Production Diary one. Stuck in a dream.

StevieBbeatz - Stuck in a dream, recording!!
For this track, my idea was to go for something dark since It fits in with my genre I'm doing (Ambient/Contemporary/Dark RnB). I also decided that I wanted to do a composition/experimental type of track so it has no song structure, it's just something you can vibe too. I did use specific sounds to make it suit the genre such as synth pads, vocals, bass and more. I got some of these sounds from Logic HOWEVER many would not be able to notice that I got it from Logic, I did loads of tweaking. The sounds I tweaked is the electric keyboard, I took the treble off so it has that soothing sound on it and I added more of the bass to it. My track does not contain any live instruments it's all midi, I decided to do it in midi because using live instruments for a dark sound like this type of track... wouldn't of suit it in my personal opinion.

Many instruments are reversed in my track, the only why is because it gives it that contemporary feeling, I wanted to add a lot of influences to this track. Not only this is a Dark/Contemporary track but it also influences a hip hop type of track as well. The 'I'm Stuck in a dream' vocal suits it so well.

Equipment & sounds

To start of with, the Equipment I used to create this track, was my keyboard (Typing keyboard) and samples (My samples)! I made this at home, to mix and master I used my headphones.  I recorded the chords by playing it on my typing keyboard, I also did the hi hats on it as well.

Natural sounds: There is some natural sounds I used such as the rustling, the bottle cap, the beep and that helicopter sound.

I recorded 3 sounds using my phone and saved it as samples on to my computer, afterwards I tweaked it by using the EQ, Filter, echo and so on. One other sound ( The helicopter one ) was recorded using a  high quality recorder, that sound is actually a dryer in the bathroom. I also tweaked that. How I used it in this track is that I added the tremelo effect to make it go from left to right in the speaker/headphones.

Drum kits: I have my own drum kits that I made from a while ago, so I used them for this track. How I made the drum kits is that I took 2 drums from one of the logic kits, did some EQ, Overdrive, filter and then bounced it as a WAV file for high quality.

But in this track there is a bass drum that I tweaked, I used the Filter, Distortion and sent it to a bus for the pitch shifter effect on the drums, to give it that dark - bass type of sound. The pitch shifter created a huge impact upon the drums, this is because pitching drums down would give it more of a boomy type of drum, and you wouldn't even realise that it's been pitched down.

Reversing: I did many reversing on instruments. The instruments I reversed was the bass drum, to make it a bit more jumpy and to make it feel like it's moving back and forward. I reversed the claps, so the claps isn't so bright. I also reversed 2 or 3 vocals, to give it that dark feeling, which suits my genre. I reversed the bottle cap instrument and the 'helicopter' sound so I can confuse the listener's, they'll hear a bottle cap that's not reversed but they'll also be hearing a bottle cap is reversed - however they wouldn't realise that the bottle cap (reversed) is the same as the bottle cap(unreversed).

Vocals: I got the vocals from Logic's library. The 'Stuck in a dream' is also from the Logic library but I added some EQ, Distortion, Compressor and then sent a bus to a pitch shifter which made the vocal a bit deeper, dark and evil. I added loads of tone to the distortion (overdrive) though. I also sent a bus to a reverb, so the vocal doesn't sound subtle and dry.

Melody & chords:
I started with the chords first, the instrument I used was a piano but I changed it to a synth pad ( a logic one ) I did edit it though so that people wouldn't recognise the sound.
There's a flute that's reversed, the flute is reversed because it suits the track more, making it reversed makes the track a bit more dark. I didn't do that much on the melody & chords.
I did add a electric piano, you probably can't recognise it because I made it into my own sound and processed it a lot. I chopped it up and put the melody parts into different orders so for example the start of the sound would be last while the end part of the sound would be first. Something like this for example ALSO it is reversed! As you can see these chopped parts are in different orders. The wave form is not accurate is what I wanted.

Mixing and mastering.

This is how I mixed all of the instruments, I mixed them low first but I did turn some things a bit more up such as the claps, drums, vocals and the main melody (the electric piano). Before turning everything into audio, it was midi at first but I decided to mix it using audio because you get a higher quality. I mixed all of the instruments Individually none of them was in groups or anything like that or a bus. They were all mixed individually and it took a lot of time to mix them like how they are now. I didn't mix this track using the studio facility I used my headphones to mix this.

After I finished mixing the track I bounced it as a WAV file so that the quality isn't lost or compressed. 

How I mastered this is that I used the Hipass plug in because the kicks were a bit too bassey. 

I then used the EQ, around 85Hz I turnt it down to -3.5dB because the bass on the kick was a bit too much as well. The MultiPressor was also used to balance out the whole mix and push the kicks a bit more to make them stand out more through out the track. I then sent it to a bus for the distortion. Now, why did I do this? I did this because I wanted the mix to be a bit more FATTER but I did not turn up the bus volume that much only a little bit. The drive of the distortion was turned up to 10.5dB. After finishing all of that I added another EQ on the output and turned down around 85 Hz to -5.0dB, then I stuck a limiter on it and turn it up briefly.