Reflection/Overview on Side Project: サビシイ Sabishii
- Ron De Guzman
- Aug 30, 2018
- 4 min read
サビシイ Sabishii
Start date: July 2nd Ching Hsu & Ron De Guzman
I approached Ching Hsu during week one to express the idea of collaborating on a track that was not really within of our comfort zone and outside the typical genres that we usually make. This was our first time collaborating and I originally presented the idea of doing a 'Future Funk' track. We later created a slack channel and sent through ideas and potential reference tracks.
These were the original references:
After looking into this genre, we found out that 90% of these tracks are mostly sampling foreign 80s pop tracks while increasing its tempo and adding a new layer of drums. Ching and I wanted to create something more original and create a track without sampling. This required us to change our scope and our aim, we decided to go for a more modern dance/funk track.
New reference tracks:
Compostion (July 10th - August 5th)
The main aspect that I noticed within these reference tracks were the similar drum patterns combined with a 'funky' bassline. I felt that these really defined the aesthetic of a 'funky' song. While making the scratch track Ching and I agreed to compose specfic parts. I was to compose the drums and bassline and ching was set to compose the chords, melody and lead for the track. It took me a constant trial and error just to get the drums to sound right and suit the track's aesthetic. I had some trouble while composing the drum pattern, it kept ending up sounding to much like a 'house' track because of the pattern of both the kick and snare. One thing I noticed about the drums within our reference tracks was the pattern being played by the cowbell and shaker. These gave the drum pattern a whole new groove and really defined the genre's type of drums. The one thing that is a strong and prominent element within funk music is the bassline, composing a 'funky' bassline took up a lot of time because of constantly going back and trying to nail the composition, eventually I achieved something that I was happy with and gained positive feedback from Ching. Within this genre of music the most promient elements is definitely the drums and bassline and it is what greatly defines the funk genre.
How we mainly collaborated was through online and constantly sent stems to each other through a google drive.
Ching recorded the vocals from Tsz Fung Tsang Billy within the S6. Although, I was not able to attend that day and unfortunately we were only able to get one take. (August 6th)
Mixing and Mastering (August 8)
This session was rather short, the instrumental was already sound good since we mostly mix while composing the instrumental but we made sure to process, mix and Melodyne Billy's vocals. We also ran his vocals through the Avalon in the S6. With the rest of the track we made sure everything was balanced and used EQ to take out any unnecessary frequencies in each of the instruments.
For mastering we ran the track through some of the hardware in the S6 studio. First we ran it through the Alpha VHD-Pre SSL for a very clean sound, then we ran it through the Dangerous Bax EQ to give the track a bit of warmth, then through the Avalon VT-737SP and the Manley Variable Mu for compression. For a limiter we used a Maxim limiter and applied iZotope Insight to measure the overall LUFS (Loudness Units Full Scale).
We planned to post this on Soundcloud only but after researching Soundcloud does not have a specific LUFS standard. We ended up deciding to aim for the Spoitfy LUFS standard (-14LUFS).
Loudness standards?
Loudness standards were introduced to control volume of a song on a specific streaming platform. These standards came to be as a result of the loudness wars between each of the streaming platforms such as Apple music, YouTube, Spoitfy, Tidal, etc. It's important to be aware of each platform's Loudness standard because if it's not followed, the platform will automatically effect the quality of your track. For example; If your track is too loud the platform will normalise and ultimately turn the volume of your track down. This results in your track losing quality, so it's important to know this when mastering. Although Soundcloud does not have a standard we decided to aim for Spoitfy's standard, since most platforms have a standards around -14LUFS to -16LUFS.
Final Thoughts
This project was great, I got to step out of my comfort zone with a new genre and collaborate with both Ching and Billy. During this project the main challenge for me was to capture the proper aesthetics of the references and the Dance/Funk genre. I believe that I was rather successful of capturing the overall aesthetic with the sound and composition of the drums and bassline. Although, in comparison to the reference tracks our vocals let us down, since they did not have enough clarity when comparing our vocal mix to both references.
Our track:
Overall, I am happy with outcome of this project but one major thing I need to continually practice, is my vocal processing and mixing. This is an essential skill if I want my future tracks to be at par with industry standard tracks.
Comentários