Song Writing for 17/6/2014

At the end of the song writing session, I was asked to bring in a song for the following week. The song would be sang by another performer in the course. This is okay because I am aware of my lack of vocal skills and song writing/ production are my stronger skills.
I had a look at previouse songs I had made and decided to remix 'Winter' a song I made for a demo album called 'Eclipse'. The old version of this song was poorly made with poor equipment. I just used Audacity and raw recordings from a rubbish laptop mic. This time I have used Fruity Loops to remix it to a better quality. Here's how I started it:

 












(Above) First I chose my sample instrument sound and placed it in the pattern. I couldn't find the string sample I was after and don't know how to add new samples or where to get it, so I settled for this sample.

 (Above) Then I started entering the notes into the piano roll.






  







(Above) Then I placed it into the playlist. First I left the colours grey but then I coloured them to organise them.














 (Above) I gradually added more to the playlist after making the patterns in the piano roll.















(Above) I didn't understand why the bass notes were overlapping with each other and distorting the sound so I played about with the fade out dial and fixed the note length.













  
(Above) I don't know how to make the velocity of all the notes the same so I made it as close as possible. Getting the levels of each pattern right is difficult and wastes time without knowing how.












(Above) The key change from the chorus to the verse is pretty tricky so I added few bars of percussion to act as a transition.










(Above) Here I started adding the vocals.












(Above) My vocals are not very strong on the own right now. I had a look at some of the effect I could assign to improve them. I still don't really know what effects to use. But I remembered the notes I took in the music production session about the best Fruity Loops effects to use.

(Above) I had a go at harmonising the chorus vocals to improve my vocals. For a first attempt I think I did well. I'm unsure about the levels for each recording though. I listened to songs I like for reference.

As I've finished the song, I think it is way better the the original demo, you can find it here (If you really have to). I think I could have improved it by improving my vocals, effect choices and overall volume level balance for each instrument.