Project 5: Sound Design

Project 5 Info

This project was done completely in Apple's GarageBand software, with the included samples. My goal was to a retro mix between techno beats and actual instruments, such as orchestral strings and drums. I've an avid techno/electronica music listener, as I think it's great study music, and I wanted to create such a piece. Most techno songs have distinct portions of the song, such as a slowly starting beginning and a fading end of the song with a descrescendo and echo. My piece relied heavily on the aspect of looping samples and layering many of them. I also became fond of Garageband's effects such as echo and reverb.

My song begins with Electric Guitar Swell 01 to which I slowly ramped up the volume before fading it away when I added in Techno Synth 2 and Synthbass Sequence 01. Right as the guitar swell faded away, I introduced Synthbass Sequence 08 which started increasing the song's pace as the song progressed. All three of these samples end looping and fade away right as Synthbass Sequence 07, Techno Synth 2 and Orchestra Strings 8 lead in. Each of these samples have no echo or reverb as the last ones did. After these continue to loop for a while, I put in a new track World Agogo 02 but I set it to Orchestral Strings mode for a unique and light background beat to mix with the Orchestra Strings 08 sample. The song becomes fully active later as several more samples are looped and included. These samples are Synth Sweep 02, Synth Swirl 03, Techno Synth 03 and Club Dance Beat 021. The synths add a high-paced foreground sound while Club Dance Beat 021 creates a nice background thump.

It is at this point where the song behinds to transition to a different climax through the use of Lounge Vibes 05, Lounge Vibes 02 and Far East Drums 02. After these samples complete looping, the previous samples start fading away while the final six samples make their way into the song. They are Ambient Beat 01, Moody Electric Piano 02, Ambient Guitar 01, Dance Floor Pattern 25, Deep Electric Piano 04 and Synth Array 13. All of these samples except Deep Electric Piano 04 fade while the song ends with an echoing Deep Electric Piano 04 loop.

One thing that threw me off while making this song was how Garageband keeps track of time. I was under the assumption that the numbers at the top of the tracks were seconds, but they turned out being a method of keeping track of time with something do to with the tempo. When I exported my song to iTunes the first time, it was 5 minutes long. I also didn't like the fact that Garageband is unable to import samples from outside sources other than instruments. I had browsed the ccmixter site and found many samples I wanted to use, only to find out that Garageband wasn't on my side. I stayed away from Audacity as there were some samples that I wanted from Garageband as well.