Create a Lo-Fi Track For a Future EP

Day 22 – 30 or THE FINAL UPDATE!!! Have you ever been running the ball to the end zone, get to the five yard line, then just feel like playing baseball instead? That was me with this project. I took what I knew about mixing and mastering (very little) and slapped it on this song to put a cap on this project. I’m happy with everything else about this project and song but at this point this is what I will call finished. Lets break down the goals of this project.

Making the Song: Yup, did that. Exploring the tones for the different instruments was a good exercise for achieving the overall feel I envisioned. This starts to creeps into the sound design space and is useful across any genre of music. This practice will help me take the sounds from inside my head and put them in the song.

Developing my FL Studio Workflow: I feel so much more comfortable in the program now than I did at the start of this. Over time, I was able to work without having to double back to fix inefficient ways I set things up or search how to do basic functions. This progress has felt more apparent in the new files I started in this time.

Moving forward: The next steps towards completing an EP to release would be to make another song or two in this style and then really dig into mixing and mastering. I don’t expect to become an expert in those disciplines but I’d like to feel more confident in what I’m doing at those stages.

Thank you all for coming with me on this journey and here is the end product! https://chirb.it/q4K08G

Day 16 – 21 I didn’t look at the project much as I got absorbed with an unrelated project during this span of time. Coming back to the project I think adding much more would just muddy up the overall song. I feel pretty good about where it’s at and I may just make some arrangement tweaks before moving into mixing and then mastering.

Day 15 Took a break to work on something very different: http://chirb.it/w0zHsk

This gave me a chance to put to practice some of the workflow I’ve been working on over the past couple of weeks on a new project. It felt good to work on it.

Day 14 Oh wow week 2! That kinda snuck up on me. Looking at my goals I jumped ahead a bit into song structure before entirely dialing in tones and effects but I think that’s ok. A lot of that work will be getting revisited in week four anyhow. I think I’m in a fantastic spot going into week three and I’m excited to start adding the extra bells and whistles (maybe literally) to the song now that I have some structure. Here is a small slice of where I’m at with things currently: https://chirb.it/bDK47w

Day 13 Today I just looked at the drums a bit and found a couple small things I didn’t like that was going on. I’m starting to work more on the structure of the song now too to feel how I can use the pieces I have in different ways. This is giving me the chance to work on different parts of my workflow now as well as giving me a sense of more progress.

DAY 12 Yep. I feel better about the project already. I realize that while the part I recorded on guitar before is not very complex, it already has a fair bit going on for a mellow song like the one I’m going for. Trying to fit anymore parts around it immediately begins to mush things up.

DAY 11 I am definitely starting to feel antsy about the project. The slow pace to make sure I’m setting the file up properly is starting to bleed into my creative process. I am going to be looking back over my goals and start aggressively checking some things off. I instead of a slow pace to structure my project file I should have planned for frequent cleaning up of my file to put things in order. I think that way would allow me to progress at a more free pace and not get caught up.

I was able to lay down a bass line and move on from it, so that felt like a win.

DAY 10 Set everything down for today lol

DAY 09 More bass work, not thrilled with it. I think I need to simplify, this is lofi after all. I also don’t want to get too caught up on this so I’m going to give it one more day of working on it before setting it down.

DAY 08 Today was all about that bass, no treble. Yeah, sorry that song is has been stuck my head and now I pass it onto you. Back to MY song though, I played around with a few bass lines and was reminded that totally isn’t my strong point. Praise Gaia that we have the internet and a ton of great videos with tips about writing bass lines. I have something I feel good with for now and can start exploring tones with. Tone is another area that I’ll have to do some searching on. I know what I want my drums and guitar to sound like but I have very little taste for bass. I’ll be listening to a bunch of music similar to what I’m going for and focusing on the sound of the bass.

DAY 07 Week one! Huzzah! First I’d like to go over the goals I accomplished for this week. Got my key and chord progression picked out with out much waffling. My drum pad was super easy to get set back up and I’d say I’m about 80% of the way there with my workflow using it. I am very happy with my guitar recording workflow. For tones, I worked out something I liked for guitar. Looking at the other instrument tones is where we start to find goals I did not complete in week one. Drums are being worked on and starting to take shape but piano and bass have not been explored yet. I haven’t worked on any melodies yet, I didn’t get to the noodling I was hoping to do. None of these are major set backs and are areas I was planning on continuing to work on in week two anyhow. Moving into week two, I will be looking to work out the tones for the other instruments and building out more elements of the song. I feel like I’m in a great position so far.

Since the first day I have slowed down my process and worked to build good habits and efficient best practices in FL Studio. I don’t feel like I’m just making a mess for myself to clean up later in the project file. A demo of what my guitar and drums are sounding like so far can be found here! There is much work to be done still but this is where the song is right now https://chirb.it/cE4src

DAY 06 Worked on the chord progression and played Guild Wars 2 all day. Back to more drum stuff tomorrow.

DAY 05 Still not settled on what chord voicings I want to play on guitar. I also took a look at my process for recording drum patterns and how which parts I want to program versus play on midi pads. This is looking like an area of the workflow that isn’t going to line up with what I was imagining.

DAY 04 Today I took some of the guitar chords I was practicing and settled on a chord progression (I-vi-ii-iii-I) in the key of E major. The key might get transposed and the chord voicings might change but I’ll be sticking with that progression.

DAY 03 Learning new extended chords on guitar is difficult.

DAY 02 Stayed focus and stuck to developing my workflow. Specifically, I got my guitar hooked back up and a better recording workflow than I had before. This included getting a couple of mixer channels set up and led to me planning out how to use those in my project.

DAY 01 For the past week or so I have been getting back into navigating the FL Studio UI and tools but today I started to set up proper mixer channels and labeling/renaming tracks and patterns. This helps me keep everything separate and be able to fine tune individual instruments. Today I was also able to set up my drum pads. And then I accidentally the whole thing. Let me explain; I started playing around with piano sounds on some different chord progressions and melodies then messed around with drum patterns under it all. Next thing I know I’m finding ambient river sounds and putting EQs on stuff and then this happened: https://chirb.it/nC4mIg

Now a valuable lesson in goal setting: know what your actual goal is. Sure, I made a lo-fi track but did I accomplish what I hoped to with this DK30 project? No, I didn’t. The primary thing I wanted to achieve with this project was to develop a sick solid and tight an efficient workflow in FL Studio 20 through making a lo-fi track. The project file for that song isn’t atrocious but it isn’t anywhere near the level of organized I think it should be. Nowhere in that song is there any recorded guitar. I haven’t mixed or mastered that track at all. There is clearly plenty for me to work on during this DK30 project still. I’ll be shelving this song for now as I get back to the main objective for the next 29 days.