Evaluation of practical task - Music production

As part of the diegetic soundtrack within our product, we decided to create our own music as not only could we have the exact soundtrack we wanted, we didn't need to worry about copyrights over the soundtrack as we made the track ourselves. Myself and Charley performed the piece and it was produced and edited by Amy and Tia. The song is called "living a lie" and as opposed to being parallel to the genre, we decided that a more upbeat track would make the conclusion to the particular scene seem more abrupt and would also sound more like something a teen girl would listen to when running.

 We started off by first being shown our way around the recording program by Charley's dad, who kindly lent us his studio and technical skills. And then went on to create a basic drum track which I could play along with as I can't keep time to a metronome which we realised after the first two hours of recording.

After creating the drum track, we went about recording the main guitar track for the song. This took some time but we eventually had the guitar track recorded to the standard we wanted and then set about recording the vocals.

Because we didn't have a vocal booth, a way in which we managed to reduce the background noise and vocal echos during recording, we ended up holding a duvet surrounding the microphone as a way of absorbing any vocal echos and as a shield to prevent any background noise coming from outside.

 After the first day of recording, Charley and her dad sat down together and created other backing tracks, including: bass, drums, secondary guitar, strings and a synthesized organ. On top of that, they created a harmony track which enabled me to have a vocal guide to help me harmonize with Charley's voice to make the whole recording sound neater.

The product we had at the end was then exported as an Mp3 file which we could later use as a compatible file format in imovie to use as the diegetic soundtrack for when the girl is running.

The lyrics and chord progressions for the song are:

Living A Lie

Verse    

I used to stay awake with you

Talking till two

I was in love with you

But you were blocking my view

And every single time you spoke

I couldn't cope

Never wanted to let go

But now I struggle with hello

Pre chorus

Just open your eyes

And you will see

Chorus

Now I'm flying

And I'm not crying

I'm living my life

Day to day

I want to find you now

Some place, some where, some how

I need to say goodbye

Cos we were living a lie

Verse 2

Do you remember the time

You lay by my side

I couldn't call it then

Never thought that it would end

And every time you smiled at me

I could never believe

This was never meant to be

The end of you and me

Pre chorus 2

Please just open up your eyes

And look at me 

Chorus

Because I'm flying

And I'm not crying

I'm living my life

Day by day 

I want to find you now 

Some place, some where, some how

I need to say goodbye

Cos we were living a lie

Middle 8

I wish that I had known

How much we had to grow

But it's okay

I was better alone anyway

Chorus

Now I'm flying 

And I'm not crying

I'm living my life

Day by day

I am flying

And I'm not crying

I'm living my life

Day by day

I want to find you now

Some place, some where, some how

I need to say goodbye

Cos we were living a lie

The chord progressions were:

Verse: Am, C, G, F x2
Pre chorus: G, F
chorus: C, Am, F, G, C, Am, F, Fm7

Middle 8: G, F, Am, G, G, F, Am, G