This week there was a two part written/lab test on terms and Protools. Some terms we were responsible for knowing were Sample Rate, which is the number of times per second the audio signal is sampled, a few options are 44.1K and 48K. Bit depth is a number of how many chunks the audio is sampled into. The lab portion of the test consisted of setting up the MIDI/AUX/AUDIO track matrix and recording some midi to audio. Then we were to step input a scale with the midi controller. There was a creative mix part of the assignment to rearrange the original track, add effects, and play with different software instruments. We listened to these in class and there were some good and interesting remixes. A couple of them sounded like a ton of random, non-musical tones. Some important things to be aware of when composing your own piece are to use some repetition and references. We as humans are interested in patterns and familiarity. I see a big difference between repetition and monotony are two different characteristics of music. You can have repetition without monotony, and it takes making slight differences in the loops to give spice but keep familiarity. My final remix ended up being very different, completely different than the original - chord progressions and all, but I found myself on a creative kick and just had some musical ideas in my head that I needed to record. Being a drummer, I was thinking of a simple groove in 4/4 using only a kick, snare, and hi hat. I recorded it by playing the midi-controller with my hands and using the BOOM instrument plug-in on protools for a tight, electronic sounding kit. I looped this groove, loaded an instrument track with piano, and began playing to it. I started in c minor like the original composition did, but went to the b7 instead of the ii chord. I soon found a melody that I really liked so I laid that down and in listening to the mix, thought of what other instruments I could bring in to benefit the overall jam. There wasn’t any bass yet, and listening to the beat against the piano, I added a 16th note pulsing bass synth sound to make the music feel like its moving rhythmically and give it some bottom end. I used the digital Vacuum tube plug-in, activated the LFO cut off parameter and synced it to a 16th note value. Now that I had the rhythm section in place and a nice single melody on top, it still needed to be filled out so I added a spacey warped strings patch to give a constant ambiance. I arpeggiated the same chord tones that I was using for the melody, and backed off the attack in sound envelope editor so it created a swell, and a I put a flanger on it. I played all of these parts, recording live, without quantize on. Then I went into the piano editor and made any necessary corrections. I like doing things in layers, and subdividing beats to give one 4 bar loop many different feels. Another in class assignment this week was to record a simple drum beat at 100bpm and an a minor scale played melodically on the piano. Then we were to record ourselves singing along to the scale, saying a-b-c-d-e-f-g along with it. After getting that recorded, we grouped together the two tracks because we needed to section out the different letters and piano we recorded. We rearranged them into the C major scale c-d-e-f-g-a-b, and then into a-c-e-g-b-d-f-c, and d-f-a-g-b-d-c. Then we into AUDIOSUITE > pitch shift. We doubled the vocal track and started to pitch the notes. We did a minor 3rd up and a dimished 5th up on a third track, creating a diminished chord. We then played with reversing the sound in the audiosuite’s other section.