Week 8: The Grindathon

(Linking Timothy’s Blog here for his audio uploads)

Welcome back to my blog! Sorry for the late post, but I have been extremely busy tidying everything up for this project, so here is what I have for you all this week! Here we go.   

The Beginning Of The End

For the past couple of weeks, we have been trying to tidy everything up so that we can start recording, but it turns out it is a lot harder to play in groups, so we decided to record each part individually before meshing them all together through some software. In the music notation software that we are using, we decided to stray away from lead sheet music and instead go for something that is used in classical music as mentioned in the previous blog. However, I began to realize that I added all of the lyrics and chords incorrectly onto the music sheet, so I had to start all over again! This time was more grueling than the last.   

The Grueling Additions

So, in order for it to actually sound nice, we had to make sure that we added everything correctly so that we would get the right MIDI output for the software. So, in order for us to actually do that, we had to input all of the lyrics into the software in certain notes, which means that I have to add the notes for the lyrics as well!  

This was a grueling process, as it took forever for me to actually get all of the notes for the specific vocals in each song, let alone notate them inside of Finale which alone was a huge pain in the behind. However, I think it did turn out well. The lyrics that I added last week has now turned into this inside of the “lead sheet” (more of a classical style but you get the idea).  

In order to actually get the dashes, it took a little bit of research but I managed to get all of the notes correct alongside the spacing for each of the words.  

There is a lot more of the lyrics and the vocals that are shown in the picture above, so here is what a couple of them sound like! 

So, you’re probably wondering what that opera sounding thing is. Well, it is the substitute for the voice in the software. Don’t worry though, there will be actual voices in the final product (if there aren’t any more major issues that come in the way).  

Here is another one (this one took a lot longer because of the two voices).

As you probably know, those weren’t the whole songs but in the interest of saving my computer from exploding, I just showed you the first half of both of them (you can probably hear some of the heating up in the recordings.  

Closer is almost at the cusp of being finished, but there are some issues with vocals and how they align with the bass, so we are planning to fix that first. However, that doesn’t mean the other two aren’t finished in their entirety, and we have started recording for presentation.   

The Problem With Chords

Well the problem with the chords that I added last time was that it would actually play the chords instead of just sitting there and looking pretty. So, that resulted in some horrible sounding music, so I decided to take them out and redo them as well!   

The Final Stretch

As I am approaching the final stretch of the project, I am putting in extra hours to make sure that the final product actually turns out nicely. We are continuing to record everything, so be on the lookout for that when it comes out! See you then.