While taking courses at Full Sail, I spent a month learning Production Music. We had 3 projects a modeling project that brought a lot of clarity to the structure and layout of the music I created throughout the month along with techniques to boost my own creativity. A Hip-Hop cue that looked intimidating when I first started going through the materials, and it proved itself when I finally finished the piece, and finally a tension cue that I felt fairly confident in myself when it came to composing, and I had a ton of fun putting together the tension cue, along with the outcome of the piece.

Even though the tension cue was by far the most exciting piece for me to compose, the Hip-Hop cue ended up being my favorite. The reason behind this is that it was the most challenging for me to create. The sounds almost came naturally. I love orchestral sounds, so I immediately knew I wanted to work on an Epic Orchestral Piece, but It took me a whole day just to figure out the right progression, then another half day to write the melody. Every time I would start writing a progression I would just get lost in the sounds and end up going in a completely different direction than I needed to be heading. When I finally thought I had it completed, I submitted my project, and I instantly felt like I was missing something. Later to realize and find out, I never added a hip-hop beat to the piece. It was all orchestral. So, after going over the advice from my instructor and listening to some reference tracks, I was able to incorporate a hip-hop beat that fit well with the orchestral percussion set I had already laid out and I loved the sound.

When it finally came time to mix and master the piece for the week 4 project, I was really excited to use outside plug-ins, but I surprisingly ended up using all stock plug-ins while learning a few new tricks along the way. First thing that grabbed my attention was the percussion kick and drum kit kick sounded a bit off and needed to be glued together, so I read into sidechaining and was able to get them to sound the way I wanted. I actually used sidechaining on a few instruments as well such as the staccato basses. Before the sidechain they really sunk into the mix and you could barely hear them, but after adding the sidechain, they were able to pop through as they hit. My mix still sounded off, so I looked into my panning, and learned about orchestral panning. Learning where specific instruments sit in different settings really helped me create a fuller mix with a more natural sound to it.

Creating this piece was by far the most challenging for me, but it also pushed my creativity while encouraging me to learn new tricks and techniques. I really feel as if I’ve personally grown as an artist/producer from logging in on day one with Full Sail to now, finishing Project and Portfolio 2 a little over a year later.