Finishing Touches

Today in class, Cameron and I successfully put the finishing touches on our google project. We recorded the end part of the song, rearranged some parts and finally completed our song. Our song now consists of piano and synthesizer recordings in which we arranged to form a cool song, which we haven't named yet. The name is what Cameron and I will need to be thinking about from now until our presentation date, as well as what we are going to say when we present the song. Today, in addition to finishing our actual project, we went off on a tangent and recorded this hilarious a cappella of our chorus line with Mike and Aram. After presenting our song in all seriousness, we are thinking to throw in this funny 30 second clip to add some comedic spice to our presentation and hopefully get everybody laughing. I guess you could say it's a song "blooper". I am proud of the work Cameron and I have done and it feels good to know that we have made a cool song.
Matt

The Final Stretch

Today we had another google day in band that was very productive. We got a lot done and got much more recorded that was needed. Our song is coming along quite nicely and now that we have recorded most of the individual parts it is becoming much more enjoyable to hear little tastes of the final product as we stack the pieces together. The only part we have left is to record our ending, and to finalize all of the editing.
Cameron

Tidying Up

Yesterday during our Google Project work day in class, me and Cameron spent time tidying and polishing up the song. I am pleased that we have almost all of our recording done. We spent most of yesterday just editing and mixing, seeing what would sound better and where. We both ended up being satisfied with how the song is sounding and actually very pleased with some of the parts which are actually really cool. The Garage Band program is becoming much easier to use and I'm becoming a pro at it. The song is around 4 minutes long I'd say and it's very cool. After me and Cameron get the ending recorded last time I should put up a tentative version of the song.
Matt

Editing

Yesterday me and Matt met to do some editing changes and we didn't do any more recording. Matt was the tech guy and I helped to figure out where to put some of the sounds and what sounded good and what didn't. The song is looking more like a real song now, but still has some parts that need work. We are going to work on it more tomorrow at school during the google day. Otherwise it was a good day and the song is taking more of a shape. I am excited about what our outcome will look like.
Cameron

Major Editing

This morning Cameron and I sat down for about an hour and just edited what we had gotten down. I realized that you could copy and paste the previous sounds onto another part of the song, which was what I was originally hoping for. The song is sounding good, however there are a few minor transition problems that we need to work on, possibly with some new recordings. However I'm pleased with what we have now because it is sounding more and more like a complete song rather than bits and pieces of sound. If possible I am hoping to have a recording session tomorrow depending on our schedules. Otherwise, I am still pleased to be at this point in our project. Once we get a more tentative recording I will try again to upload it for viewing.
Stay Classy Lake Oswego,
Matt

Chorus Line Almost Ready to Go

Today me and Cameron got together to get some more recording done. We managed to get a pretty cool beat down again, however after a while the synth began to make weird sounds again, screwing up our recording and making us very frustrated. Eventually we began to get so fed up that we decided that we would record the chorus melody on the piano. This was a great idea because it only took us one take to get a great melody down. We are thinking of using that recording as the chorus. We have a lot of recordings down in Garage Band, however we still need to edit and rearrange them in an order that pleases us. Although we still have a ways to go, we are making good progress with the addition of the chorus melody.
Matt (Also sorry about the recording not working last time. I must have entered it incorrectly. Will try to update a recording when we rearrange things)

Great Day Today! We Got Some Cool Stuff Recorded!

Today matt and i spent most of our time getting good quality work done instead of having to waste time trying to get the synth to work. We got much accomplished including an intro that takes you into a deep abyss, a drum beat to go underneath the rest of the song, a bass line, a melody, and a partial harmony to go underneath the melody. It turned out to be an awesome day. When the synth started acting up again (minor problems) we found a quick solution to unplug it and give it a rest for about a minute before turning it back on. This helped fix it so we could get some awesome tracks layed down. Overall it was a very awesome and succesfull day. We plan to get together this weekend to start editing and tweaking our song to be exactly how we want it to sound.
Cameron

Productive Day, Finally Got Something Down

Today we finally got the synth to cooperate, at least for a small amount of time. We finally got some really good takes and are pleased with where we are at. Now we have the intro and beginning part to our song planned out, with a cool intro, a looping bass track and the harmonic and melodic parts of the chorus. The recording quality isn't the best, but that is to be expected with just using the mic built into my MacBook. I am still learning new things every time I use garageband, and each time I use it the cooler it gets. We are playing around with building tracks on top of each other and integrating them to sound smooth when played concurrently. Today was awesome and I am super pleased. (Not to mention we are having some fun too!)

file://localhost/Users/mattagritelley/Documents/Google%20Project%20Day%203.mp3

-Matt (I've also attached the mp3 file of what we got started for today. Take a listen and feel free to add feedback. You should be able to copy and paste it into a URL and hear the mp3. If there are problems let me know.)

day two

today we worked with they synth again. it was a good day, however we had some major technical diffculties. on the first day we worked with the student teacher on how to use garage band and what we will need to do in order to record. Today we started off our session by talking about the structure of the song and what we want it to look like. after talking for a while about intro's and backrounds, we agreed that we would just record the lead line first and see where it takes us. as we started to record, the synth was making some errors and producing a screeching sound when it was supposed to play a note. as it only happened a few times we decided to keep the track and start making a bass line. the problem continued and got worse the more we tried to record. now our mission is to try to record clean tracks with no screeching sounds. lets hope we are successfull.

Cameron Dean

Rougher Day, However Still Insightful

Today me and Cameron decided we were going to begin figuring out what we were going to play for our product. For "Clocks" we walked through and came up with some great beats to use on the synth. The synth, however, decided to give us trouble today. At random times, the synth would make a random screeching noise or just not play the note at all. This interfered with us as we were trying to get some descent recordings. We did manage to get a good bass beat for today, which is a good start. We are going to try to figure out why the synth is doing this (it is old) but Cameron will talk to his piano teacher and we can try to get some recordings in on the weekend when hopefully the synth will cooperate. Otherwise we messed around on the synth and found some cool sounds that we liked, and I am becoming more familiar with Garageband and am getting better at using it. (While I'm talking about Garageband might as well throw out a RIP to Steve Jobs who passed away today). So far, though, I am pleased with how me and Cameron are coming along, and we will work on figuring out the synthesizer more so we can get more of a quality recording in.
Matt Agritelley

Day 1. Getting Started with our 20% project.

Today, me and Cameron began by evaluating the materials we had. These consisted of: a full keyboard synthesizer, my macbook air, garageband, and an amp. Mr. Detarr was nice enough to say he would lend us a digital box to hook the synth up to my computer so we could record straight onto it without having to use the bad mic that my computer has.
So here's the deal on what me and Cameron are doing for this project: Using the materials listed above, we are going to generate a cool remix of the song Clocks by Coldplay. This will consist of recording the synth and using the program garageband and possibly even recording a drum line played by me. However, we are still unsure whether or not we will do that.

Today in class, we learned how to use the program garage band and generated our first recording on it using patch 22 and 23 on the synth. I learned how to loop tracks and develop new tracks to build on to a recording. The program is really cool! 

Matt and Cameron