First Music Track – “No Time for the Busy Life”

I recently tweeted that I hadn’t been writing blog entries for the last few weeks due to me learning music production. I definitely haven’t stopped thinking about blog entries, though. And while there’s still the plan of doing video content, I knew I wanted to expand on my music skills to create themes and additional music for videos. Stock music will help as background stuff depending on the mood I want to go for, but I’ve always intended on diving deeper into things like music theory and software & composition techniques.

Well, all that time has led to me completing my first track and uploading it to SoundCloud. And since I’d been itching to write again, I figured why not write about this and share the thought processes behind its creation?

Check out the tune and read on. Let’s do it to it!

https://soundcloud.com/somemediageek/no-time-for-the-busy-life

I loaded up FL Studio and started this off like a practice run in which I set down a four-on-the-floor beat. A habit of mine when doing so was to always just have the kick drum play for a few measures before introducing a snare on each second beat, and then let those two run for a bit before bringing in hi-hats.

I thought that’d be too redundant based on how I always practiced stuff, so then I decided, “Screw it, just combine a couple of those sounds and shift around the snares. So I did that at first, then found a good set pattern for the snares before realizing that I needed an extra sound with serious power to it.

Unfortunately, one sound wouldn’t suffice. I found that by combining a couple snares and kicks plus a closed hat, I got the exact sound I wanted.

My idea was to have a really powerful smack-type of sound similar to the one in Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal” (easily my all-time favourite MJ track). Once I had this, I realized that while it would work nicely on certain moments, it could be even more fun making it go off in-between the beats to kind of take listeners by surprise (though still keeping them from being too random). Once I experimented with this, I found something I was very happy with.

Then came the hi-hats. I learned that they’re good to use on the off-beats, so I pretty much used them like that. Much like with the smack sound, though, I didn’t want them to always be going off randomly. As I moved the hi-hats and the smack around, it became clear that I really didn’t want a lot of the sounds to go on for too long. I thought that if nothing new happens for what feels like a long moment, something should change. Either I space things apart to lend some kind of unpredictable feeling, add a new sound, or remove something.

This helped me create what would sort of be “less harsh” moments in which the listener could sort of ease into a different feeling, wondering what comes next. I kept moving things around and just followed my gut feeling as the whole arrangement took shape.

Somewhere in between all that, I improvised the bass-like melody-type portion. That’s one of my favourite things to create and play around with, so this one came fairly easy. I’ve been listening to a lot of retro video game tunes lately, so I wanted to keep a similar feeling of simplicity and originally approached this like a loop-able chiptune. I also did simple harmonizing to make a richer sound. But then as I was shifting around the hi-hats and smack sound like I mentioned, I thought about the bass/melody I was creating and realized the track as a whole felt kind of short. So I asked myself, “Hang on, what if I reverse the melody/bass thingy or try some inversion to lengthen this?”

Reversing (or in musical terms, retrograde) is a neat trick in which one “mirrors” the melody. For instance, if someone plays, C – E – G – F – A, they would then play A – F – G – E – C. And with inversion, the musician flips the intervals. This makes it seem like they’re turning the melody “upside-down” in a way. So I did a bit of both and just experimented with the results, even chopping some of these new pieces up (particularly around the 53 second mark) to give it more life. This really helped me add some extra length to the piece as a whole and keep it fresh as it’d progress. I also added another layer of the melody/bass but with another instrument for added effect.

As for the ending? Well, I wasn’t sure at first but then realized that the smack sound I created had a really cool power to it almost like that of a gunshot. So I thought, “What if that sound ends the track?” In a way I thought it was funny, as if I didn’t have an idea and felt, “Yeah, what if the smack kind of just knocks the life out of the song, finishing it?” So that’s what I did at first. I just had the sound go off and then boom, silence.

Meanwhile, the beginning felt like it needed more. At first, I thought I wanted something slow that would play before transitioning into the energetic feel much like Orbital’s classic 90’s hit “Halcyon + On + On.” I wasn’t too sure how well that’d work, and yet another idea was to get some inspiration from the start of Crystal Method’s song “Busy Child.” I thought about both ideas and then decided to sort of combine them. I thought about a relaxing sweeping ambient/synth sound from the beginning of Halcyon, and the cool sounds from Busy Child, and decided to take a simple approach in combining these ideas. I found that once I shifted things around, it actually had a nice sound. To add another element, though, I thought it’d be cool to add in just enough of the hi-hats to sort of unify everything.

Then I revisited the end of the piece and felt like it needed something. Since I started to find places to insert that sweeping synth, I thought it’d be a cool idea to bring that back plus the other sounds that were at the start of the song to give it a sort of feeling of symmetry. As I look at it now, it feels like a good fitting end to the piece, with the smack sound taking on that power of a gunshot that ends the song, just as the background sounds play their last ounces of life.

After all that, refining, refining, and more refining. I found that as I moved thing around, some things needed to change a bit. Nothing too big changed, it was just some cleaning up. I even managed to find some places to insert that cool sweeping synth sound during the less-harsh moments and I feel like that helped add something. And in terms of mixing, I actually didn’t do a whole lot. Experts will probably shake their heads at that, but I feel like a lot of the sounds are clear enough and that the levels carry everything forward without overpowering one-another too much.

Since I am just starting out, it’ll be fun to revisit this whole track when I have learned more and refine it further, give it some proper mixing techniques and maybe even expand on some of the sounds. I primarily used the Flex VST in FL Studio for most of the instruments and I’m really happy with how everything turned out, but we’ll see where I’ll take things as I keep on learning more.

Oh yeah, and I’m sure professionals have noticed from the screenshots that I used the MIDI/piano-roll tool for like… everything. It’s just so convenient. Don’t judge me lol.

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So that’s my whole thought process in making what I’ve titled “No Time for the Busy Life.” I call it that because I hadn’t done music for a while due to being busy with work, but now I wanna make more time to keep playing around with music production. That and I feel like it also has meaning for avid music listeners who don’t want the busy life and just wanna get their groove on.

I really enjoyed making this and already have ideas on things I want to try in the next track. Before I go, I’d like to take a moment and thank a couple friends, Karac and Christina for their feedback and encouragement. This is the first track I’ve ever created, so giving them a sneak peek before uploading it was fun and they really motivated me to do this.

I hope everybody likes the music and I can’t wait to create more. Until next time, take that leap and don’t give up!