Song for assignment "write a song".... 

so here's what I handed in with it... 


Walking to Killy is a song based off the poem The Walk to Kilcarnup (shown above). Written and read by my Keith McLeod, it explains why you would “walk to Kilcarnup”, or Killy for short – a local beach in Margaret River, WA. 

I stumbled across this poem when I was visiting family in Margaret River. It was in one of Dad’s old writing books from years back, and I instantly loved a variety of things about it. Being written by my father I felt immediately drawn to it – curious about why my dad would write it, why he would be interested to walk to Kilcarnup, and would it be any different from why I would want to walk to that same beach? The beach holds a great connection between me and my old man, from casting a rod out into the rough, murky waters on an overcast day during salmon season, to sharing a beer on the beach over a bright sunset, so I feel pretty connected to it. More than that the poem to me has an amazing structure and build up – it keeps you waiting in suspense for the reason why you’d walk to Killy, hanging for the pleasant surprise to in the end: “to be with others”. The poem has a lot of character to me, and it makes for appropriate song lyrics. 
In the song, everything is taken from the recording of the reading. There are no added instruments or samples. Having pretty limited experience with DAW’s, and in particular Logic (what was used in this song), I wanted to challenge myself to create the sounds I wanted through the program itself as appose to going to the beach, recording the waves for five minutes, and laying the vocals over the top. This decision had its negatives and its positives, I greatly increased my knowledge of the program and how it operates, but immediately lost plenty of timbrel qualities that sampling could have offered, also being new to logic, it was hard. If I were to do it again, I’d definitely go to the beach record some ocean samples or what not – that would definitely make for a better, more refined final product. 

I feel the rhythmic structure of the vocals very important, and decided against any backing rhythms, but instead drive the beat of the song from the rhythm of the words. To make the most of the vocal rhythms, I maximised my use of panning, this was meant to make the song feel like it’s flowing from ear to ear – like the flow of the ocean. (With the lyrics, however, I made sure to keep the clarity of the words, so I separated it into three tracks. Track one had just the original recording with no pan. Track two was using a high pass filter and panning from left to right at the rhythm of the words. The third track with a low pass filter, slowly panning back and forth, in a similar way as the second track.) 

Underneath the main three vocal tracks are several other backing tracks: 
1) A fast echo, which drops in and out at different points of the song 
2) A slow echo that increases and decreases in volume as the song progresses, panning left to right 
3) The lyrics inverted, playing backwards, slowly increasing in volume as the song progresses 
4) A distortion track that drops in and out at various points of the song
5) A track with a whole bunch of effects and pedal boards that tries to create some kind of washing wave sound, and
6) A white noise track that is intended to tie the lyrics together to the rest of the song. 

The whole song is in a style I’m really not that familiar with, and definitely haven’t written in before. That being said, and all things considered, I’m pretty happy with the overall result, and felt I learnt a lot while making the song. If I was to do it again, I’d probably take out a lot of the effects and add actual beach samples to get better timbrel qualities in the sounds.


Walk to killy

Piece for dance Yin and Yang by Yilin Kong at WAAPA. This might not be the total final, but that will probably be coming! Unless I can't be arsed putting it up... meh. Anyway, have a listen! 

Felix Wolfl... Not Just a Pretty Face

Not my composition - just uploading to share with others for an exam. 

Viva voce song

Not my composition, just a rhythm to share with some crew for an exam 

Viva Voce Rhythm

Some dark repeating bass shiate with some cool bell lines at the end and some drums and that. yew

Bellage

BOOOOOOOOOOMMMBBAAACCLLOOOTTT

made in reason - got some xylophone crankin with some cool african like beats going over the top and all the rest... have a listen. Oh, and samples of notes of like, organic recorded harmonics from banjo and guitar, and some edited bombaclot sample which sounds pretty cool. good grammar there. 

Don't know if you can manage to do it, but this song leads in from the last bell song with the deep repetative bass... so if you can somehow play the other one and get it to connect up with this one that'd be cool 

BOOMBACLOT

For all of you final fantasy VII lovers out there....

Tainted Music