Dead Man's Beat

So here we go, here's the first track:

So the Flash player picked a 1 - MIDI

Firstly a picked a midi track - Legend Organ,

I then had a general look around Logic to see what my options were

and found the ESP Polyphonic Synth.

I then played some bass notes using a Korg PadKontrol,

added inserts (compressor, Rotary Cabinet).

Then I added a new Midi track and found the Ultrabeat,

picked a drum sound and added some fairly light percussion using the PadKontrol again.

Next I added another Midi track, this time I used the ES2 (Synth2),

played again with the PadKontrol, adding various inserts (Delay, Reverb etc).

They were all fairly simple loops, so then I moved the loops about and structured them to make a song.

I decided to chop parts of the beat, so it was not the same all the way through.

Then I added another midi track, this time Calm winds.

Made a break down

Added another synth (ESE (Ensemble synth)) with inserts (Compression, Limiter).

I felt that the song needed a vocal sample (which although it is not strictly in the rules, I felt I would learn something), and with the song being dark, it reminded me of the Shane Meadow's Film Dead Man's Shoes

Dead Man's Shoes

So I took a sample into GarageBand, chopped it and brought it into Logic.

Things I learnt:

Basic use of Logic

How to use MIDI

Adding inserts and what they do

Compression - dynamic effect reduces difference between loud and quiet sounds (so quiet sounds seem louder)

2 main parts:

• The Ratio - determines how much will be compressed eg. 10.1 = extreme, 2.1 = moderate
• The Make-up gain - which brings the compressed signal back up to a reasonable level

Time Taken - 1hr 52mins

Dead Man's Beat sound file

Source of info:

Apple Discussion Forum