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Friday, April 9, 2010

Creating Demos

There's so many steps to completing a demo... I'm in the midst of it now (in fact on most of the nights) and somehow got distracted! So I went to blog at a old blog and now here... Hopefully after blogging, I can concentrate and finish the demo!

There are many steps in doing a demo... from creating, editing to completing! Normally for me, it kicks off with having a melody, which most of the time I'll record my humming in my phone. And when I'm back home, I'll find out the chords and make the midi with a piano sound. At this stage, I'll try to fix it to the correct key so that when I need to record vocal the song is already in the right key! If not I'll just do up the arrangement, then transpose, then record the vocal.

The right way to do the arrangement is to start with drums then bass. But sometimes I'll do it differently due to different reasons... There's no fix method, but if you are new to this... do it correctly for the first time and you will cultivate a good habit! Someone ever told me to set the "blocks" at every tracks to green because its good for eyes... I said "是meh?!?" but then I'm sticking to this since then! Haa! After recording vocal, you may need to record harmony for backing vocal. Then edit the tracks to make it neater... trimming, adjusting the position left, right, up, down etc.

Pitch correction is optional, good vocalist sings accurately! But lots of practice is definitely needed! For me I'm a one man show, DIY home recording... When I need to rush demo... I'll record first then if really need to edit the pitch then I'll add the addition step to the process. Just remember, pitch can be edited... emotions cannot!!!

Last but not least, is mixing of the tracks to make the demo "broadcast ready". This really requires experience, good ears and perhaps, a pair good speaker. I'm quite bad at it... still trying to learn. But well, I'm quite contented that I got this far. A few years back I only had "Fruity Loop" and "Cool Edit", I don't even have a midi controller and thus, my piano is created by clicking note by note with a mouse. At that time, I don't even know what is quantize!!! Thankfully, I've met people in OB that really helped me a lot in this area. Friends like Acid, Wenhan, Yarden etc. I enjoyed the learning and sharing experience. Hope we can all excel together and get better and better :))

Ok, very motivating!! I shall get back to work... :P

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