SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC067 March 2023 - Winners announced

[OrpheusXL]

This was really a hard work to find out, which chords I used for this song.
It has actually been created on guitar, then transfered to Midi already 3 years ago.

But as I have no idea about music theory, it took me some efforts to find out the chords. Well, here they are:

Bm,E57,Bm7 - Bm,E57,Bm7 - Bm,E57,Bm7 - Bm7,E57,Bm,Bm,E57 - Bm7,E57,Bm,D,Em7,Em -
Dm,C,Bb,F,G5,Bb,A7 - Dm,C,F,Bb,G7,A5,C#7.Em6/11 +repetitions
.....

Song title: The Day When My Heart Broke
Available at soundcloud:
https://soundcloud.com/orpheusxl/the-da ... al_sharing

Now here the story (and a question):

The song was first created on guitar, then transfered to Midi and arranged in GarageBand some years ago.

Now, for the challenge I’ve changed some instruments, made everything more crisp, changed the bass line to simplify it and added a new part to the song. The drums are complete new with an additional topper track from the library.
As there is no voice, I had to create the melody for an instrument and added some „decoration“ sounds for the background. The intro and the end are new.

The most time consuming work was the defining of the chords. I tried the suggested apps and plugins which where available for MacOS, but as far as I can say, none of them would let me ply the song and display the chords at the same time. So I had to do this manually by creating a new track with the basic chords, chopped every chord into a single region and then renamed the region to the displayed chord when selected in the piano roll.

Instruments and plugin:

I mainly used the built-in plugins of Logic as there are:
ES2, EFM1, Alchemy Dark Space Pluck, Upright Studio Bass and Pigments for the melody part. For the drum track I used „2 Step Balancing Beat“ from the loops and ripped it of some disturbing noises (for my taste), then duplicated it just for modifying and enforcing the kick.

the master track contains Apples AUMultibandCompressor and LoudMax, which is set to Out: -1.1 dB, the upper display reaches 4-5 (although I don’t now, what this means) as had been recommanded somewhere.

Tempo: 100 bpm
this fits best when later the voice will be added.

Now we have agein to talk about the loudness settings.
Mr. Fox wrote:
„Regarding "Loudness Specs":
For the Songwriting Competition -- as long as it does not exceed -14LUFS and -1,00 dBTP, you're getting all bonus points. There is no disqualification criteria.“

I don’t understand, what „exceed“ means. Is -15LUFS exceeding or -13LUFS?
Could you clarify this be telling me, in which range it should be?
Same for dBTP.

I hope the changes I made would validate the song for the challenge?

[EsteveCorbera]

Challenge companions and Mister Fox, Good night!!

Curious proposal this month. A competition to write songs with artificial intelligence. Who writes this month's song, us or a machine?
Taking advantage of the premise of the chord wizard, I have taken advantage of other tools that help with songwriting.
First I started with a Reason rack extension player (equivalent to a program that executes MIDI on an instrument) called Aggregate from the firm Lectric Panda.
This tool offers you a melody and accompaniment. His system of musical composition is based on iteration and permutation.
But the results I got weren't inspiring enough to go ahead and make a full song. This does not mean that the program does not work, but that the proposal it gave me did not work for me.
Then I went through the 1000 plugins I have that do similar things. And I stuck with the WAProduction InstaComposer. By the way, I bought the WAProduction Loop Engine but didn't have time to experiment.
As I said I used the WAProduction InstaComposer. This MIDI generation plugin can conjure melody, rhythm, bass, pads and chords at the click of a button – all using artificial intelligence to create genuinely useful and musical riffs.
Technical note: Reason does not have the MIDI routing option, so I have to set up Instacomposer and a VST instrument inside BlueCat PatchWork and do the routing by hand.
I started rummaging through the factory presets and couldn't find anything until I found the preset called: Cm-(G@-D#-A#-Cm)X2_a KB
And then the inspiration came to me. This plugin only uses two tracks out of the five that the plugin can use, but that was enough for me.
When using it, he proposed the chord line that my song has (which I thought were 8 chords and now writing this presentation I have seen that they are 4 chords repeated 2 times) and the first part of the melody (and the one that is repeated the most in my song of the month). With the button to alter the melody, the plugin proposed the other 3 parts of the melody.
So I based my song on 4 chords and 4 melody variations in the scale of D# Major.
Continuing with the programs that help compose songs, I have also used a drummer from UJAM and another rack extension from Reason that proposes 4 melodic lines at the same time (Quad Note Generator Player) also in the school of D# Maj.

The list of chords is:

D#3, C3, G#2 – D#3, A#2, G2 – F3, D3, A#2 – C3, G2, D#2 - D#3, C3, G#2 – D#3, A#2, G2 – F3, D3, A#2 – C3, G2, D#2

When it comes to doing things automatically, I wanted to try the AYAIC Mix Monolith plugin, but I was passed over the Plugin Alliance offer and couldn't buy it. This plugin promises to do automatic mixing. Using it would have been appropriate this month.

I must confess that this time I am very happy with the song that I present to you.

P.S. We used this music to put it in the background for a presentation video of the job where I work.
I'm giving you the link so you can watch the video, but you won't be able to hear my music very well because it's at a very low volume, because the important thing about the video is the explanation.

phpBB [media]

Thank you colleagues.

(translated with google)

Equipment:
DAW:
Reason 12.5

Instruments:
Processed Pianos
Humana Vocal Ensemble
Europa Shapeshifting Synthesizer

Effects:
RV7000 MkII Advanced Reverb
Sweeper Modulation Effect

Players:
Quad Note Generator Player
Scales & Chords

Utilities:
Combinator

Other instruments outside of Reason:
WAProduction InstaComposer
BlueCat PatchWork
Plugin-alliance Wedge Force Oolong
Arturia CS-80 V3
AIR Music Tech Vacuum Pro
Arturia Matrix-12 V2
UJAM Virtual Drummer VD-Heavy

Other effects outside of Reason:
Plugin-alliance Noveltech Character
Cableguys ShaperBox3
Plugin-alliance Unfiltered Audio Triad
Plugin-alliance Brainworx bx_refinement
Valhalla Supermassive

Other tools:
iZotope Ozone 9
Plugin Alliance SPL HawEye

[KukoBass]

Now we have agein to talk about the loudness settings.
Mr. Fox wrote:
„Regarding "Loudness Specs":
For the Songwriting Competition -- as long as it does not exceed -14LUFS and -1,00 dBTP, you're getting all bonus points. There is no disqualification criteria.“

I don’t understand, what „exceed“ means. Is -15LUFS exceeding or -13LUFS?
Could you clarify this be telling me, in which range it should be?
Same for dBTP.

I hope the changes I made would validate the song for the challenge?

It is confusing because the targets are negative numbers, so -13LUFS would be exceeding the -14LUFS target (closer to zero = bad).

There is a freeware called LUveler that can be used to limit the loudness settings:
https://luveler.blogspot.com/
Since I use this with target levels -14,1LUFS and -1,1 True Peak to be on the sure side, I had no problems with my mix getting too loud.
I hope this helps.

[OrpheusXL]

It is confusing because the targets are negative numbers, so -13LUFS would be exceeding the -14LUFS target (closer to zero = bad).

There is a freeware called LUveler that can be used to limit the loudness settings:
https://luveler.blogspot.com/
Since I use this with target levels -14,1LUFS and -1,1 True Peak to be on the sure side, I had no problems with my mix getting too loud.
I hope this helps.

Thanks.
I'll try some other level meter plugs to get there, because the LUveler site says:
"Porting it to other platforms and operating systems, such as MacOS, is not planned!"

[Mister Fox]

As usual, on the budget side of things, I highly recommend Youlean Loudness Meter 2. The Free version is more than capable, and is available in multiple plugin formats for both Windows and macOS.

Use either the ITU-R BS.1770-4 or EBU R128 preset, run the song from start to finish, then check the "True Peak Max" (no higher than -1,0) and the Integrated (no higher than -14,0 LUFS) values if everything is alright. In this particular signal analysis, values are measured from -inf to 0. So by exceeding I mean "do not go higher than value ABC".

Remember, this "limit" is not to stifle creativity, but to learn how to present a well produced song while still having a dynamic mix/listening experience.

[Mister Fox]

Curious proposal this month. A competition to write songs with artificial intelligence. Who writes this month's song, us or a machine?

Technically, the task this month was to create something with the help of "harmony tools". The idea here was to gather inspiration, and you then build upon that. Not let the "AI" write something completely on it's own.

Same topic with @GamaGama's entry, who used "Band in a Box".

You still made music, and that alone makes you already a winner. However, I currently question how much of that is actually yours other than selecting sounds and mix strength.


Other than that... I would still try to get more balance for the chaotic higher mid frequencies (from the synths clashing a bit with each other, since they are in similar frequency spectrums). I think this is also due to the used reverb. But you had a certain specific concept in mind - and the song definitely works in context of a tutorial. So you also dabbled in that realm as well as bonus.

[OrpheusXL]

Finally I think I made it to get the correct loudness settings.

In addition I did some minor changes and could remove a disturbing background sound.
Reuploaded to soundcloud. Sounds much cleaner now.

https://soundcloud.com/orpheusxl/the-da ... al_sharing

[chaseracer]

Just a quick heads up for the last three entries:

All of these links are broken in some shape or form.

@chaseracer -- your link on Soundcloud is declared "Private" and not public. Therefore the forum player link doesn't work. It should be public.

fyi, i don't wish to make the track public, so i withdrew

[JeroenZuiderwijk]

Finally I think I made it to get the correct loudness settings.

In addition I did some minor changes and could remove a disturbing background sound.
Reuploaded to soundcloud. Sounds much cleaner now.

https://soundcloud.com/orpheusxl/the-da ... al_sharing

sounds good! this version swings :-)

[EsteveCorbera]

Technically, the task this month was to create something with the help of "harmony tools". The idea here was to gather inspiration, and you then build upon that. Not let the "AI" write something completely on it's own.

What you say is what I was trying to reflect at the beginning of my explanation. But as I always say, I participate in this contest to learn and experience. I had bought several plugins of this type, but had not tried them. So I took advantage. Basically it's like using samples. But, despite starting from external MIDIS, I do consider the result to be mine. I have worked on it and I feel it is mine. It's a simple song, but I like how it turned out.

If I have time, I'll try to look into what you say about the high mid frequencies.

Thanks for your point of view