Project 2

Like I said in my previous post, this is actually the first project I completed. I have some experience with a little Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) called FL Studio. It’s actually a pretty powerful tool, comparable to Photoshop except in the audio field. In FL Studio, you start with the raw sounds: a drum kick, snare, hi-hat, bells, claps, etc, and insert these sounds on a grid where a line sweeps through from left to right and plays each sound as it passes over. The result: a beat. Here is a very simple example:

I have actually worked with this program for awhile, learning the basics of beat manipulation, when I came across a feature called “piano roll” which looks similar the basic beat thing. A piano roll is an option available to any sound and it manipulates the pitch the sound makes. It works in a similar fashion, except on the left side, instead of different beats, you have different notes. You place little bars of variable width which change the length the note plays. As before, a line sweeps over and plays each note resulting in a melody. Every now and then in my free time I dabble, and every now and then, I end up creating a beat I really like, and develop into a full fledged song. The particular song I finished and will present to you today is one that I have started about a year ago, and messed around with on and off. I have tweaked every aspect and have finally run out of things to do with it. It is done, and has gone through about 7 or 8 revisions. I call it Video Game Hysteria, because the main part of the song, the melody, sounds like something out of a Mario game. I hope you enjoy it!

If you would like to see (hear) the evolution of this song, the other revisions have been uploaded to Video Game Hysteria