Terraria Type - DAW Track

I chose this as my 2^nd artefact because I believe it shows off my skills in sound design in a way as I created different synth patches which were then incorporated into this track. It allowed me to apply my skills in MIDI such as editing, quantising and labelling tracks. The reason it is called “Terraria Type” is because I took inspiration from a game called terraria where the boss music is quite intense and retro. This project allowed me to show off time domain automation, panning and that I can record create and use my own sampler instrument which is part of this track. From my other class Recording and Mixing I learned skills on level balancing and how to get a great master without redlining and causing audible distortion which has helped me massively in the creation of this song. I spent the first few weeks trying to create something different which never went to plan so I had to create this one quite quickly, coming up with a plan and working towards the deadline.

I decided I wanted to complete my track fully using Ableton with nothing being recorded externally. I wanted to try and enhance my MIDI skills, and this was a great way to do it. I started off by creating my Ableton session and creating markers of the areas at which the chorus and verses will be, this made creating each part of the song easier for me as it was nicely organised and helped to keep a quick workflow as I was working to a deadline. I also had to choose the tempo of the song, I already knew I wanted something fast paced and decided to go for a 120bpm tempo.

I had been working on different projects in class that I thought maybe weren’t the best or most creative, they seemed quite basic until I found the “Vocoder Scrap Night” in the Glitch drum kit and it sparked an idea to create a boss fight sort of style track. Firstly, I created the drums I went 4 to the floor to keep it quite basic along with the vocoder voice. I used the FX part of the kit quite a lot in the creation of the sound using the Glitch Melt and the Glitch Salient with a few of the FX Cymbals which sound like arrows fitting my boss battle theme quite well. The drums have quite an energetic feel to them and provided a strong foundation for the rest of my track. The drums processing was quite simple too; I added a drum buss on the kick to make it quite prominent in the song and ramped up the Drive and Crunch whilst aiming for a low frequency of around 37hz. I also automated the hi hats so that they are transposed creating a sort of funky sound when switching from the chorus to the verse. This is also an indicator that you are in the verse when you hear this.

To create the melody, I tried creating my own synths but nothing seemed to be working so I had a look through Ableton stock synths where I found Tech Chords, to me this was perfect; they fit the theme so well. To create the lower tone of the melody I turned on unison to create a nice stereo width, used a filter with a high cut and upped the resonance to shape the sound, I also turned up the drive quite a bit to make the sound prominent. My ADSR was quite a fast attack followed by a long tail which worked quite well along with my reverb to create a retro spacious sound.

To create the higher tone, I used a tech chord again which is a wavetable synthesizer, this time I turned it on retro mode to create a warm vintage sound and added a sub oscillator to create a bit of low-end thickness. In the filter section I added slight resonance and drive with more emphasis this time on the high mid and treble frequencies. The Amp envelope this time had a fast attack long and quite a long decay making it effective for chord stabs that slowly fade away. I also turned on the glide setting to give it a more melodic feel. These 2 combined created the perfect retro gaming feel for the song.

To create my sampler instrument, I started off by recording sounds of me hitting a glass bottle with a screw at different heights of the bottle, with the bottle being filled and empty. This created a bunch of different pitches and ended up making a brilliant instrument that fit nicely into my song as a bridge into the chorus. To get this onto Ableton I had to record each one into Protools and then import them into my Ableton session on the sampler instrument to create my own one, i then had to programme them so that they played at the correct pitch to what ever key I was using on my MIDI Keyboard. On the sampler I added a reverb cutting the low end to avoid muddiness, adding space and depth, I combined this with an echo with ping pong delay on it to create a bit of rhythm and both these were quite wet sounds. I then EQ’d it to boost the mid presence a bit whilst completely removing the low end and clutter. These combined gave the sampler quite a good bit of clarity and space so it is audible in the pre-chorus of the song.

Once I had completed all of that I had to edit and mix the song. To do this I started by getting a good balance for each track, using skills learned in Recording and Mixing. This was massively important in creating an overall brilliant stereo image and allowing each element of the song to stand out without feeling muddy and a cluttered. I then followed this up with panning and automation to make the track a bit more interesting for the listener. These included automating the final Moog lead to boost the reverb at the end and allow the song to have a smooth outro, the ending changes and makes it feel as though you've completed the boss. The feeling once listening to this project once completed reminds me of the game Terraria which is why it has its name, the retro sounds along with the intense chorus really does make it quite an obscure but good listen. Its similar to a few different songs from the game and is kind of a blend of a bunch of them. I am quite pleased with how it turned out.