Artefact 1: DAW Track

My Experience With DAWs

Prior to beginning my course I had experience using DAWs such as Cubase for work in highschool and Bandlab for more personal projects.This is the first track I made in my own time after buying my personal Ableton license. I was very happy with this and decided to include it in my portfolio. I decided to name it “Conflict at Zero” as in my opinion the sound of the track resembles a video game boss fight in an icy area.

Sound Inspiration

"Deep Blue" by Heaven Pierce Her

Deep Blue is quite possibly my favourite track from one of my favourite games, Ultrakill. I love the way it blends its atmospheric piano and bass sound with the aggressive choppy breakbeats that come in after its intro. I have a soft spot for drum sampling and wanted to include some in my track.

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"Wanderer" by Little Dragon

I was inspired by the pop-esque groove of the drum beat in this song as well as its bass synth, I tried to implement something similar in my song to have a less aggressive drum pattern for the verse parts of my track to make the breakbeat pattern have more of an impact when it came in.

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Starting from Zero

Keyboard

The first instrument I added was the high pitched keyboard. My idea behind the sound of this was to have something dreamy/echoey open the song and linger in the background as it goes on. I got the dreamy sound combining the high pitch plus the reverb. In my opinion the sound almost feels like its being played in an icy cave.

Saw Bass

The next instrument I added was the Saw Bass to accompany the melody. This took inspiration from the bass in Wanderer mentioned earlier. To add some soul to the sound of it I added some chorus ensemble in order to make it sound more lively. Additionally, I added some EQ to get closer to the sound I wanted.

Chords

The next part added was the chords, I decided to make these chorus exclusive to give more separation between it and the verse. I added reverb to make it feel more spacious as well as a bit warmer to give it a bit of distortion to complement the breakbeat pattern.

Drum Pattern 1

It was at this point I decided to add the first drum pattern. There isn’t much to say about this one, the pattern itself is a fairly standard Drum n Bass pattern with a slight reverb to make it blend in the track better, as well as a compressor and EQ to give it more impact while still staying balanced.

Vocal Sample

I’d say this part of the track is my favourite, build-up/chorus vocal sample. The sample itself is one of a choir that can be found in Ableton’s library, I chopped it up and altered the pitch for some parts so it played in harmony with the bass synth. I added a vocoder and chorus ensemble to make the sound feel more electronic and added EQ and compression to enhance the effect I was going for. This was my first real time chopping up a non-breakbeat sample and I am very proud of the result.

Drum Pattern 2

Next up is the breakbeat sample seen in the chorus as well as briefly in other parts. For this I used a Drum Rack and chopped up a drum sample I found online (see link below). In terms of effects the clean sound sounded good for what I wanted so I added a slight reverb to make it blend with the track better.

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Piano Melody

Next is the piano melody. Prior to this I wasn’t very good when it came to thinking of proper melodies so I decided to challenge myself to write one I was proud of. I would say I accomplished that goal. For this I put slight overdrive and compression to make it sound a little more electronic, as well as a slight reverb. Additionally I added another track during the end chorus that brings this track up an octave to serve as a dramatic conclusion for the song.

Shout Sample

Not much to say about the following track, just a vocal shout sample from Ableton’s library that serves to introduce the final chorus, with a compressor to lower the peak of the sample.

"Think (About It)" Sample

For the final track of the song, I used a popular sample from the Lyn Collins song “Think (About It)” as I had heard it before and wanted to try and implement it into a work of my own. To this I added a compressor to decrease the prominence of the transients from the tracks own drums, as well as a reverb, EQ and chorus to help blend it into the rest of the mix. Below you can find a video breakdown of the samples I decided to use, some very interesting stuff.

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