MIDI:
When it came to recording/editing all of my MIDI, I chose to completely use the mouse because I currently don't possess the ability to reflect all my ideas whilst I sequence everything live and I don't organize the one at a time because I feel that I'd be wasting time in comparison to using a mouse. However, my ideal choice would be to record everything live then polish and add a few ideas afterwards. I choose not to quantize my MIDI because I feel I don't need to as I'm already organizing the data as I'm progressing with my ideas and by doing so, I'm already putting everything where I want.
When it comes to note length and velocity, it's very dependent on the instrument and the role it plays in the song. It would vary in terms of note length however I choose what I want whilst in the process of creating the song, for example, I'd choose to have a kick drum at a shorter length so it could apply a "bouncy" feel in the drum line, to do this I use the mouse to adjust the length. I then turn my attention towards velocity either when I have the idea is completed or when the song is completed because it can make a huge difference when I'm mixing down my track. If I want something to play a more predominant role, the velocity would generally be more orange (red if need be) but if I want something in the background or to serve an ambient role, the velocity would be more green or light green.
When it comes to arranging my music, I choose not to colour in sections because I find that distracting and off-putting when I want to make music. For example, when I'm concentrating on what needs to sound different or what else I want to add to the song, I wouldn't concentrate as well with all the colours in front of me and I'd feel it would influence my decisions. I also choose not to use markers because I prefer to look at my music and point to the screen "that's the chorus, that's the bridge, here's the break down, etc".
On the arrange page, I generally use copy/paste to repeat sections of a song instead of looping it because I know for a fact that I would want to develop it later on in the song since it may become a bit boring. I also don't use the scissors or glue tool to edit the data as I generally the bottom right corner to lengthen or shorten the region in question, plus I find myself not needing to use them. I use "solo" way more in comparison to using "mute" because once I hear one part that's isolated from the track, it sticks in my head clearly even when I play it with the rest of the instruments. The only time I use mute is when I'm judging whether or not a certain part of the texture fits in with the song or not, by listening to what it's like without it and questioning myself what it brings to the song and how it can help it's development.
For sections, you'll find in various song that I don't really follow a typical structure of a "verse/chorus/verse/etc", but instead decide to let the song develop on it's own by introducing new rhythms, change in harmonization/rhythm and even instruments, but there are some songs of mine where I follow a clear structure.
Audio:
For recording audio (which I've done in my Electro piece for Olly), I used a Shure SM58, which is a dynamic microphone and the reason I used it was simply because it's regarded as one of the "go to" microphones when recording vocals and I recorded was me channeling my James Brown by saying "1, 2, 3, 4, hit it!". I placed the microphone in my hand whilst recording rather than using a mic stand simply because I felt more comfortable holding it. I recorded it all in one take because all I had to do was count up to 4 and say "hit it!" at the end, which isn't a hard thing to do.
To edit my audio, I'd usually use non-destructive editing when using audio especially when I sample because I know for a fact that I would want to use more parts of the song I'm sampling from to give my song more development and changes to catch and maintain the listener's attention. In that case, if I use destructive editing before I pick out all the parts I want, then I'll have to reload the file and that would be annoying and time consuming in the long term. However, that doesn't mean I don't use destructive editing as I use fades mainly on vocals or to transition from one part of a song to another and I especially time stretch a lot of songs of my own (refer to my SoundCloud) to simply give my song a completely different vibe to the song I sampled from.
"The vocal samples is the performer breathing, taking a sharp inhale and what sounds scatting and I didn’t think much of it at first however I saw potential in it and adjusted the sound by using an EQ to make it sound much crisp and stand out as if it never came from the song I sampled it from."
"I mainly used non-destructive editing because I knew I was going to sample more than one section of the song. For example, in "Melody (Strings)" I simply cut it up using the scissors and marquee tool and re-arranged them on the lines so it stayed in beat rather than time-stretching it because I was going to use the same technique and I didn't want to risk altering the sample too much to ruin it. I chose this method because I found that if I just cut it only using the scissors & marquee tools, I preserve the sample at it's original pitch (in terms of the recording) and the quality of the sound."
Advanced Techniques:
I've used Drummer before to create a MIDI file to see what I could do with it. I chose to use it as MIDI because I was adjusting the settings on the Drummer, however there some small specific parts that I wanted to adjust but the Drummer wasn't accurate enough and that kept getting to me, so I changed it into MIDI and changed everything I wanted and added new things I wanted to enhance my ideas.
Reference Songs (found in my folder in L3 Music Prod Yr 1 & Sequencing Folder):
Like We Used To
Naruto
September Wind
Electro (Olly)
Jungle-Type Drums
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