Recorded Sound Project

Initially, when I started this project, I had no idea what I was going to make. The only instrument I can play moderately well is piano, but I wasn't confident enough in my classical composition skills to create an interesting solo piano piece. Nonetheless, I started writing down some simple piano melodies in my DAW, and eventually, I came up with a melody that I liked. I then began building off of that until I had three more ideas that worked with the initial melody. At that point, I was ready to actually record the melody on a live piano.

This process wasn’t too difficult to start—I just had to connect the recording device to my computer and set my computer mic input to the device to begin picking up audio in FL Studio. The problem I faced was an issue with the DAW itself that I’ve come across before when recording audio, which has sort of deterred me from the process in the past. The issue was a kind of delayed and inconsistent audio input from the device. I realized the cause was a mismatch between the DAW’s sample rate and the recording device’s sample rate. After I fixed the DAW’s sample rate to match, I was able to capture audio perfectly.

Recording the parts was easy. All I had to do was place the device on top of the piano and let it record the audio—then I could go back and correct the tempo later. I hadn’t actually heard all my ideas played together until I layered and quantized the audio files, and when I finally did, it sparked the idea that led to what I ended up creating. I could hear the potential for a brass melody that would complement the top piano melody—and then I basically just ripped off Nina Simone’s Feeling Good.

You can see the audio recordings in the top three rows of the video. I use these throughout the song as the basis of the melody and progression. Of course, the recording wouldn't have worked too well as it was, and I did some processing to make it match the timbres of the digital instruments. The song's opening was the least challenging, as I only needed to minimize the little amount of splice popping and then add a vinyl filter to make the transition to digital more impactful. I added some reverb for warmth, and also as a sort of blanket fix for the popping, which I then layered with some EQ that I used to cut out the frequencies which caused the issue. Then I added the vinyl filter on top so that all the processing would be affected by it.

The piano top melody keeps this processing throughout since I thought the broken sound this created fit better with the atmosphere I was going for. However, when I reintroduce the chords and main melodies later I added some different effects to make them sound more digital. Reverb of course is always welcome in my mixes, and then I some slight distortion for a bit of a crunchy sound. Then to reinforce the distortion I added some bit-crush on top of it to make it sound really digital. 

The ending of the sound also has some effects, but they were on the master channel rather than the instruments themselves. It's kind of an odd atonal ending, but I like how it sounds, I don't think a melodic ending would have fit any better. First I automated the tempo which created the pitch bend effect for the audio recordings, and then I added some delay and more bit crush which stopped abruptly at the end. This was partially a move to extend the piece to a minute and thirty seconds, but it was also what I had in mind anyway. Overall I really like how it turned out and was surprised how well I was able to incorporate the recordings into this piece. Now that I have the process figured out I'll probably start using more recorded audio into my music.