2024-MAR-01 Info: Check out Songwriting Competition 079 if you're into "Synthwave" music making.

SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC034 June 2020 - Winners announced

Thematic Songwriting Competition - recurrence: monthly
Richard Watashi

Re: SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC034 June 2020 - Submissions until 24-06-2020 23:59 UTC+2/CEST

#11

Post by Richard Watashi »

We thought to collab with Trojak again, but it fell off the table. So, i came with this:



Name: SWC034_Richard Watashi_Great Destruction
Genre: Big Beat/Alternative/Synth Rock
DAW: FL Studio

Plugins:
Almost all stock! Guitar is Slayer, bass is also stock, the crazy-oscilated synth is Harmless and the main lead is Sawyer with Gross Beat plug-in placed upon.

FX'ses
Almost all stock. All fruity stuff, i think the only extra is the CMT Bitcrushe that takes it's place in the outro. Some freebies ,too - like the Frerrick TDS saturation plugin. I chose distorted sound.

That would be all, i guess. Enjoy
becsei_gyorgy
Posts: 171
Joined: Sat Nov 09, 2019 19:55 CET
Location: Szeged, Hungary

Re: SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC034 June 2020 - Submissions until 24-06-2020 23:59 UTC+2/CEST

#12

Post by becsei_gyorgy »

Hi,

Of the given examples - perhaps unsurprisingly - I followed the movie soundtrack, game music line. The works of Tom Holkenborg, Andrew Aversa were inspiring :smile:.



Inspirational image:
Image
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The day after

BPM:138
DAW: Reaper

Addictive Drums 2
Zebra 2
Diva
Serum
Tone2 Saurus
Spitfire BBC Symphonic Orchestra
Kontakt:
Spitfire Albion ONE
NI Strummed Acoustic
Zero-G Ethera
Performance Samples Oceania

Fabfilter Pro-Q3
Lindell 80 Series Channel
Waves L1
Waves RBass
Waves RCompressor
Waves RVox
SPL DrumXchanger
ReaComp
bx_control V2
Soundtoys Decapitator
Soundtoys FilterFreak1
Soundtoys Echoboy Jr.
Endless Smile
Sennheiser Ambeo orbit
MAutoVolume
Kilohearts PitchShifter
Kilohearts TranceGate
Valhalla Vintage Verb

SPAN
Ozone 9
Tonal Balance Control

Samples (Drums oneshots, FX):
Freesound
Sonic Academy
Zero-G
Last edited by becsei_gyorgy on Sun May 02, 2021 19:26 CEST, edited 1 time in total.
gruskada
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Re: SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC034 June 2020 - Submissions until 24-06-2020 23:59 UTC+2/CEST

#13

Post by gruskada »



This one was pretty easy to name, sticking with my software development naming scheme. "Power Cycle" is just a hard reboot, where you completely shut down first. If you're having serious problems, especially network related, usually you want to power cycle instead of just restarting.

Anyway, the idea for the song is that people get entrenched in ways of thinking, and just stick with them, even if they don't make sense. People try to make sense of it and still trudge along until something big comes along to actually shake things up (like the current race protests in America). To reflect this, the loose melody is initially kind of snipped together and shared across multiple instruments. Also parts of the old melody still try to hang on in each new key, even though it doesn't really fit. The tension keeps building until it all falls apart. The song then reboots itself, and goes back to the original theme, but this time with a few basic changes. For example, the first intro theme uses closed chords (a big no-no for string voicings).

The "rebooted" theme uses open chords, and the idea is that everything gets better from there. A violin melody develops, then other instruments come in. There are hints of epic music, going with what Mister Fox said about how films used to use Big Beat, but now use big Taiko drums instead (sort of another type of reboot). It then ends with the Eventide "crystals" type effect triggered off of one of the violins (though I just used NI Guitar Rig to generate it, as I don't have the Eventide Harmonizer). This is supposed to represent that great things can happen if you just get your core beliefs and values in order. Re-reading this, I probably overthought things a bit :-)

The drums were really fun. I built them up in NI Drum Lab, tuning each sound, then messing with the MIDI to make it more customized, but basically it's the iconic "Amen, Brother" break from The Winstons, like a lot of Big Beat music uses. I then did a bit of reversing, short cut off samples, and resampling with IL Harmor.

Instruments:
- IL Harmor (synths and drum/vox resampling)
- Tone2 Saurus2 (all the chiptune-type sounds, and run through Guitar Rig for some of the guitar-type sounds)
- Impact Soundworks Shreddage II
- EastWest Symphonic Orchestra (strings, flutes, celeste, bassoons, some percussion)
- Embertone Joshua Bell Essential Violin

- SoundIron Hyperion Strings Elements (just for double bass)
- IK MODO Bass
- Novation Bass Station (VST)
- Arturia OB-Xa V 
- AIR Hybrid 3 (just for risers)
- NI Strummed Acoustic
- Sampleso Floppytron

- NI Drum Lab  
- NI Battery 4- EastWest Storm Drum 2
- Spoken words - me

- Intro sample - my daughter banging on the counter :smile: , run through lots of effects

Effects:
- Polyverse "I Wish" (for glitch sounds)
- Izotope Neutron 2
- Izotope Nectar 3
- Soundtoys PanMan
- Polyverse Wider
- NI Guitar Rig 5
- NI Raum
- Valhalla Room reverb
- Bark of Dog subsynth (just on double bass parts)

Post:
- Soundtheory Gullfoss
- Izotope Ozone 8 Standard
Last edited by gruskada on Wed Jun 24, 2020 20:07 CEST, edited 1 time in total.
Jack.Olentein

Re: SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC034 June 2020 - Submissions until 24-06-2020 23:59 UTC+2/CEST

#14

Post by Jack.Olentein »

Greetings fellow producers

Here is my submission for this month songwriting competition :


===== FUTURE RIDER =====

Designed to have the movement of BigBeat, but with more uplifting melodic components, like in the aftermath of a movie, where you are inspired to keep moving forward, the past remains in the past. now focus on the future.
Riding your bike trough the city, where progress & society slowly start to grow again, like in the old prosperous days.

Instruments used
- AIR Music Hybrid3
- AIR Music XPand2
- Dmitry Sches Thorn
- Ableton factory sounds

Sample origins
- 99 Sounds
- Cymatics
- BreakBeat Paradise
- Loopmasters

Effects used
- SoundToys Little Plate
- Dmitry Sches Tantra
- Sonible Entropy EQ
- NI Raum
- Tone2 BiFilter
- Ableton devices

Mixing effects
- Kilohearts Disperser
- Kilohearts Transient Shaper
- Izotope Ozone 9
- Exponential Audio PhoenixVerb
- Youlean Loudness Meter 2
- Ableton devices

Note: I couldn't get it at -14LUFS, I used the Ozone learn target feature, but still, Youlean Loudness Meter marked that it was at -13.5LUFS, I don't know much about mixing, I did my best, but these thigs are hard to understand, sorry.
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Mister Fox
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Re: SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC034 June 2020 - Submissions until 24-06-2020 23:59 UTC+2/CEST

#15

Post by Mister Fox »

A friendly reminder:
We're in the final 24 hours to submit your production
gruskada
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Re: SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC034 June 2020 - Submissions until 24-06-2020 23:59 UTC+2/CEST

#16

Post by gruskada »

Jack.Olentein wrote:
Wed Jun 24, 2020 01:20 CEST
Note: I couldn't get it at -14LUFS, I used the Ozone learn target feature, but still, Youlean Loudness Meter marked that it was at -13.5LUFS, I don't know much about mixing, I did my best, but these thigs are hard to understand, sorry.
The "learn threshold target" will adjust based on the part of the song you are playing until it finds the target. So you can keep it on the whole song, then turn it off.

If it's still wrong, you can adjust the "threshold" setting on Maximizer a bit - a lower threshold value = a louder song. Then re-test and re-adjust until it's right. Or at least that's the way I do it - there might be an easier way.

Nice song, btw.
Jack.Olentein

Re: SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC034 June 2020 - Submissions until 24-06-2020 23:59 UTC+2/CEST

#17

Post by Jack.Olentein »

gruskada wrote:
Wed Jun 24, 2020 02:18 CEST
Jack.Olentein wrote:
Wed Jun 24, 2020 01:20 CEST
Note: I couldn't get it at -14LUFS, I used the Ozone learn target feature, but still, Youlean Loudness Meter marked that it was at -13.5LUFS, I don't know much about mixing, I did my best, but these thigs are hard to understand, sorry.
The "learn threshold target" will adjust based on the part of the song you are playing until it finds the target. So you can keep it on the whole song, then turn it off.

If it's still wrong, you can adjust the "threshold" setting on Maximizer a bit - a lower threshold value = a louder song. Then re-test and re-adjust until it's right. Or at least that's the way I do it - there might be an easier way.

Nice song, btw.
Hey, thanks!
I made another master, this time I didn't used the Izotope Assitant, I think the highs are a bit harsh compared to the last one, but I managed to get it at -14.5LUFS now, hopefuly it's ok now (I updated it already).
SimaGT
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Re: SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC034 June 2020 - Submissions until 24-06-2020 23:59 UTC+2/CEST

#18

Post by SimaGT »

My goal was to get dirty, more agressive sound with distorded guitars combined with some midle east vibe.
I combined AD 2 with DrumLab and layered them with some samples i found on disk.
MSoundFactory was used to process vocals.
Strangely my soundcloud upload is bit quieter than original wav. file and i dont have time today to deal with it, so push volume to 11 :D.

https://soundcloud.com/user-253743970/s ... -soultribe

Addictive Drums 2
NI Drumlab
Heavier7Strings
Massive
Synthmaster 2.9
Air Hybrid 3
EW Ra
MSoundFactory
Samples from hard drive and few free loopmaster sounds

For mixing/mastereing mainly Waves plugins.
Olli H
Posts: 207
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Location: Finland

Re: SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC034 June 2020 - Submissions until 24-06-2020 23:59 UTC+2/CEST

#19

Post by Olli H »

During my long walks I listened to quite many times those reference files. They all seemed to have somewhat organic drum sounds with farting bass sound. But I have to admit that just by listening I couldn’t figure out what is the essential essence of Big Beat genre. Then I found from Wikipedia a Fatboy Slim quotation:

”The name came from our club, the Big Beat Boutique, which I'm tremendously proud of. I always thought the formula of big beat was the breakbeats of hip-hop, the energy of acid house, and the pop sensibilities of the Beatles, with a little bit of punk sensibility, all rolled into one. People like the Prodigy and the Chemical Brothers – we saw it as very similar to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, who grew up listening to soul records and blues records and then sold an English version of it back to America.”

That definition gave me an illusion of to what direction I should proceed. It sounded like easy preliminary steps tailored for me to dive into the world of EDM. After that my plan was to have couple of different 70’s style organic drum loops, distorted bass, and melody lines inspired by 60’s British pop.

Verse part is built around chord progression: I > I+ > I6 > I+ > I > I+ > I6 > I+ (Although I got the idea to that progression from Buddy Holly’s ”Raining in My Heart”, later I got the feeling that probably some Bond movie track uses somewhat similar progression. I hope I haven’t stolen too much from there.)

To add more pop melody lines I used in choruses parts like: IV > IIm > I > IVm

Luckily I managed to add also a C-part in another key.

Hopefully the end result has enough of Big Beat elements to participate int this contest.

DAW: Reaper
Drums: Kontakt
Bass: Massive
Synths: Massive
Electric Piano: Kontakt
Piano: Kontakt
Real Guitars
Vocals: my Alter Ego

I run out of time, so the mix is just a quick headphone mix. But sometimes the quick mix is better than the labored one. At least in my case.

”Reboot”, Olli H
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DVRnFM ... sp=sharing
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Doc Jon
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Re: SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC034 June 2020 - Submissions until 24-06-2020 23:59 UTC+2/CEST

#20

Post by Doc Jon »



I think we all know that the current world situation is ultimately going to end in the zombie apocalypse so that has been the inspiration for my track this month

Cubase 10.5 Pro

VSTs
Toontrack Superior Drummer 3
MusicLab RealStrat 5
Synapse EKS Pro
Steinberg Halion SE
u-he Hive
u-he Zebra 2
AAS String Studio 3
Steinberg Virtual Guitarist 2

Fx
Various Cubase native Fx
Various TRackS 5 modules
Izotope Trash 2
Valhalla Room
FabFilter Saturn
FabFilter Timeless 2
Soundtoys Little Alter Boy
Soundtoys Devil Loc
Soundtoys Filter Freak
Soundtoys Microshift
NI Guitar Rig 5
Izotope Nectar 3
CamelPhat 3
IL Vocodex
Izotope Ozone 8

Samples
Some Luftrum field recordings
https://www.luftrum.com/free-field-recordings/

LUFS -14.1 (TRackS 5 metering suite)
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