Transcripts
1. Introduction to the course: Hello there, My name
is Alistair and I am a professional
composer and teacher, and I have been for the best
part of the last ten years. Music has always been my
passion ever since I was tidy and especially
making music, composing. My frustration has always
been the accessibility of it. The idea that music is just
for those who have money to afford the latest
instruments or technology, those who are elite in standing. And quite frankly,
this is just not true. This is not the case. Music is for all. It's all about expressing
yourself free creation. And in this course, I'm going to show
you how you can make music on whatever
budget you have. As you can see, I'm not
in some fancy studio. I'm not in some big
expensive recording space. I made the bedroom,
but by small house which I share with my
wife and two children. We're going to work
together to discover what a DAW, a door, a digital audio
workstation is and how we can use it
to make our music. The music software
that we'll be using is free and easy to access. You do not need any
previous music knowledge for this course is designed
for absolute beginners. And if you follow our lessons, you will come away with
a full sounding song that last 2-4 min, as well as then the capabilities to go and create your own song, whatever your genre, whatever your tastes, whatever
your desires. You could find
samples of my work, the things I've created on
Spotify at ashen music. There you'll find many of my different game music
compositions waiting for you. But enough about self-promotion. Let's get on with
making some music.
2. Introduction to Bandlab: Okay, so we just get set
up with a band abba camp. So let's do that right now. This is all online-based, so it's all gonna
be in a browser. Heartily recommend using either
Firefox or Google Chrome. If you do happen to be on a Mac, but do note it's Safari does have some compatibility issues, but it does get into
the actual music making part of this. So nice and simple band, lab B AND LAB. There is the education version, but we're not going
to be used now. We are going to be using
the full stream version. I tend to use the
Education version in school just because
it's easier for sharing resources and access
within in-person numbers. Band lab, make music online. That's what we need to be. We click on that. And perfect. You'll find yourself on a
beautiful screen like this. The person's picture may change. And quite simply from here, hopefully you can
figure out you click on Sign Up, Your name. Hopefully your day. If not, you have more
issues than I do. And your email could
be any kind of e-mail address with
a, B, Outlook Gmail. Go ancient be Yahoo, AOL tags, things like that. And then a password. I'm just going to
blank screen whilst either add to my details. So I can show you
the next section.
3. Bandlab Tour: Alrighty. So once you have
successfully logged in, you're gone through
all the different while this the instruments I play or this is the type
of music that I like. You're taken to your feed. There is a social
media elements to ban lab which some
people find useful. I personally don't. If I'm going to
be sharing music, you're looking more at your SoundCloud or if you
could afford it, your Spotify or even YouTube
and things like that. But some people like to use
it to share and collaborate, but that's something we'll
look at a fair bit later on. So whilst you're in here, there's a few different
things that you can do by clicking on
your nameplate. So I've got an image for mine. So we've got a company of edge. And from here you
could do a whole variety of different things. You can look at past projects. So for me there's quite
a few because we're using band lab for a while. You can see the various ones that are used in school
or other classes, look at structure, form, different musical genres
from here as well. If you have albums
playlist cell up here, they're just like in many other
music streaming services. You can of course, go to your settings,
change your settings. So if you want to
change your password, if you want to change
your username, tried to change any
of the other details, e-mail address, etc.
yada, yada, yada. This is where you could do
that, which kind of helps. And other bits, fairly
self-explanatory, alrighty, are the main things
you'll find yourself using is your projects, because that's how we
get back into work that we've previously looked at. The next main thing we
do look at it though, and this is what I would argue is the most
important part, is the Create button
in the top right. This takes us into our door, our DAW, and this is what
we'll look at in a moment.
4. Introduction to the DAW: Alrighty, So let's get
into the actual DAW, the door, the digital
audio workstation, the main place where we're
going to be creating many, many pieces of wonderful, beautiful music that may
make us some extra dollars, extra pennies, or your
currency of choice. So we click on Create. Sometimes there'll be
an extra drop down menu depending on which
version you're on or which browser you're on. You just got to
start the project. Don't use the AI, not yet. So now we have in front of us, we have the start of our
music-making journey. We can select the kinds of things that we want to be using. So some of these require
inputs into the computer, whether that be, so
if we go capture your voice or audio,
you'll need a microphone. See that demonstrated
here beautifully. So if I wanted to, I could then select that and then
sing on band lab. I could then edit or other
things with it as well, and could add back to songs or gray but own four-part harmony, whatever I really choose to do. Job machine, how
to create beats. That's one of the
first actual parts we'll look at in
the next session. Guitar, you could
plug in a guitar provided you have an
appropriate input. Instruments. So you can
either use a midi keyboard, which hopefully can see
just behind me there, which we set it up shortly. And then you could use
that to have access to a wide variety of different
instruments, sounds. The sampler, very, very cool. It'd be able to use samplers, be able to change and edit them, to be able to create and
personalize your own music. Again, we'll look at
that a lot later. And then base very
similar to Qatar, plug it into your computer
and then it'd be able to play bass exactly like that really with an actual
base in your hands. You do also have
importing audio or midi. Midi is just the language
used to transfer the music across to record
the music audio. So say if you had a
specific backing track that you wants to use it
you're gonna sing over. You could pull that into band lab and then
use that as well. Subway, if you've been using some other music
creation software and you wanted to pull
in the different stems, the different musical lines. You could then use that with
importing media as well. We'll look at that in
a separate lesson, probably a separate
topic later on. A-band app sounds. These are different loops that we
will eventually look at.
5. DAW Tour: So we're just going
to do a general tour of what is bad lab.
How does it work? So what I'm going to do,
I'm just gonna click away just so I can
show you what the door to the DAW or Digital Audio Workstation
actually looks like works and does a few
different parts to it. Some of them fairly
obvious, some of them not. Apologies if I did, this
does seem patronizing. I just want to make
sure that everyone is coming away with the
same level of knowledge. So there's, there's no
misunderstandings as we go on. One of the more
important bits are used as the whole
track bar up here, say Play, Stop, record that he got leaping sections
of n number time. Whole numbers you got here. It's easier bar numbers. So it goes for miles
and miles and miles. You can have more and more
on should you choose to. White thing here, this
is your track above. So wherever you have this and
click Play or click Record, That's where it's
going to start. Majority of the time. You got to want it right
back at the start. If it is over here, he wants
to get back to the start, tap, stop, and it goes all the
way back to the beginning. How handy you can
add a metronome. So click track system that
will help to keep you in time. If that is something that
you find particularly useful through here, you can change the various
different settings, the beats per minutes, or how fast or how slow
your piece of music is. They'll do you want to
empty as a standard? You can make it faster by
having a bigger number, slower of a smaller number. And it can change
the type signature if that is something
within your knowledge. If not, there'll be
other courses designed to rap about that in the
not-too-distant future. Adding tracks. So how are we going to add
things on more about that later when we actually start
playing music and such. Overall volume gauge. Volume for music,
especially indoors, is represented
through dB decibels. Zero decibel is good. Obviously, go lower. If you want it to be quiet, higher it wants to be louder. You tend not to
have too much gain. So higher numbers, just
because it can really affect the quality of the
sounds that you are using. What will eventually look at is this thing called peaking, when this will eventually change beautiful and lovely
colors if it goes red, as dangerous there, what that saving, saving the work that
you've done, publishing, making it so that other
people can see it should they choose to starting session, you can collaborate
with other people. That's something we may
look at it at a later date. Who knows? Zoom out. So you can see more, zoom in. So you can see less, but get a bigger view of whatever it
is that you're working on. Drop a Loop audio midi file. Those be demonstrated
later. Lyrics and notes. So you can write notes here
that I am using band lab. Again, it goes away. But in lab sounds, these are the various different loops
we'll look at midi mapping, not something we need to worry
about just yet, the chat, if you are working
with other people, you could use that
there as well. All of these down
here are related to the instruments which we'll
get onto in just a moment.
6. How to use the Drum Maching: So what I've done is I've
exited, then come back in. So we're now back
at this roughly familiar part for us now. So we're going to start off by looking at the job machine. We're going to lay
down some beats, which is the foundation of what it is we're
going to be baking. So we simply click on it. And we are given two
wonderful beats. These have the imaginative
name of beat a. And you guessed it. Bibi. You would never guess what the third beat is called. Soap. It will give us two
beats automatically. These are the same
two beats each time. It's not randomized, is just the same two beats each time and they sound like this. A deep p.sit. So just like we
mentioned earlier, we got the volume
control up here. If one's quieter, louder, that up, we see
that's going red. Red is not good. What read? Two bits up here. I
mean, they're peaking. Just got too loud. Now, this whole
bottom section here, this is the control center
or whatever bridge, but you're using this whole
bit in the middle here. This is your main workspace. This is where your
recorded music or your sequences are your
loops. This is where they go. This is where everything will be layered up so that you can edit, change, and use to
your heart's content. So let's look at how
this instrument works. I said earliest the
machine is a sequencer, which means you input a sequence
and then it repeats it. Simple as that change which passenger on by
clicking where it says patterns a, b of t. Once we have there, c, d, e, f, g, h, and so on and so forth. We're
going to start with beat a. You could also do this by
selecting them manually. You can see they are selected by the white border
that is around them. With these, you can move
them around and change them, but we'll do some
more funky things with that a bit later. We're going to
start off with BA. In order to make your sequence, in order to make your beat, you have to change the pretty colors that
we have down here. If there's something
already there, click on it and it
goes, guys, bye-bye. If you click in a blank space,
something is added there. If you want to get rid
of all completely, you right-click
clear pattern or if you're a Mac Control
click clear pattern. The way this works is
that when you press Play and we've got a
play button right here, which is just for the machine. This white bar will go across. This is the tracker bar. Whenever it encounters
a colored dots. It plays whatever part of the drum kit that dot
is lined up with this, this instance is the high hat. Now the great thing
about this play button, which some of you may
have already noticed, is that it's going to put
it on a continuous loop. It's not going to stop
until we tell it to. This means that whilst it's
going, you can add embeds. Whilst it's going to make
sure that it sounds alright. Once you're happy with what
you've got, then click stop. The great thing is
now out beat up here. If we go back to the
start, is going to play exactly what we just wrote. We can see this
last for four boxes or 4 bar before then going into the FBI already
been made for us. Forget to change that
in a little bit. Now we've already
got this kind of EDM style sound going on, which the eight-week jump just
always defaults to a stop. What we can do is we can change that sound depending
on what type of music, what style we're looking for. So I quite liked by
rockin, heavy metal. So if I'm gonna go
into drum kits, drum kits, these are
more for your life, your pop, your country blues, drum pads, easier electronics. So whether it be for EDM,
dubstep, drill, gripe, all these different
colors, genres, depending on what it is
you want to look at. Some of them have some
more obvious names. So Blues is gonna be
a blues-based kit. Some of them don't. Some of them have some very strange and unique
sounding names. Like back Classic. At fats '90s. James Alister, David random producer whose name is
associated with this drum kit. If you're not certain, is
click the Play button. So Dr. dry. Pretty good. My app. That's not, that's awesome.
Hard Rock white arm. You may see that this one
here, the clap feature. So there's no collapse
of the hard rock kit. So we can do is we can go in and change it to something else. A cow bell always
need more cowbell. If you have counterbalance,
the hi-hat white on the hi-hat back in. The open hi-hat
in there as well. Let's now change the sound. We didn't like that and
go and change it again. Let's go to lo-fi
was another one I had Dr. quite like that. I'm going to keep
that. That's not my BA for them wants
to go into beep, be clear pattern, gather
a lot of hats here. Breathy with this,
like I just did. If you hold down your
mouse and just drag it, it would keep going
continuously. You can do this to make some
crazy interesting patterns, but no sound a bit less
professional, shall we say? The standards that I
always tend to see from students both in school and with other beads as well, is, I want all the colors. I will warn you, this is just
going to be a lot of noise. Hold on. Isn't that lovely? But you can do pretty
pictures diagrams would eventually go
into how to make a professional sounding jump be. Part of this is just
experimentation. Whole host of things you
can do. Let's try that. Let's say that that's my beet. Be. So play those together. The a and B P. I'm quite happy with
those. So give it a try. How we'll experiment to try make some sounds, the drumbeat. If you're wondering that it
sounds a bit too chaotic, a bit too much, then just try and
restrict yourself. Use just the hi-hat, the base of the stair. There's the foundations
of any jumpy. Give it a try. See
what you can do.
7. Drum Machine Extras: Okay, So now that you've
made your drum beats, however it is sounding whatever genre or style guide for the next few things that
we could do with it as well. Now, most, most pieces of music don't tend to be 16 s long, tend to be a little
bit longer than that. I'm just a smudge. This is just the default
that bind lab has given us. What we can do is we
can change what we got. We can change the
length of what we got. We can move these
individual parts so we can see how these are
all clustered together. So all the A's, B's there,
and so on, so forth. We're just going to move
the bees up to number 17, clicking, dragging and dropping. Then what we're gonna do
is we're going to extend. So we're going to make a
longer for click on it. The top right, we should see this lovely little loopy symbol by clicking on that
and then drag it in. It's getting bigger. Look, you gotta go. All the way to number 17. This gives us 16 full bars
of a jumpy as in section a, jump bees, which is also a job beat. I'm
confusing myself. That same with B. The up to the end of those two. That should be 16. That right. Can I count to three? I can count guess winning. Qualification
wasn't for nothing. So now we're thinking
lengthwise a minute in 4 s. So if we were to think
of a averse and b is our chorus with
the one on the way. I'll be fantastic.
We could then do, say if we are thinking
about verse and chorus is we want a to come back again. So what we can do,
go to pattern a. Click on Add a, it adds one. And then we can go
all the way up. That's what it'd be.
60 plus 30 to 48. Yeah. Joss and the 48. Then we do the same with B. That's what 64. 64 is conclusive as t minutes and 8 s for
two versus two choruses. Intro and outro, bridge
slash solo. There. Got a song, we're
just successfully made a drumbeat to a song. So ba is now going
to go on 16 bar. It's not going to go
on for those 16 bar. Return to be a. And so on and so forth. We have now successfully
made a jump be done.
8. How to use the Instruments: Okay, so now that we have our jumpy all nicely set up this time to
start thinking about, okay, we have a song list,
add some more things to it. So here's how we do that. Click on the Add tract button
located just top left hip. And we're gonna get onto
virtual instruments. This is the same menu
we had at the start, Whereas in that
kind of big square in the middle of our DAW. Now it's just a slightly
different format here. So virtual instruments
is what we did. Now we have a grand piano, just like the job machine
defaults to beats a, beats B, same every time. You will automatically be
given the grand piano, most common instrument. You
have the keys down here. Click on them. It makes pretty plunk, plunk. You should hopefully be able
to see it at the bottom. You have various
different letters. These are the note
names, these are just relevant to your query keyboard. Press those lays down. When I sit down and they
played that lovely. They have used mouse, which kinda restricted to just
one note at a time. Or use the keys on your
keyboard in order to do so, you can hook up midi keyboards
like the one behind me, which we'll do a
little bit later. But if you happen to not have one because they are a cost, then you can do this, this way as well. There are a few
different buttons, you different things on
here to understand as well. Modes, these kind
of things that you can experiment with and just see if it's something
that suits you. It just makes it so it's a bit easier to read if you're not
used to using a keyboard. I've been playing the
piano since I was about 34 years old. So this is, this is comfortable to be. This makes me happy. Let's be calm. Happy place. You can change the key, you can change how
it is presented. Lots of this or some slightly
more advanced theory terms. These are things that
are going to cover in separate courses dedicated
to the theory of composing. Octave is important.
Lower the number, the lower the pitch. So a lower down it is. As you go higher, you go. Where do you find that
there are grayed out bits? This means the instrument
physically count, play that. So if you click that, it
will not do anything. Normally, you want to
be around octave three. C4 or C3. Tend to be good places
to start. A can. It's just got to
demonstrate that. Change it whether it be the
quasi letters or the pitch, these the official note names. We use GoodNotes and named
ATG and then just repeat. So a, B, C D E F G, a B, C, D E, F G. And just have them at different pictures
or how high or how low they happened to be
there or sharps and flats. So that's the hashtag
and the little b symbol, but we'll cover those at a later date.
Sustains quite fun. Press the Shift
key to engage it, and then it'll hold
on notes or longer. You let go. Let's go
to the notes as well. You can change what sounded
using on the left-hand side. So this opens up a much
bigger our drop-down menu. There are hundreds of instruments that you
can play with here. So many different sounds
that you could use. You could have a drum kit, little bit less
accurate, but you can go into editing and
change it if you want to. Really useful, if
you're trying to make films and things like that. It can have various
different guitars. So Kevin acoustic guitar, whole variety of
different sounds. There are a lot of really, really funky, funky
synthesisers. If you're not certain
what they sound like until the fan belt, like, I just did click
the Play button. Examples of the kind
of things that you could play where he could make. Same as synthase
voice. Get the idea. There are lots of
instruments here. There are a lot of things to
play around with Brian side. You can change the volume of that instruct make it
louder or quieter. You can do the same up
here on the panel on the left-hand side with the
individual instruments, depending if you
want some louder, quieter up to you,
how it experiment. Pan and reverb effects will
cover at a later date. So now if you want to see
we could play our drum kit. He started to play,
use and record. So having experiments, have a
FAQ, see what you could do.
9. How to Record Chords: Alrighty, So now we're going to attempt to
play some chords. Chords in music.
It's when you play more than one note at a time. So a chord might be two
notes, three notes, four notes, 27 loads, 126,000 votes, however many
you can physically have. We're going to focus on three
note chords cause triads. So that we don't have to delve too much into the
theory behind this, at least not just yet, which is going to
follow one simple rule. So we're going to
use, I'm just using my keyboard for this subject. I start at the bottom. I've gotten for a dance lead, I've changed my job beats out
a bit more EDB just because I felt inspired by the
sounds of the head. Soap. Good, start off with zip. So I'm going to play one. Skip one, play
one, skip one. L1. Just focusing on those white
keys, there's white notes. So play one, skip one, play one, skip one, play
one at the same time. That's a sad. We should have negative ticket, different starting
points and starts here on this be the keyboard. Keyboard that'd be letter B, that's the word I'm looking for. Play one. Skip one, l1, get one, play one. Follow that pattern. So she'd have these four chords. Play one, skip one, play one, skip one, L1. Then from a different
starting point, different white, nope,
you can choose your own. Doesn't particularly matter.
One tip, one way, one, skip one, play one with
different starting points. So we have four cores, we have our chord sequence then starts. What we're gonna do. We're gonna record
these in a moment so we get introduced to
the recording function. We can now try to play
one-quarter at a time, Go Record, and then
see how that goes. So in order to record, they go red button here, click that. You'll have a click
track and start playing other interests
that you have as well. If you did not want the
other instruments playing, you could press the
button here to mute, or the S button here to solo. Just the instrument will place. That's particularly
useful if you have 12 instruments and
you're recording a fresh one, either didn't have to
beat all the others. If you just have whatever, you can click mute or if you have a few
that you want to use, you can beat them
and so on, so forth. Now I'm not playing anything. They can still see this
white bar is moving forward. This is what is recording. I've got intersection
beat, exciting. I stop, stop recording. Nothing that because I've not
pressed any of my my keys. So there's nothing there. This demand for
good press Record. Stop recording. I tend to use space
bar to stop recording. So if I'm using my
keyboard anyway, it's just there.
It's nice and easy. This has got three lines in it. Three lines, three notes. Recorded beautifully. Marvelous. If you don't
like what you've got, you can always click
it and delete it. So press Delete on your
keyboard and it goes away. I'm going to attempt to Troy
and record them all at once. And then we'll try another
method to show you what would happen if you're less
confident doing that. That might be a bit of a
skill check for some people. It's like I've already
messed that up there, so I missed the key. Wasn't happy with
that. I'm going to click Delete when in doubt. Try again and remind
myself that nice amazing. Practice makes perfect. G34. Now you're aiming at this stage, just have them, each chord. So each sets of how
loads going on for a whole number,
That's a whole bar. So first chord by one wants to, second chord, or two
to 3.3 to 44 to five. If you're finding it challenging to do those all
in one lump like I just did. There is another
method. Just got to do them one at a time. So you can press record. And
then we're going to stop. That's just recorded
our first chord. For some reason he's on OneNote. It's remedy that there we go. Three lines, three dots,
double-check that. Perfect. Now this next step, wherever you have your
tracker to your white bar, that is where you're
recording will start from. So, and I remind myself now that my next chord is that one. It's like a press Record.
Stop it moved my white bar.
10. How to use the Midi Editor: Okay, So next we're
going to be looking at the midi editor. Midi stands for Musical
Instrument Digital Interface. It's a term that we end up using quite a lot when he's in DAWs. Abigail learned
today what it is, how it works and
also why we use it. Let's go with the y first. So with the chords
that we played so far, Let's have a little listen. They just sound a little
bit off, don't they? They're not quite right. What we could do instead
of having to re-record, which is what we're doing
if we're having to do this live or analog, because we're working digitally. We can, whenever we've
made your recorded, we can change, we can edit. Midi editor is such a powerful, such a useful tool
or use it every day, a bike composition career. There's a couple of ways we
can get to it using band lab. The easiest is just to double-click on our
chord or calls, but depending how we have it, or we click on the
midi editor bottom, down here at the bottom left. If for some reason you haven't
got this menu down here, by clicking on this
little setup tab here, you can get those back. Now as a few snacks, you might come up along the way and we're going to
address those first. What we have from how
we recorded previously, because we're feeling
less confident or less comfortable with
using the keyboard or the recording functions. We did all these as
individual recordings. What we now need to do is
to merge them together. So they're all as one
big box instead of these four smaller separate
boxes. Nice and easy. We're going to click in the blank space next
to drag over them. You can see that all lit up, they will have a white border. Right-click. Merge regions were
merging them together. So now there'll be one big
white box instead of one. So for smaller boxes, so here they are, 1234
flexing together. Merge regions. Now throw one big white box. Reason we do this. We
then go to the editor, which you can see down here. It wants to move
something passed the boundary of this
box. It won't let us. It's like it has
this little square around it is this border which
nothing can pass through. They follow, Geldof
shall not pass. But if we merge them
as far as you want to, those leads us into kind
of a mediator works. So these individual bars are the notes that
we've recorded. We've made three note chords.
In each of these courts. There are 3 bar, three lines. These lines match up to keyboard notes. On
the left-hand side. From here, you can change, it can move, you can make a
longer, they can shorter. You can delete, you can add a lot of different
things that you can do. There's quite a few options
on the left-hand side here, whether it be selecting, creating, or change the
velocity of the volume, but we'll cover
those later video. We will look at more
intense editing. For the purposes of
what we're doing here, Let's just keep it
nice and simple. If you feel more competent, you could explore and to
your heart's content, look at all these
different things that can happen and honestly, it is one of the
better way to learn is just go crazy, try and break it. We have the little gray bar
here so we can scroll along. Obviously, we've already
got four chords, so we don't need
to worry too much about whatsover it bar 212. What we're gonna do is we're
going to click on the link. And from here, we
can then drag it to the left, right, up, down. I get some very pleasant
noises at the same time. In order to make this to
match up with our drumbeat. Now, drumbeat, which
doesn't really change. It can't have too many errors
because it's a secret, sir. It's based around the
various different beats that are available at each bar. We're going to try and make
sure that if I could try, we are going to make
sure that our bars, startup, whole number, you
got these holdup is up here. These are all to do
with the bar numbers about 1234 and so on. And that beat the beat 1234, binary TB 1234, and
so on, so forth. So if we just shift these, they all start at a whole
number Boris tasks, but in how you are,
then we press play. Those are actually sounding
better already there, match you up with that drum kit. There's a few of them that are slightly different links down sometimes that might be in textual for us this
time it is not. So what we're going to do, if you want to make them longer, to hover your mouse over
the end of the midi notes. You get this little icon
here and here you can drag as much C1, which can leave a
tiny bit of a gap at the end to allow for
a bit of a breath. I'm going to aim to do
this on all of them. Now if you happen to have Some are all the same. Let's say e.g.
these are the same. For the opposite purpose
of this demonstration. You can select them
all and nudge them. Move them all at once, which saves you having to
do them all individually. Some people get really,
really predict t, like they're willing to be
exactly on the line as it is, but sometimes with
the ends of notes, it's less of a precise this, the start is more
where you need to be. They need to make
sure they start out those whole numbers so that
sounds properly in time. That sounded pretty
good, like that, like that a lot so far. We have just
successfully edited or changed our midi notes. If e.g. we had a mistake, Let's just double-click on a space there. We've got a note there
that we don't want to go to the quota keyboard. Click Delete, it's gone. Say bye-bye. Nice. No idea. Say we're likely to see that
you want to add some notes. Double-click, that'll
be that. Change it. If you want to put a copy, you can copy and paste it
and paste whole host of different things you
can do depending how crazy or bolts you want to get. We have just made our
notes more accurate. We've done some editing,
we did some changes. Now. We've only got
four chords there. And if we want
these to go on for the entirety of this section, a, the same as this drumbeat. Normally we'd have
to rerecord them right or wrong, not today. Let's make life easier. We don't need to
re-record recording to be printed with the
more challenging parts. We're going to loop these. What happens? We have this lovely
little circular icon with an arrow in the top right. Click that, drag it that way. It's going to loop whatever
it is that you've made. So just to prove that Cycle, now, synthetic am
re-recording needed. Common areas you might
find with this. If e.g. you have like a random
gap at the end, no matter how big or how small, whatever state this box is in. When you click on the
loop and drag it, it keeps everything that
you've got bear inside of it. It assumes you want
to keep it at all. So if like me, you got this gap from bar five
until decades past six, we don't want that because
that's empty space. I just got some rubbish. Keep her ADLs Kelly, you
can even just see it there. There it is. There there is, but don't want it go away. Could shorten it by instead
click at the top here, down at the bottom, can make
this bank longer or shorter. We want shorter, this case,
up to the number five. Then we loop it. Beautiful. The same manner as well. If there happens to be. If any of your notes are off
time or not quite right? That's gonna be the same
throughout as well. So this could be the
same here. There it is. Got that gap there.
Don't want it not. Okay. Let's go back. We change that. Loop it all the way
up until section B, a boo-boo there too far. Let's drag that back again. To listen. Make sure check. There we go. That's better. Next time round. Little bit. Nice and secure. We have here is 48 16 bar. What normally you
might call it first, or a chorus, comes out
a little bit later. Then goes into what
will eventually be Section B and C. We've got these different
versus the courses here, but we'll cover those
at a later point. So that's the midi editor. Go again because I
have a double-click or click on where it
says midi editor. Scroll bar at the
bottom can shift, change, move notes around. Once you have done the loop, then unable to change the
ones that you have loops. So if we do to change
him, you go scroll back, change the scroll up again. And see you got it, perfect. Just how you want it. Have an experiment in a video editor to see
what you could do. Next time we're going to
look at adding a baseline.
11. How to ad a Bass Line: Okay, So we have a
drumbeat, we have courts. Next thing we're gonna
need to do is we need to add some textures, different layers to this. So we're going to
add in a baseline, nice low-end instruments, or keep it nice
and simple is what those extra sounds that
thickness to the texture. So we're gonna go to attract
like we've done before. And virtual instruments again, they're going to make sure
that the instrument panel, I'm going to click
on electric bass. Could you synth bases? But I tend to have more luck
with the electric basis. He could choose
either or depending what kind of sound
is you're often. Maybe I'll change my
mind. I would decide. I tend to go for
electric bass to guard. So now basis there will often
be a much quieter sound, much more of a background sound, but they're incredibly
important sound. Here. There's not that loud. Sometimes it's just bumping up. You don't wanna go too crazy. You don't want it to
be just pull-based. We'll look at EQ adjust a lot later which
way you can change the different base treble
mid levels as you need to. Now, it also make this match up with the
chords that we've got. A few things we can do. One, you could try and remember what notes
that we played. A much easier way because I'm all about making
our lives easier, is to go to our old
friend copy and paste. So this is going to lead us into a few different techniques
that we can use. Firstly, we're going to
do is we're just going to copy these chords. It's the baseline,
then we're not going to play bass line, will obey cords,
get the baseline, try remember how that worked? Because base is Ted's
just be single notes because they are quite
low, quite rough sounding. If you try and play too
many notes at once, it just sounds like,
sounds like flub. It's not that nice. A few different ways
you could do this. You can either use the old right-click or
control-click if you're on a Mac and go to copy
and then go down to, uh, to make sure you have the right instrument
line, islet. See on the left-hand side
drum kit called base. Wherever you click Paste, it will paste whatever you want, wherever your white
track line is. So you can either make
sure it goes back to the start or you can
move it where you want to manually right-click paste. I'll pop the ball
in their other way. Round is keyboard shortcuts,
which I'm a big fan of. So Control C or Command
C if you're on a Mac. And then control the
day go either way. Now, starts to golf, just listed the baseline
party and go DG much. Because we look at
the midi editor, the base is a low edge to it. They cannot play that high,
unlike our synthesiser. So therefore, we've had
these great outfits. Carb lab don't exist. A couple of things
that we're gonna do. We're gonna need to
make them lower. But before we do that, I mentioned we only have one note at a time
playing for base. So let's do that first. This is already looped, so I can take this back to the start. So we don't have to
keep redoing thing. We're going to select the two
top loads of these chords. And delete two top notes
and delete two top notes, delete to top loads
and delete. This way. The bass note that we are using matches up with the roots notes, or the lowest note of our
course that we played up here. So it's guaranteed to match
up in sound most of the time. Pretty good. But we still have this problem where this one plays
this one place. These are the two
down that eight, okay, we need to change that. Now we can either select them all and drag them up and down. The problem is we're
doing that, that opens us up to more errors. So what we're gonna do,
we're gonna transpose. Transpose just means
to change or to move. So by clicking on
this is our box. We go to right-click transpose. We're given a different
number of semitones. Semitones is an octave that's
going from one to another, C, or one to another a, a one base to another base. Just going down to
the same note name, whether it be lower or
higher, plus or minus. A semitone, is just
going down or up. Next available note
whether it be white date, but they blacked out
pink fluffy, whatever. If we transpose this down, It's easier to see this
in the midi editor. And accuracy on my mouse wheel. By transposing negative 12. That's gonna go down. And now let's get to play. Let's say that sounds pretty good. I'm trying to see
what would happen if we made that a little bit lower. And suppose I still playable too low. Maybe let's experiment
and find out. Now we're going to see how
that sounds with the rest. I heard the background,
nice bit of texture. Some better. What does it
sound better at octave up? I kinda like both, to be honest. I'm tempted to say,
I'm going to have mine as an octave lower, just because then he adds
that extra layer to it. It's that lowest
note that's a bit weird at first and last night, you know what? I got an idea. I've got a plan. I'm
going to manually, we can just move both
of those up an octave. The rest stays the
same. I like that. I like a lot. Good thing. Kick ourselves that we
track that that way. Yeah. Well, matches up. Sounding pretty good. Nice big fan of that. Big, big, big fan of that. We have drums, we have
chords, we have base. We pretty much have
our cup people sorted. Remember with that said we
did copy, we pasted it. We then deleted
the extra lights. We then right-click
transpose BU down, up or down, 12
semitones, so an octave. So going for the same
note leg to the other, we then at the end
recognize that but those lower stakes
were just a little bit too flabby technical term. So then just move those
up adopted themselves. And now we have this pretty
cool sounding baseline. Very happy with that. Give it
a try. See what you can do.
12. How to use Copy adn Paste: Next step. So now that we
have, we have at a company, but we have john's, we have codes, we have base. Now we're going to
look at actually fleshing out our song. So we have our A's and
B's and the drumbeat. These help to signify
our verses and choruses. I go all the way up to
plus 65, 2 min and eight. That's not bad for a song. Missing some intros and
outros and British, but those are things
one at a time. Let's just focus on
bulking ourselves out. So I've mentioned before, like, let's make
our lives easier. Let's do that exactly. All of our race sections are
going to be the exact same. So we have our courts,
we have our baseline. Fine, Let's copy those. So Control c1c for the Mac. Remember we take our tracker bar to where we wanted to copy, which is for us to start
with the a section. Then paste it. Let me paste. Do we have anymore? So the last days say
just the two perfect and now we zoom out. We can see we have two quite
chunky filled out sections. Hopefully. Now, if we just had the same thing
going on for 2 min, even if we did eventually
I did a melody lied or sub loops or things
like that. That'll be fine. It'll be a little bit boring, a little bit repetitive, and we want to avoid that. We want to show you that, okay, So we're at section B
now we're at our chorus. There's clearly
something different guy got here to make it
seem more interesting. Now, for the purposes of today, we're still going to keep
using those same chords. We're just going to change
and vary them a little bit. So what I'm gonna do is
actually still going to copy and paste in those same chords for
these two sections. We're going to take
the loops down. And now instead of
having to re-record, we're going to just go
into and change and edit. So currently we've got
these long-held notes. Let's change this. Let's make them shorter. We can overdo them as the most. Let's have a little
look. See here. Something like that will be getting less spread them out. Let's separate them
out. Let's go crazy. Let's make it sound
bit more cool, but we're interested in. So in order to do
that, so once again, we're using these white bars inside of somebody's
going to work. Then we can add
one more in there. What about very quickly the map? Let's make them one square. As that sound. Cool. And again, save us
having to input things again. Go in. Copy. We have our white
chocolate bar, paste. Save our work again. I start let me get to the exact same for the rest of these above as well. Yeah, cool. Like that. So they really want to make sure that you
align these properly. Otherwise will be
really obvious. Bar, bar, bar, bar, the
white chocolate bar. And select those copy, white jacket bar paste there. So this is the slightly
more laborious part when it comes to music creation. Really, really pay off. Especially people who
are like less competent, less secure with
things like keyboard. So now, based on the sounds, all right, she wants to see we could
change those as well. Bar, bar, bar conjecture. Why not? We can stretch
that out. Until then. That section B, that's
what that baseline. That's half the basis you
want to keep nice and simple. Yeah, cool. I'm going to double-click
again. It's about matchup. I don't have to keep it as is. So I'm starting to get into my, what would happen if
mindset hats are, but it's not quite the
stage we're at just yet. Now, if you want to, as long as though she taught
them a little bit shorter, we have them bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump,
bump. So she do that. I'm actually happy with that. We can go like that. Yeah, happy with that obsession. One of those down, step it up on the ones
that sit over there. Could always just copy and paste that and have them
move appropriately, but they're a fan of clicking. Playing. Lot of FPS is. Let's give that a try. Let's stretch that out. Now. We have those two bits. Copy paste. If we stretch out now, if you're just a
simple bit of editing, we now have whole
proper accompaniment. We have a nice long helmets. Good. We've gotten just missing something, isn't it? Nice? The melody. Of course. Take you up to where it just
then flows into the next verse. Homeobox. One. Transition needs work it up, but that's where we
start at the end, like fields and leaps
and things like that, which something
for another time. Last main thing that
we're missing is the melody and that's
we're going to look at in a little bit.
13. How to add a Melody: Okay, so now we're going
to add the melody, arguably the most important or most recognizable
parts of any song. The melody is the lead part, the most important parts. If he got a song with a singer, they are usually
singing the melody, the main chewed of
the piece of music. So far we just
have a complement. So we've got drums, we've got towards, and
we've got base that. We're going to add a
melody light on top of that to make life easier. But we're going to do, we're going to add
a new instrument on what we're gonna do. Again, use the same
instruments sound as, as I call it, just to make it familiar with, might
change it later. Let's see how this goes. Easiest way to do that.
Say if we don't want to go to the whole
ad tracking data, you click on the
three dots here. We can go down to
Duplicate track. Now, although it
gives us the kind of course we can just get
rid of those which do do take conveniently put such that a little bit under the current track as well. Maybe we can always double-click
in here and rename. Maybe I'll just
call this melody. Melody. That's, that's all
the girls actually codes. And base. Just good
habit to get into. On other DAWs. You can actually
color-code that, which is very, very
satisfying. Anyway. What are the tricky
parts of melody is making sure that it
fits your chords. Now, I gave you
the advice earlier when making cause just sticks
the white notes play one, skip one, play one,
skip one, light one. So I'm going to give you a
general rule that you can use. And it What about later videos? We'll go over the actual
theory crafting as to what, what chords to use, how to
know which ones to use, and how you can get appropriate
melody with that as well. We should have
approximately four chords. Because prepayment for
a four chord pattern, except me, I got this one
here, is going to work for me. There we go. It's it's not one that I've then
got that one there. I would not want that
goal is with the melody. To try and use the notes, but just not obviously as
having the same chords. Again, because I'll get a bit
boring, a bit repetitive. If you just call her back. At the same time as
past notability, melodies are usually
individualized, usually individual dots. What you want to avoid
is this thing called clashing notes. So say e.g. if you look just at the
little bit down here, the keyboard here on my course, and I'm playing this note
here. Sounds a bit odd. You got that clash. They got their non harmony
notes sticking in mass. What we want to try and avoid. Sometimes it can
be really good as a kind of a quick step. So what's called a passing
note, a quick step, and they go back to that, going back to what are
those made notes of the chord just adds
a little bit flavor, if you will, to whatever
is that you're playing. Rule of thumb when it comes
to melody writer gears. So whenever you
record this for us, the C major chord here. If we look here, let us
see g of keyboard B, a set C and B. It's taking the first five
notes, first five letters. I want to obviously all the same type
because that's going back those clashes sounds
that we had earlier. What we're looking at is
we're looking at writing in blocks of 4 bar. So that's up until we
get to number five, conveniently laid out by
this white line that we have in our codes here to
take those five nodes, which are taking them,
playing them in any order. Sometimes you might need to Sub long having some shorts
as experiments around. So I click up here. This is going to create
a little looping section which we
can move around. And it's just gonna
restrict it to these first 4 bar. Must
collect those, play around. What's the button? I quite like that. So we stop there.
So I got that far. So good press Record, big red button up here because
the best accounting, some long, some short, pause
it there and it's recorded. Now, imagine, just like with
everything else we've done, we're going to go and edit
it so we double-click. Oh, it's not bad. Which is matching up. Not warm. Yellow sounds. Quite like that, quite
happy with that. Now he is where some of
the tricks cupboard, some good melody writing,
lots of repetition. I would like to speak Mercado,
go, Yep, happy with that. And then have that copy
and paste the whole way along because that
will get very boring, very dull, very quickly. We don't want boring. One interesting, exciting. Instead, we're going to
loop through those bars. So, so far we have so now we have to pick
out what to finish off. This could be a
slight variation of what our last 2 bar
where here we had. But as I was, we've got all things
change a little bit, so yeah. Pop up. Yeah, like that. So
I go up, up, up, up. That's gonna be horrendous. But if we go in, we edited, we change my resolution at the end data. See how that sounds together. Can we do something between? Now I'm quite happy
with that as it is. So let's just listen to
that melody line just like a brief focus on
those changing bits. Stops that didn't go. And repeat. Variation 0 together. Sounds a little bit
more interesting. Now we've got this kind of bit
tacked on at the end here. What can we do this,
I can't remember, this is a thing we could do
so we should be able to, we can merge them
together even better. So let me just show you
what I just did there. So we've got this
little section here, the separate recording of
this bit which is looped. What we're going to do, similar to what we've done
before with the chords, is we select them both,
right-click or control-click. If you're on a Mac,
go to merge reagents. This is now turned
into one big box. So if you want to, then
we can just loop this. That's our section, a stem. Let's have a look. And variation. Looks lovely. So next we've got
the challenge of, okay, So this is going
to be a section. So once again, we can copy abrogated by a
section and go dude. Alright, let me copy it. Rude. Let's pass the rub it, copy. Paste, paste. There we go. Now we've got to figure out
melody for B section. We're going to use the same
principle, the same process. Slightly off up in the map.
It's fine. We're good. Let's just like gap at the end. Got bit worried, but we're okay. So same process, same idea. So we're using such that those are spread out a bit more to help the standard battle because
it's meant to be there. So this is our chorus, like you mentioned earlier. If we move the octave up. So again, when thinking
about how can we maybe extended a little
bit we can do, but that's, that's down to personal
preference and experience. I'm still going to
stick with my law. Excuse me, these five nodes quicker, odd the other query keyboard. Experiment. We go back to our
little loopy icon, this bit here, and then
pull this up here. We can have a little bit but
experiment in fact using just those notes
trackable back here. Quiet that papa,
papa, papa bars. Try that case. It's gonna be a bit
tricky to edit, but we can still go in and
experiment away, away. Ask it be a harder one. So what we can do a little trick with the shorter ones are the Bode plot that isn't too bad. That if I just saw
supposed to move these up, they're going to be outside
of where those lines up. What we call a D.
Where's the right? It's going to be snap to
grid. So go to settings. Snap to grid. If you
get rid of that, we can move these around. We can put them anywhere. We're not restricted
by where these grids or we could do, we can zoom in closer, right? That that's better because
you can zoom in close. You get even more loans who
doesn't love more lines? Because it's not gonna do it
exactly that halfway point. Let's make sure that
all doing that. I've never tried this before. What if we put the
snap to grid on here? Yeah, it does that as well. It's really handy. Today as well. We have less overlapping. Look a little bit liter,
so a little bit better. There we go. Try that again. Nice, exactly the same as last time we do
cheap hours worth. Yeah, baba, baba,
baba, baba bar. Say, supply that we are going
to be a bit crazy. Show up at classical
south wind up regards sure. Why dark data type
is off of that. I didn't go to work. I got shorter. But too similar to
the previous one. Yeah, It's always identical.
So what do you think? A little bit different? Rack my brain. We could even do the opposite. They're speeding it up and
make it more complicated to do small difference
at the end. Why? I stopped bad, similar but different. Edited it. Z me, see me. Let's try that now. We'll take that we
can then same process due to click and merge. We can get there. I paste. Now if we look, we
have quite a few blocks. That's a fairly big
and chunky song. The two sections together and repeat. And section B. While I call the ends, now we go, so we've got a melody. There's many more
things we could do. We could start to
add extra harmonies, extra layers to it. We can have the ability bouncing back and forth between
different instruments, but I think those are slightly
more complicated matters for another time,
for another course. But now we have, we have drums, we have courts, we have melody, we have base, we have to
clear different sections. We have verses and choruses.
Within an actual song. There are introductions,
there are middle eight, there are pre-chorus,
is there a Phil's? There are links and all these
other different things. But I think for a starting
point of where we're at, this is particularly good. This is a good thing
to be aiming towards. Thinking lengthwise if you're somebody who's wanted
to kind of go, well, I want to start
making creative music. But to 3 min, so long time, just through,
as you can see here, just through two
versus two choruses following appropriate
theory lakes, we've got to eight bar
phrases and each of them, they 16 bar per section. We have got T, but it's
an eight sections now we could slow the speed down,
we could speed it up. That will change that as well. We could add an extra little
bits intro and outro. These are many, many things
that you could find. We start looking at
more complex structures in somewhere later courses, but have a go at some
of the melody writing. Remember, keep it
nice and simple. So it's using those
first five notes. Remember, we're trying
to match up with whatever codes it is
that you've used. If you use the same
chords that I have, then please, please, please just follow the same
ones that I did. So they have a go and then let us see what we
can do next time as well.
14. Extra Contnet - Loops/Bandlab Sounds: Okay, so let's look at some
of the extra bits that we could use is the kind
of hidden features, if you will, of this course. So whereas we've already
looked at how to create a make our road
bits and bobs Dallas because some of them premade
things that we could use and explore and in some cases
exploit the band lab has, first of which we're going to
use is the loops functions. These have the charming
name of bad lab sounds. From our main menu here we can simply click on band up sounds, and this whole big thing pops up on the right-hand side here. I'm just going to move myself. Where Schleicher, let's go over here so that we can see
what's available over here. Loops are pre-made little
snippets, little trucks, little pieces of music that you could do is to add
hidden layer up. These are things
that are already created by other people. So if you are hoping
to use these to go out and make your own
and make your abilities. There's gonna be some
copyright issues there, but they can be quite fun. It's a good way to expect
with texture and to explore certain genres
and such as well. Really nice and simple
and nice and easy to use. Particularly accessible
or the mobile app or for bad map located down here, if you happen to be
in this menu here, by simply clicking on Belknap, sounds care that it pulls
up the menu as well. There's kinda front page
will change every month. And it's a whole variety
of different genres here. Well, I showed you
in the packs menu. If you go to loops,
it'll just give you one shots which are fine. They're just a lot
harder to navigate. One shots, you
should just go like a single drum kit or
something like that. But Pax is the best
place to start. Yeah, little filters
here. So you can filter by character
or via genre. And then you can also
change whether it'd be like the more recent ones order via names in alphabetical
order and sexual, as it says here, got some numbers to
start off with anyway. So let's go with silicate
at specific genres. I mean, normally
I kind of go for low face that's pushed myself
out of my comfort zone. Here. Let's go for some
electronic that I saw. There were some synth
wave just a few moments ago or some stuffs
that's always quite fun. But say, I was born in the '80s. So there's gave her
some 80 synth wave. So just type in synth
wave in the shirt, in the Search button
on the shirt. That's something very
bright, difficult, different retro future synth. So if you did it, what
it sounds like, press the play button.
That's pretty cool. Not gonna lie. Which one, first or second one? That one. It's kind of more
like the synth wave, like relax videos
you tend to get on or the youtubes and such. And you are given
a whole big option of different loops
that you could use. Once again, drop-down menu, filter them by instrument is
by personal way of doing it. So I guess starts
off where staff are some drums, press play. That's gonna be our
intro to start off with that. So what do you do? It demonstrated that further. If either one that
you want, go away, you drag it and drop it
to where you want it. Left-click, just drag it
to where it says drop Ollie or audio midi
file from here. Much like we've done previously, you can extend, good leap it, I have a guy for as
long as you want. This one going for 2 bar. And then we're gonna go
into different drumbeat. Why not? Straight there as well? Again, we can link that
for as long as you need to go to Osaka, be 16, 19. Save. So now we've got perfect speed away from drums. Let's now go out. Sure, why not pop that into a new line? Just connect set for
these, just makes sense. That gang, that's how these match it up link,
make life easier. But that's kind of cool. Oh, we gotta get
a little Cynthia. Cynthia after that,
as popular as soon as what we got here. Show Sheila sounds
not 100% on that, but let's see what happens.
I'm happy with that. Let's extend those
all a little bit because that's starting
to get quite funky. Dude and do come back to accidentally
loop and then boot once some kind of RPO arpeggiator,
then go with that. Um, I think of
having a leader that some points map that's
coming at the same time. First of all, my guide
for drag and drop that. Gela sounds yeah, we like that. And then let's have lead from that that one. Yet at the same time
the art comes in. Badge, you're a little look see according to the side. And then you can start thinking about sections later ones. We just layered
that up so we could then quite easily just go right. Boomers have the other
drumbeat we're looking at. Squish. Then some more synthesis. The same ones as you start
to lay a whole bunch of different stuffs up
at around it as well. It really controls
here on the left, very important because some of these will be
incredibly loud, some will be incredibly quiet. You can kind of start playing around
with the auto pictured here and such. But that's just one of those
things where it's just best, experiments awakes and
start to change the pitch, change the key of it. One of the best things you
could do with any piece of kit or software to general St. Joseph Pfaff around
the mess about it, you will find the
coolest things. Well, I should have listened
to this just until we get to the ops and since
got our color intro. Loved that '80s
reverb on the snare. Sounds like dirty. Cool. The end of an action film as
the credit starts to roll. That's cool. So those are
the loops are bad rap sounds as they're called
here by the genre. For either type it
into your synth wave, your metal, your drill, you grab your hip,
hop, your lo-fi, whatever it might
be, there'll be subject to satisfy
you with it here. How about experiment
is a very, very cool, very funky sounds here at to see what you
could do with it.
15. Thank you!: So that's our look at ban lab and thank you very
much for engaging in, thank you very much
for participating. Be on the lookout for
many more courses. Now that you've got a grasp of the basics on these, get DAW. Now you can start to branch into different areas of music, whether it be your
own personal genres, have choice of the other areas. Whether it be that you start
thinking to ourselves, Yeah, This is something
I want to do. This is something I
want to engage with. Potentially start
making some money and start building a portfolio. Who knows. But be on the lookout for more of
our lessons which deep, deep dive into some
specific genres. And there'll be
looking at some other professional DAWs
as time goes on. Thank you very much. I look forward to
seeing you soon. Take care. Bye bye.
Alasdair Ashby, Orchestral Composer for RPG's
