The Evolution of a Song

Lots and lots of tracks and samples.

So, today I went through some of my old recordings searching for some illusive lost gem. What I ended up doing was going through a butt-load of my old recordings on Pro Tools and laughing at myself because, either, the sound quality was so abysmal, or, because the songs were just sooooooo bad. And I mean really bad. It is one of those times when you listen to a song and say "Please tell me I didn't write that. I did? God dammit!"

But I was also amazed at some of the stuff I found. Especially one piece that I had done for a project in my first year of college. What was even stranger is that I still happen to have about 9 different revisions of the song in my iTunes. I decided to start from the earliest and work my way up.

Now let me explain this project first. For the assignement we were give a set of 53 musical patterns known as In C. This semi-aleatoric piece was composed by Terry Riley in 1964 and is supposed to be played by a large ensemble of about 35 musicians. The musicians are supposed to just jump in randomly while a constant C is played on the piano. (Thanks Wikipedia!! I could not remember all of that.) You can listen to an original recording here, though, I would, in no way, suggest that you listen to more than about 1 minute and a half of it. As well an explanation of the piece with the separate musical score can be seen here.



In class we brought in a small ensemble and had them record all the parts. We were supposed to arrange all the parts any way we wanted and present it as a finalized song.

This is the setup besides, you know, a computer.

Well, I hated the stuff we recorded in class. With the way the music was written, using traditional instruments seemed like a waste to me. So, I loaded up Sibelius, put in the patterns, and exported them as midi files. I loaded those up into Pro Tools and connected over to Reason to load synthesizers and such.



The earliest version I still have was called V.1.5. It still posses most of the key elements but was not very well formulated. The arranging and layering of the different instruments was actually terrible. I'm afraid to remember what V.1 might have sounded like and I'm sure not going to look for it. The flow is also an issue in this version. There are stops and starts but they are placed poorly and are normally too abrupt or take too long. The panning suffers from some serious mono-phony. Though, for a test run, I wasn't too unhappy with it.



Now we come to V.2.5. If you read through the explanation that was posted earlier in this entry, it is said by Terry Riley that the musicians can be accompanied by a constant eighth-note played on a piano. The note is of course middle C. I decided that I would incorporate this into the piece. I captured a very simple midi recording of a piano playing this eighth-note and then set up some automation using an old Alesis Quadra-Verb as an insert. Flanger, chorus, delay, and reverb were all incorporated to make the kind of warping that the piano goes through. I intended for it to be a metaphor in the beginning for the music being taken beyond it's normal bounds and warped into something different.

The Quadraverb on top in all it's disconnected glory.

Now the structure in this version is also much improved and some of the panning has been sorted out. Flow is still an issue and the levels are all over the place. Mixing and mastering this was also still an issue since I had very little experience in that field.

Now fast forward about 3 semester. I had made a finished version of the project, titled V.3, which I turned in and got a great grade on. However, I was never fully happy with the end result until I learned how to master and mix these tracks properly. I have Alan Wonneberger to thank for that, a great teacher and an extremely knowledgeable. But anyway, I had never gotten to equip that level of polish and layering that I wanted. After I learned how to mix and match properly, touching up this piece was a no-brainer. I had even started a surround version, but never did finish it.