How To Make Tropical House
Technical Song Design Document
Requirements
Plan, record, mix and produce a musical piece between 2:30 - 5:00 minutes long using the studios at dBs Music and working from home. You will create a multitrack composition, incorporating a minimum of 2 different live recorded Instruments and 2 different software-based instruments, a minimum use of 2 different time-based FX processors and 1 dynamics processor. The processing elements can be either hardware or software-based.
The portfolio submitted will include between 5 to 8 audio stems and a bounce of a finished mastered track. The stems are referred to as the groups of the various elements of the multitrack. Playing all the stems together at the same time would correspond to a mixdown (pre-master) of the music piece. Each stem can be either stereo or mono.
Having a stems mix and a stereo bounce of work is industry practice. For this reason, you will be submitting a session folder containing a stems mix and a mastered stereo version of the same musical piece. The work needs to be presented at a professional standard utilising mixing and mastering techniques to provide optimum levels and balance on playback.
Song
Tropical House - Typical bpm range of 95-115 bpm
Key Words
House, Happy, Sunny, Ocean, Waves, Love, Friendships, Tropical, Beach
Artists within Genre
Kygo, Mike Perry, Sigala, Jonas Blue, Matoma, Seeb
Tropical Vibe
Tropical instruments such as flutes, folk guitars, horns, steel drums and marimbas, pianos have been included due to artists such as Kygo.
Not so many big drops, the feeling is relaxed and chill. Techniques such as sidechaining and vocal chopping are also apparent. Melodies are sporadic and flutter up and down the scale although short in complexity.
Key
A Minor - Due to acapella being used falling into that key. Relative is C Major, features no flats or sharps. This helps with the audience feeling more relaxed with the tonality and nothing too ‘experimental’.
Chords used
F Major Seventh
G Major
E Minor Seventh
A Minor Seventh
Arrangement, audio, channels and VSTs
Main Techniques Used
Vocal Chops - “Vocal Chops are the fragmented vowels that act as melodic or percussive pseudo-Vocal elements.” (Bresnahan, 2016)
Vocals are inputted into a sampler, from there you can adjust pitch and key. For myself I chose not to change pitch or key since I wanted it to still fit the key of the song. Next you chop the sample into little sections, with each section corresponding to a key on the piano roll. You can then play with these sections until finding a cool melody. The sampler I used for Vocal chops is called SliceX, a powerful vocal chop/ sampling tool.
Sidechaining
Sidechaining is a tool activated by one part of an audio track/ input and then affecting another part. Its use in EDM is mainly with the Kick and bass elements, however its proper implementation can also be used to create rhythmic elements, such as White noise risers and downers. The Sidechaining tool I used is called Kickstart, it offers great compression sidechaining, and within my track I used it for the bass elements to help with the kick implementation and also for other elements such as the chords and white noise rhythmic elements. The first image shows the Sidechaining tool Kickstart in action, acting upon information sent through the BPM, compressing the first beat and releasing on the up beat. The other images show that by changing the rhythm of a piano and applying sidechain, you can create a pumping rhythmic element to the track. The last image shows sidechained white noise creating a Downer FX.
Resampling
Since my track is tropical, and using the key words above, I decided to include sounds of the waves at the beach. Since I do not live near a beach, I found a Youtube sample, and resampled it. I found the original to be low in pitch, so using the stock sampler I pitched up using the piano roll until I found a pitch I was happy with.
With the sampler I was also able to change the start and finish points, which allowed me to control clipping such as the image below shows.
Automation
Automation is the ability to change characteristics over a time period to a particular part of the track. This allows for the excitement and anticipation to grow and be controlled. Within my track I used automation to affect the EQ of my main melody to grow. I start with a low pass of the melody, and as we get closer to the drop section, the band 7 slowly realigns just before the drop. This creates interest and excitement just before the drop hits. Below are images outlining this process.
Stereo Enhancing + Reverb
Stereo enhancing allows certain elements to appear wider within the mix, meaning listeners listening through the stereo platform will have more interesting elements to listen to. Most elements such as percussion I have enhanced and panned left and right.
Reverb creates space with the track. It allows what would be a traditional flat and dry sound to become placed within a space. Elements such as claps and snaps include heavy reverb.
Recording
For recording I planned to complete within one session. The main elements I aimed to record were piano, shakers, percussive drums and human noises such as claps and snaps. The piano would act as a layer for my chord's piano layer. The percussive snaps and claps would be added for additional elements with wide stereo enhancement and panning for extra flavour within the song. I planned to record in stereo pair, this would allow me to really exaggerate the percussive elements and give the layer of the piano extra width. The stereo width would also help for the piano since it is a large instrument, so one side would be Left and Bass keys, and the right would be Right and melody keys.
The below images show the setup for the session and the recorded elements. I used FL Studio with a DI box to record directly into the daw, and two AKG c414 microphones set up in A/B Stereo position.
Mixing
Mixing is the process of blending all the individual tracks in a recording to create a version of the song that sounds as good as possible. The idea is to take the best parts of the song and to either emphasise and/or edit using tools such as panning or compression. EQ stands for “Equalizer” and is used to boost or dampen different frequencies within a sound. Say for example if a drum hit I have recorded isn't heavy enough, I can add an EQ onto the channel and increase the lower frequency bands to give a fatter and deeper sound than the stock audio
Compression was featured and used heavily on my track. Sidechaining was used both for rhythmic and ducking capabilities. This helps create both interest and diversity within the song. Panning is also another tool in which you can effectively place instruments within a space. This could relate to hearing a band on stage and hearing certain instruments coming from certain areas such as left and right, forward and backward.
Volume balancing was also used to create subtleties between main chord/melodic noises. To avoid phasing and too much noise coming through, decreasing noise from layers can help even out the overall sound. For example the image below shows how even though I have four elements playing the same thing, their volumes are ducked to form one cohesive sound.
For my song, the vocals and melody are the most interesting and focal point of the song. WIth this in mind when mixing I made sure to make sure they were the most prominent.
I also produced 7 bus categories for all instruments and noises to go to. These were broken down into Melody, Vocals, Bass, Drums, SFX, Chords and percussion. With these busses I was able to apply effects such as compression and EQ to a wide range of noises in one go.
When exporting the song into the 7 Categories, I made sure to release at -6dB. This would allow headroom for the mastering process.
Mastering
Mastering refers to the point in which a mix of a song has been completed and is now being edited to be distributed. My aim for distribution in accordance with professional practice was to master with Spotify in mind.
The main tools used in mastering include compression, saturation and EQ. Due to allowing room within the mixing stage, I could compress and effectively enhance the loudness of the track whilst keeping some of the dynamic range. Due to Spotify having a -3dB limit and -14Lufs limit, these were my bench marks to aim for. The tools I used for the mastering stage include Maximus, a compression/ saturation all in one tool, FabFilter Pro Q 3 (EQ), YOULEAN Loudness meter 2 and a limiter.
With the song, I found after compression of the lows, mids and Highs that the bass was too apparent. I decided to EQ slightly and to dial back the compression slightly as well. When using compression within the mastering phase, it should only be applied in small indices of around =/- 0.5db. Also, on the mids I added some very slight saturation. The EQ would produce more tonal balance Below the image shows how I have managed to keep nice dynamic range within the track whilst also reaching and mastering the track.
Below is the loudest part of my song and here you can see I have achieved the desired LUFS and Truepeak max DB I was aiming for.
The use of a limiter helped to make sure I did not reach above that -3dB peak as well.
Bibliography
Bresnahan, R. (2016). Music Production Tutorial: How to Chop Vocals Like a Pro. Blog.sonicbids.com. Retrieved 15 April 2021, from https://blog.sonicbids.com/music-production-tutorial-how-to-chop-vocals#:~:text=Vocal%20chops%20are%20the%20fragmented,us%20singing%20all%20day%20long.