Final Project

I've completed my final project. I had a lot of fun with this. I made an effort to use sculpture in Logic after we spent so much time working with it these past few weeks. I also relied pretty heavily on the ultrabeat function, maybe too much, but I love the wide range of sounds you can produce with it. Another goal of mine was to work on the transitional phases within a piece. I'd like to think I did a much better job at this than in the previous assignment.

Blog 5: Review of Wildcat by Ratatat

I know I'm not really branching out here with another blog pertaining to Ratatat but I thought it would be appropriate since I'm going to see Ratatat in concert next week.


This song, along with many others by the group show that a piece does not have to be very busy for it to be appealing to the ear. It starts off with a snare drum and whistle going off in unsion in the background with a bass guitar playing in the foreground. After a few measures a wildcat noise sounds and a deeper sounding bass guitar is introduced.

If I had to be critical of this song, I'd say my least favorite part is the bridge that begins at 1:57. I think I just find the guitar to be relatively 'squeaky'. But after that segment is over I find myself really getting into the song even moreso than before. I like the subtle percussive elements, particuallry their usage of the high-hat.

Can't wait for the concert.

Assignment 4

My goal for this project was to create a 2 minute trance song using Logic Pro. I began my piece with two synthesizers that produced "laser-like" and "spacey" effects. I fade them out and then lay down a quick beat using the Logic Ultrabeat feature. The remainder of the piece was created mostly using patterns I created with Ultrabeat. I continue to find the most difficult part of composing dance songs to be creating smooth transitional phases. I had a tremendous amount of fun with this project and continue to find Logic Pro to be the most user-friendly software we've used thusfar.

Have a listen. Hope you enjoy it.

Final Project Proposal

I had a lot of fun composing a techno song for assignment three. I am even more excited to use the drum machine in Logic Pro for assignment four. For my final project I want to make another techno piece relying mostly on Logic Pro. I think I'm going to rent a microphone as well and see if I can't produce some short audio samples that I can integrate into my song.

Also, you'll notice that all prior assignment are now embedded into the blog which should make things easier for you guys.

Blog 4

For this blog I'll review Conor Dooney's piece for assignment # 3:

The piece starts off with a few spacey tones followed closely by a short vocal sample. Then a quick series of claps, characteristic of the techno genre, are introduced. I was impressed that Conor's vocal sample seemed to flow with the melody. This was a task that I found to be very difficult in making my own piece.

I thought the overall tempo of the piece was appropriate for the first minute of a techno song. I felt like he was building up to a higher tempo but just ran out of time (therein lies the difficulty of being limited to a 1 minute clip).

After listening to the track several times I was able to disect it into the components from each syntesizer. I think the fact that I struggled at first to identify the effects and subtle noises is a testament to Conor and how he was able to effectively integrate the output from several instruments in Reasons.

Well done Conor. Look forward to listening to your final project.

Assignment 3

The assignment at hand was to create a 1 minute techno song in reason and use samples produced with the program recycle.

I had a lot of fun with the redrum tool. I used techno kit 3 for my piece. I decided to lay down a consistent beat that added another element every couple of bars to produce a layering effect.

I think the hardest part of the project was introducing samples with the Dr. Rex player. I thought I would try to sample a piece with some vocals. In the end I chose a song by Nina Simone. (Having never heard it before I'm not sure how it ended up in my iTunes library) I threw in the vocal samples at various points in the song where there was another element added to the beat.

I threw in some neat sounding effects using the Thor synthesizer and also changed the tempo of the overall piece so it would fall into the accepted range for techno music.

Take a listen:

Blog 3 - "What is Logic Youth?"

"What is Logic Youth?" is the name of Jared Bell's composition for the final assignment for Music 295a this past fall. Jared is a good friend of mine and the reason I'm taking this class. As I was busily slapping together papers towards the end of this past November he would talk non-stop about the progress of his final project for an electronic music class. He rambled about all the hours he spent searching for beats to sample and playing around on the MIDI keyboards in Phelps Hall. He even went as far as to say that MUSIC 295 had become hands-down his favourite class at Yale.

I decided to join him one evening in the music lab. This was partly out of curiousity and partly because I thought that devoting a bit of my time to listen to his work would stop him from raving on about how much fun he was having with his final assignment as I wrote a final paper on a painfully dull topic. Whatever my motives were, I'm glad I popped in to get a taste of what this class was all about. Although I couldn't offer any technical suggestions I'd offer my two cents on different tracks he had in the works. Before long I even found myself sitting down at another computer playing around with the Logic Pro software.

The decision to take this class was an easy one and I can only hope I have as much fun and get as much out of the final project as Jared Bell did...

Click here if you'd like to be directed to Jared's blog from last semester