SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC055 March 2022 - Winners announced

[J.Ruegg]

Found a nice tool to doodle around with chord progressions : https://hookpad.hooktheory.com/
Maybe someone will find it very useful this month

[EsteveCorbera]

Mister Fox and fellow challengers,
The truth is, this month's proposal scared me a little. As I have mentioned several times I have not studied music, so I was concerned about doing a subject in Dmaj. But I've been researching and watching videos, and I think I understand the essence. Between rock and pop, I stick with 80's pop. Close to synthwave ...

With the pads I used the most common chord progression: I V vi IV and also a very typical song structure: Intro - Verse - Return - Verse - Return - Bridge - Return - End

I hope you like it more this time

Thanks mates. Good luck to all !!!

(translated with google)



Equipment:
DAW:
Reason 12

Instruments:
Europa Shapeshifting Synthesizer
Thor Polysonic Synthesizer
Radical Piano
Grain Sample Manipulator
Kong Drum Designer

Other instruments outside of Reason:


Effects:
Audiomatic
Quartet Chorus Ensemble
Alligator Triple Filter Gate
RV7000 MkII Advanced Reverb
The Echo
Channel EQ
Channel Dynamics
Master Bus Compressor
MClass Equalizer
MClass Maximizer

Utilities:
Combinator
MicroMix

Players:
PolyStep Sequencer
Scales & Chords
Drum Sequencer

Other effects outside of Reason:
Arturia Comp TUBE-STA

Other tools:
HoRNet SongKey MK3
iZotope Ozone 9
Plugin Alliance SPL HawEye

[EsteveCorbera]

Found a nice tool to doodle around with chord progressions : https://hookpad.hooktheory.com/
Maybe someone will find it very useful this month

Thanks for the recommendation

[Mister Fox]

A friendly reminder:
Including today, 7 days left to submit your production


If you want to access the extended game mechanics of the Songwriting Competition (asking for feedback during production), please try to release your first edits within the next 3 days to have enough time to get possible feedback (if needed/wanted) and continue to work on your song.

And to those sitting on the fence - please don't feel scared off and think "the bar is set too high, I will never make it" - maybe set yourself a private, was shorter deadline. Just make music, submit your entry, join the conversation. See where this goes. By joining, you're already a winner. The rest is bonus.

[Chrisantimos]

Tanks Mister Fox! What you told now really encouraged me to submit my entry as a new here on SWC - so please be kind with me:-) I hope to post my entry soon - cheers!

[EsteveCorbera]

Hello everyone,
Let's see if we can encourage this a bit.
@Arelem I don't have much to criticize about your topic. Maybe I would put the voices a little more in the forefront, to highlight them as the main thing.
Then I have a technical question for you. How do you get 14 LUFS and 1.1 dB so accurate?
I agree with you, we've all learned more.
Mister Fox's proposal for this month is very interesting, because it made me research how to build agreements to form more correctly. Until then, I didn't pay much attention to it

[Arelem]

@Arelem I don't have much to criticize about your topic. Maybe I would put the voices a little more in the forefront, to highlight them as the main thing.

To help hit the LUFS target I've been using a Fruity Limiter at the start of my master chain and turning the gain up or down. For some reason that seems to produce a better result than a simple gain knob. Fruity Limiter comes with FL Studio but I would imagine any limiter with a gain adjustment would work. Then I have to play through the track to see that it fits the target using Youlean Loudness Meter (I find this easier than alternatives that require you to export the song, though those analyze faster). For -1.1dB I use LoudMax at the end of my master chain. It can be set as a brick wall limiter. It can be a little finicky in that even set to -1, it will peak up to -0.9. I've found that staging just before it can help that.

@EsteveCorbera Thanks for the feedback. I do find that sometimes I tend to bury my vocals since I don't really care for my own voice. I'll see if I can't fine-tune that a little bit.
I don't have much to comment on your track either, I like it. Definitely has an 80's pop vibe to it. It might be nice to get a break from the kick. It's really present and the same quarter/half notes for basically the whole track. If you are able to put some vocals with it, I think it could be a really interesting track, but it doesn't necessarily need them.

Edit: I did end up making the vocals more present. Hopefully, they fit a bit better now.

[becsei_gyorgy]

Hi all, here is my submission this month.
A simple chord progression and a light "lemonade" song was the goal in the pop category :



DAW: Reaper

Chords: Dmaj - F#min - Gmaj - Amaj
I - iii - IV - V

VST:
Atlas
Serum
BOZ El Clapo

FX:
Pro-Q3
SSL Drumstrip
Vertigo VSC-2
ReaComp
Saturn 2
Trackspacer
BOZ Pan Knob
SPL TwinTube
CLA Vocals
Vocalsynth 2
Quadravox
Valhalla VintageVerb

bx_digital V3
bx_Townhouse
Gullfoss
Oxford Limiter
TR5 Tape 24
Youlean LM
SPAN

Samples:
Vocal - ISL Soulful Pop Vocals (Loopcloud)
Drum, FX's - mostly KSHMR (Splice)
911 Call (freesound.org)

[Mister Fox]

A friendly reminder:
We're in the final 24 hours to submit your production.



Please get your production ready and submitted (through the forum) today.

[mobiledrummer]

Hi all,

Here is my submission for this month. I started with a simple D progression, but it kind of grew from there...



Anyway, I ran the midi through Scaler 2 and it identifies it as being in D major.
The track has: intro, verse, pre-chorus, chorus, breakdown, pre-verse 1, pre-verse 2, verse, pre-chorus, chorus, outro. The chords are:

Intro, Chorus 1&2 : D F#m7 Bm7 A#9 Em7 Dadd9 F#m A Em7 G
Pre-chorus 1&2 : G7 D/F# G7 A G Bm Em G E7(sus4)/A
Verse 1&2 : Bm7 A/C# Dadd9 Em7 A9(sus4) G7 F#m D D7(sus2)13 Aadd9
Breakdown : Em7 F#m7 Dadd9 Em7 C Em9 Gadd9 Bm G7(sus2) G(sus2)
Pre-verse 1 : Bm D/A D G G A Bm7 Aadd9 A G6
Pre-verse 2 : D A F#m7 G A9(sus4) G7 F#m D Aadd9
Outro : Em7 F#m7 Dadd9 Em7 C Em9 Gadd9 G7(sus2) G(sus2)

Instruments and effects:
Melody: Repro-5 with automated width
Keys: Stage-73 with some width automation, Hive 2, and the wide pad introduced in the chorus is from CS-80 V3.
Drums and percussion: Addictive Drums 2 and some percussion from Skaka.
Bass: EZbass

Usual amounts of compressors and eq on individual tracks. SSL Vintage Drive on drums, bass, and melody tracks. SSL Bus compressor, Satin, and Ozone on the master bus. Cinematic Rooms reverb(s).

Update 24-03-2022:

So my original submission was a barrage of chord variants, so I updated it with simpler chords. Now, it has eight chords in D: D Em F#m G A Aadd9 Bm C#dim, and two "borrowed" chords : A# (surprise chorus chord) C

Intro, Chorus 1&2 : D F#m Bm A# Em D F#m A Em G
Pre-verse 1 : Bm A D G G A Bm A A G
Pre-verse 2 : D A F# G A G F#m D Aadd9
Verse 1&2 : Bm C#dim D Em A G F#m D Aadd9
Pre-chorus 1&2 : G F#m G A G Bm Em G A
Breakdown, Outro : Em F#m D Em C Em G Bm G

The original submission is still on my SoundCloud page.