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bromadblog-blog · 6 years

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AUS 230 POST MORTEM BLOG

“Anyways lads that’s me. I’m off for the summer and I’m going to use my time effectively by doing literally nothing for the next 8 weeks. *finger guns* adios amigos” – Stefan McRoberts 2017

This is how I ended my last post mortem, and I would like to profusely apologize. As I lied. I did not do nothing those following 8 weeks. I chose to make my life more difficult by making more music because I’m self destructive and don’t have an off button. That being said, let’s dive in to this sleep deprived, caffeine fuelled, still mourning from the end of Avengers: Infinity War fuelled rant of nonsensical horse crap of what went right and what went wrong in my major project this trimester.

What went right

NIGHTMARE

Now obviously I finished the rough mix of Nightmare last trimester, however I decided it was too good to not have in this EP. That being said however, it didn’t really fit aesthetically with the rest of the EP. How did I fix this? By adding stems, more stems and more stems after that. The result was adding lo fi baseballesque (?) organs to the third verse and the outro. This subtle yet major change truly helped the track blend a lot better aesthetically in to the rest of the EP.

BROTOWN

Out of everything that went right with this track, what went MOST right was the mix and the master. It was mixed so well that it made the difficulty of mastering it almost non existent. I do consider it to be one of the best mixes I have ever done. I also think that recording my best friends baby brothers adlib at the very end of the track was a great way to transition this song into the next on the EP.

MEMENTOS

The decision to add a Rhodes organ/piano over the Psytrance drop was a good example of a VERY bold move but one with a large payout aesthetically. I haven’t ever heard a psytrance drop with a jazz chord progression over the top of it EVER. At first I was like “Can I do this? Is it even legal? Will Vini Vici or Infected Mushroom hire a hit on me if I commit to this?”. Then I grew so attached to it because it was so different I decided to commit. Not only does it blend the song into the rest of the EP PERFECTLY, it also celebrates what the EP is fundamentally about. Sticking the middle finger to genre’s and combining EDM with heavy influences and aesthetics from Urban, Jazz, Soul and R&B.

LAZERBEAM

Lazerbeam was a track that actually started out as an official remix for “Drunk Arcade” by “Bombs Away”. I sent it to them however and they did not think the demo slapped as hard as I did and it ended up getting turned down. Which turned out to be a blessing in disguise. I deleted literally everything except for the drops. I decided to throw down some chords on my organ and write some lyrics for it. After recording, the end result was a heavy electro/dubstep that combines not one, not two, not three, but FOUR genre’s in one track. The tempo change from 128 to 150 BPM was always intended from the start. The Four genre’s being, Urban, into Electro, into Trap, into Dubstep. Once again truly celebrating what the whole EP is about.

THE PHANTOM THIEF

The Phantom Thief is to date on of the most ambitious tracks I have ever had both the pleasure and displeasure of producing. The pleasure lies within how flawlessly Jade’s vocals fit with the track and I’m also very proud of the lyrics as well. It’s no mystery that this entire EP is HEAVILY influenced by the game Persona 5 on PS4. This song is perhaps the most celebratory of it’s source material in this entire EP. Almost (if not) every lyric in this song references the game in one way or another. Not only that, but how unbelievably well the track came together with my friend Nathan (AKA Dexx) who co produced it with me. Also without any iota of exaggeration… Jade. Friggin. KILLED IT. 17 year old with a voice that trumps that of angels. I heard her singing on a youtube video she uploaded and I knew she was the only one that was gunna do this track any justice. All recording was done in a single day, which obviously made this run A LOT smoother as well. The orchestral outro was a last minute decision on the track as well, I was persuaded to add it in by my good friend Chloe. She couldn’t have been more right about it. It was a great idea and considering this is the final song on the EP, it really became a beautiful way to conclude the EP and the final “cherry on top” to make the whole EP feel less like a small collection of songs and more of a single giant movement or composition. Also it once again celebrates sticking the middle finger to genres, merging that which really “shouldn’t go together” but ends up blending beautifully showing that when it comes to art and creativity, the sky is the limit. So when you’re enjoying the orchestral outro in this track, thank Chloe.

What went wrong

I’m gunna be cocky here and say that every problem that rose up, I managed to overcome and solve. You know the drill. You’ve read my post mortems before. Let’s do this.

NIGHTMARE

Once again, the only real “problem” here was that it had a little bit of trouble fitting in to the rest of the EP aesthetically. This was fixed by adding the little “Dracula” organ riff at the start and adding church organs to the third verse and the outro.

BROTOWN

Believe it or not the biggest problem I had with Brotown was that I had no idea what to make for the drop. I made the first minute of the song well before the rest of the song. Then I was listening to one of my previous tracks titled “Hooked” and I was kind of just like… “What if I made the drop a harder more “4 to the floor” style version of Hooked”. The end result was the most “Bromad” sounding track on the entire EP and perhaps I have ever made. Everything about this track celebrates my sound and my sound design.

MEMENTOS

Admittedly the biggest problem I had with this track was the exact opposite I had with Brotown. I had that many versions of this song ALL with different sounding drops, I didn’t know which one to go with. In the end I decided to go with the drop that felt the most true to my sound and go a TOTALLY different direction with the second drop.

LAZERBEAM

Obviously the biggest problem with this one was finding the willpower to essentially start this one from scratch. Also dealing with the rejection of Bombs Away was initially difficult as it was a big opportunity and very disappointing. However I persevered and the pay off was definitely worth it, as I know have a powerhouse in my set list and a mammoth of a track on the EP

THE PHANTOM THIEF

When I said earlier “The Phantom Thief is to date on of the most ambitious tracks I have ever had both the pleasure and displeasure of producing,”. The displeasure came from the difficulty level of mixing a track with 80+ stems and also the mastering. Firstly, the vocals were drenched in WAY too much reverb. And because the track had 80+ stems (ALL BOUNCED TO AUDIO) I had to go repeatedly back and forth into the original project file which had A LOT of VST’s and thus used A LOT of CPU. Rendering the stems again… and again… and again was very VERY time consuming. Eventually once I got it right, the next problem was the mastering (which was mastered using iZotope Ozone 7). The mastering of the track itself sounded great, however a track with an EQ, harmonic excitement, multiband compression and brickwall limiting optimized for dance music, introduces a myriad of problems if in that same track you have say, oh I dunno AN ORCHESTRAL OUTRO. It introduced all sorts of grain, crackling and artifacts into the outro that honestly just sounded god awful. So I had to think outside the box a little bit and came up with an idea. 2 instances of iZotope oZone 7 and split the audio into 2 separate tracks. One with the “actual” track and split the track where the orchestral outro begins and drag it on to a separate bus/channel. I THEN used the second instance of iZotope to master it tailored to how (I imagine) one would master an orchestral/classical piece. The end result was gorgeous.

That concludes this post mortem and now I’m going to go and write a BS post mortem for my CIU class because apparently they want to know everything about the fruits of your labour and hard work instead of actually looking at and/or listening to it. So away I go to write yet another (SUICIDE JOKE FREE) post mortem. Ciao.

#post mortem

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