'Retroaction' - New Original Music/30 Minute Songwriting Challenge! Electronic/Instrumental + Walkthrough!

grapthar (74)in #music • 5 years ago

I was a bit bored

last night, and felt like everything I was writing was kinda 'meh', so I decided to set a timer for 30 minutes, and see what I could come up with. Most of this song happened in that time, I was rushing to find instruments and stuff, and generally I think it worked well. The kick drum SUCKS, so apologies for that, I'll definitely change it. I basically got all the tracks done within the half hour time limit, but the mix was a bit wonky, so I spent an extra 5 minutes adjusting volumes, EQing, adding compression and noisegates, etc. So technically it was a 35 minute challenge, lol.

Listen to Retroaction here.

All the tracks are divided into

groups, to keep things a bit more organized, so I'll go group-by-group here. Our first group has all the main synths that provide our harmonies and the spacey melody. There are 3 main sections, which I've actually labeled this time: Verses (and the intro, same progression), Choruses, and our short Break. In the Verses, we stay on our tonic of C (minor) for the first 8 bars. However, in the last 2 bars of that part, an E natural comes in, making our Cmin a Cmaj temporarily, which sounds awesome. The following 8 bars move from Ab to Eb, then up to a Bb, before our Chorus.

Track 3, Verse, full 16 bars.

Listen to Retroaction here.

Chorus Synths, described below.

The Choruses begin on an

Ebmaj, then move to Bbmaj, Abmaj, and an Fmaj. The 1st Chorus ends on a G7 after the F, while the second and 3rd both hold on the F chord. In the 2nd and 3rd Chorus, we extend the progession, so we move from that F to an Ab, then Eb, up to an Fmin, and finally a Bmaj then a Gmaj, before ending. Tracks 3 and 4 provide the spacey harmonies and little melody part over the entire track.

Listen to Retroaction here.

Our drums consist of 3 tracks,

and again, the kick absolutely is too distorted and punchy, so that's gonna be changed without a doubt. The next group is 3 audio tracks, which are sorta placeholders until I can find some better transitional elements (some sort of swell/crescendo). The next group is actually one track, which is the 80s Saw Synth that plays only over our Choruses, playing the progression in the 2nd screenshot above. Finally, we have the little melody part over the break, which is pictured below.