you include a breakdown where some parts drop out. Will parts come in and drop out in other form elements. And then finally, the decision whether to fade or provide a composed ending. Does your arrangement keep the listener involved? Is there enough contrast in the texture and form elements to keep us intensely involved in your song from beginning to end. Let's talk a little bit about recording vocals. Sometimes, a vocalist can hear their own voice better if they move one earphone off the ear and then they can monitor the track through the other earphone and they can hear their voice live in the room. This can work well. But you've got to make sure if they do that that the off earphone is flush against the head behind the ear or the sound of the track will bleed into the mic. One technique I always use when I'm recording and editing vocals is comping. As loud and demonstrates in his production course, composite editing can be done manually in any digital audio workstation. In my view, the most important thing about a vocal performance is conviction. It's more important than legibility, then tone even pitch accuracy. My primary example for this is Bob Dylan. He has terrible pitch control. He's got unappealing tone, but he has so much conviction in his vocal performance that he moved a generation through his music. Of course, his songs are great which helped. So let's talk about the editing stage. Once you have all your basic parts recorded, ask yourself some more questions. Are there glitches in the sync or the timing of the parts? Are the midi parts musically expressive? Is the order of the form elements optimal? Does the tempo work, is it too fast or too slow? Do I want to make any large changes in the arrangement, change the order of the form elements for instance? And once you've answered these questions, you can get busy fixing the mistakes, overdubbing where you need to or re-recording if necessary. What about drum parts? I usually divide the world of kick drum into two camps. Either four on the floor or everything else. [LAUGH] So let's talk about some generalizations about characteristics of drum parts in different genres. For instance, in rock and country, you're going to hear mostly straight eights. In jazz, you're going to hear a swing feel. In Latin they used the Clave, the shave and a haircut two bits. And you might get an eighth note pulse for Bossa Nova. Saba for instance has sixteenth note pulse. New Orleans music is a fusion. It's got rock and blues. Cajun. Zydeco. Funk. Afro-Cuban. You're often going to hear the Clave beat built into that. Blues is straight eights or shuffle. Funk is straight or swing 16ths. Hip Hop is mostly swing 16ths. Although sometimes it's straight too. And then you have house, dance, electronic calypso, afro-pop. Those are genres that use this four on the floor with the kick drum playing on every quarter note. Okay. Another couple of quick tips. One is don't forget to use your key commands. I use them all the time. It's like driving a car, they become automatic. So when I want to go to the next bar, I have it set to my right arrow, etc. Another technique is replacement and this is possibly to replace midi parts with an acoustic sound source performance. So, it might make sense to use a temporary midi part to fill in your arrangement that you plan on replacing with a live audio performance later. One really important thing about sequencing is that you don't want to too much quanti, quantization. If you quantize tight all the way to the grid which is what I call hard quantizing, it's going to make the parts sound midi. Humans play with infinite subtle variation. In most DAW's you can quantize to a percentage. Pulling the positions of the individual note events towards the grid, but not all the way. So, it doesn't sound mechanical or meaty. Two more tips. Archive your versions. Make sure that you clearly label the versions with a, a version number and a decent title. So that when you come back to your project months later, you don't get confused. For instance, your song file might be labeled capstone underscore final underscore mix underscore seq for sequence dot logic. Another tip is to back up, especially your audio. You don't want to lose audio if a, a hard drive fails. When you're sure you've settled on all the recorded parts and performances. And you've done all the editing you're going to do, bounce and post the current state of your song. For this assignment, don't try for a finished mix. Rather concentrate on orchestration, recording and editing to get a good performances and building your arrangement. Okay. We're making progress.
