Hi, how's it going, I'm SilverTom93 and this is a behind-the-scenes look at the Sonic Mania
Intro Theme, which I recreated on GarageBand earlier this year. <music>
So I'm using GarageBand on an iPad; you can
use an iPod or an iPhone; you can even get GarageBand on Macs if you have a Mac or Macbook.
This isn't necessarily a "tutorial" but just sort-of a behind-the-scenes of one of my song
remixes, and to try and show you what goes into a song that I make - it's not just "play
a song, there ya go, there's my remix" - it's a lot more... well as you can see here, there's
a lot of things that go into a song remix. So it's not gonna be a tutorial but it's a
sort-of tips and tricks and how I do it.
So, if I just move my shadowy hand over my iPad: I'm gonna skip ahead to this part; and
I think what I used mainly for the melody in the chorus was the glockenspiel, the piano;
and what it does is it makes this: <music>
You accompany that with a bit more of a thicker sounding electronic lead, so... <music> and
if I just play that on its own (I'll just turn these off)
And then there's an actual melody that plays over the top - so if I play all of those four
at once, then it sounds like this: <music>
And then the melody on its own: <music>
Ok so you get the idea, but then you might be asking: How is this made? How do I put
all these notes together and all these chords, when... when most people use GarageBand, they
have this screen, where you'd play the chords just like that. Now the truth is, I don't
actually use this method, where I play the chords like that; I actually use the grid
method which you see on a lot of other Digital Audio Workstations like FL Studio and things
like that. So...
What you do on GarageBand: you tap on an area that you made, (you double tap) and you click
the edit button. And this takes you in this grid view like this, where you have all of
your notes arranged on a grid. The higher up it is, then the higher the note -- the
lower down it is, the lower the note.
The grid goes up - I dunno if you can see that on this camera, but - the grid counts
up in squares. So, the squares you wanna use as a guidance for the timing of each note
and - it's split into sections where each line is. So you can see at the top:15, 16,
17 etc. And if you want a little bit of guidance, you can turn the metronome on there, which
is like a ticker, which sorta... counts you in.
A song has... usually, two time signatures, which are commonly used. I think every song
on my channel is in a time signature called "4 by 4". It counts up in 4s, 4 times. And
that's just like... one section. So if I just play this right now, can you hear the ticking
noise in the background? 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. So it counts up in 4, 4 times.
There is another time signature called "3 by 4" which counts up in 3, 4 times, as a
segment; but I can't-- usually, there's not many songs made in 3/4 other than Waltz music,
or like "We Wish You A Merry Christmas" or "Happy Birthday To You".
So, this song is in 4/4, obviously, so there are 4 grid squares there, and 4 in there,
to make up 1 segment; and there are 4 of these segments, which puts together to all of these.
So that's 15, 16, 17, 18, before it loops again.
But these grid squares; you wanna sorta zoom in with two fingers, and you can see -- (oh,
didn't know why it jumped like that...) but you can see where the short notes are, which
take up 1 grid square, and there's long notes which take up 4, and right here is in the
middle, so.. it's a bit hard to explain, but once you study the song that you're trying
to recreate and get an idea of the timing of the notes, the position of the notes and
the backing chords, then this should come as like second nature to you.
So, if you wanna place a note, then you slide this red thing over here, and then, just tap
on the grid. So I've added that note in there, and now it makes this:
So if I just tap that and get rid of that - (oops - no! Go away!)
So this was it originally: But I can add an "A" - if you make it wrong,
just slide it anywhere. And then it creates this:
A thing that I see quite a lot on some other people's song remixes when they use GarageBand,
is that they either: try and play the song live and the timing is completely off (that's
quite an impressive thing if you can play a song live on GarageBand and have it sound
incredibly well) - but there's things where like the timing if completely thrown off - so
if I just slide these around just to kinda give a really rough estimate-- it doesn't
go well with how the song is counting; so if I just play this and you can see how badly
this goes along to the metronome. <music> ...yeah so that wasn't timed at all, that
was just..really...sorta... "sloppily placed". It's all about the sound when you make a remix,
because obviously people are gonna be *listening* to it. So you wanna make sure that everything
is at least nicely timed - and the 2nd thing as well, you wanna make sure that all the
notes are correct. Just listen to the song back (that you're trying to recreate), don't
just focus on the main melody but also focus on the backing chords, the bass, how crisp
is the sub-bass? Is it lively? Is it loud?
So that's the main melody. If you've used a lot of other digital audio workstations
then this should all come completely naturally to you, to get a gist of where to place notes
and how to time them, how to make them sound nice, etc.
So, when you make a song, you don't just want the melody playing along with the drums, because
then it just sounds a bit plain and a bit thin - so if I play this now: <music>
You want something to try and thicken the sound and layer it a little bit more. You
might not hear these small mini sounds and effects straight away, but overall for the
entire song, it's gonna make a pretty big difference.
One of the things I added was violin strings - and they sound like this:
So it gives a bit of a background - backing chords, pretty much, just to make the song
a lot more layered. I also added a bit more of a techno synth along with the thing; so
if I play all of those three at once (techno synth, main melody and the violin strings),
and you play those all together: <music>
(Can you already see how this is starting to come together?)
And then as I showed you earlier, I emphasized some notes with the glockenspiel and the piano.
The next thing I added in the intro section was the plucky synth lead which I think starts
here; and there's also another plucky synth which is used for what's called an "arpeggio".
An arpeggio is where notes ascend or descend in an order. So if I show you this arpeggio
(I think that's how you say it? I don't know whether it's a hard G or a soft G)... but
anyway, so the arpeggio on its own sounds like this: <music>
...it's just that on a loop. If I play the glockenspiel section along with
that, then it's this. <music again>
The arpeggio gives it a bit more of a faster-paced background sound to it, and just makes it
sound a lot more layered - you wanna layer it up as much as you can. If there's too many
sounds going at once, and it might sound a bit badly mixed (you can't hear one thing
over an other) then you just go into the Settings thing up there, next to the effects button.
Here you can change the compression, the treble, bass, you can even change echo and reverb
- that's quite good, especially for drums.
So if we play all of that altogether, if we have every single instrument playing at once,
then the intro segment will sound like this: <music>
(Can you hear the arpeggio in the background?)
And then the final section of the song has a very high-pitched "light melody lead" (not
really very technical, but oh well.) That goes like this:
It's a very 8-bit sorta NES style (Nintendo Entertainment System) synth- and I've used
that along with the same bassline and chords as you heard earlier, so if I play these on
their own: <music>
and then I add the 8-bit synth along with it: <music plays again>
Now i forgot to mention this actually: this line right here (which is being highlighted)
= that track is purely for what's called "sub-bass". You can have a normal bass (do it with strings
if you want, bass guitar, a low electronic bass etc.)
But a "sub-bass" is an extremely low note which goes right into the background, and
in short, it kinda just makes a song sound a bit more "boom"y - it gives a bit of a "boom"
to the song. You can't really tell on this microphone,
you can't really hear the boom, but on a recording when I upload a song to YouTube, you can tell
whether there's sub bass or not. Especially when you listen in headphones (really good
bass headphones) you can tell whether there's sub bass added or not. If I try and play this
on its own, then you're most likely not gonna hear it.
It's extremely quiet, just played out of the normal speaker, but in headphones it's definitely noticeable.
If I just show you the melody of the main lead at the end of the song, (the 8-bit NES
lead), again it uses that grid system - and it looks like this:
Now I actually added a little effect into there - I made a really small note that sorta
"flicks" upwards before it goes down. So if I play that from here, then it will just sound
like this: I could've just left it like that, one long
note; I don't know the correct term for this, but it just makes it sound a bit more chip-tuney,
with a bit of a flick on this note section here. It's not too noticeable, but when you
play it altogether in a song, it just makes it sound a little bit more intricate and detailed
- especially with this arpeggio here. It goes up like that to make this sound:
That's going up on the scale (all the notes that the song is playing in) - so, if you
tap each note, then you hear it. This arpeggio doesn't go up on all the notes
on the keyboard, but instead it goes up on the chords that the song is playing in. I
can make this sound really flat and out-of-tune like this:
......that sounds absolutely horrible :/
I'm just gonna really quickly show you what I did for the drums - I used a premade Apple
GarageBand loop for the kick, which is called "Festival Kick 2" - that's a very loud boomy
kick - all it is is just this:
And then to make things like the hats and things like that, you can do kick drums in
this as well, but I don't really think they sound very good here)- you can just use the
maraca shakes, or the hats and cymbals up here; I also used a snare drum as well just
to make some kicks louder than the others - "kick, snare, kick, snare" throughout the song.
(It kinda sounds like something you'd hear in Sonic Riders?)
To make the drum beat like this, it's almost exactly the same as placing piano notes on
the grid, but instead of "higher up = higher note", it's actually just "higher up = different
instrument". Down here are the kicks, snare, drumsticks, a clap (sounds like an awful clap,
you might wanna use another one), and the the hats, then some weird effect.
The main bit of advice you should take from all of this is: make it layered, make it sound
good, varied instruments, varied pitch, get the timing right;
The final thing I added to the song is what's called "Automation" - not really automation,
it's more just like a cymbal crash. So like, when the drop comes in, when the main verse
comes in, there's a very faint "shh" noise in the background, that fades out or fades in.
So if I play that along with the drums and this as well: <music>
If I play everything all together, then you see where that cymbal comes into play, that
crashing "shh" noise. So if I play this from the start:
And there you go! That's a very rough behind-the-scenes look at one of my song remixes!
This is actually my most viewed song remix now (the Sonic Mania Intro Theme) - it's actually
overtaken the Kingdom Hearts 0.2 Birth By Sleep theme which I made at the start of this
year for Kingdom Hearts Month. It's actually overtaken that in view count! That's absolutely
amazing and I'm really thankful that all of you guys like that.
But yeah, this has been a very basic, not-really-tutorial-but-a-behind-the-scenes look at my song remixes!
<music>
No comments:
Post a Comment