And so, 52 weeks have already passed. This is the 52nd thing I’ve made for this challenge and the last numbered card in the deck. As you can see, this is the reason why the previous week’s project was making a MIDI keyboard.
I was always interested in music, mostly as an avid listener, but here and there I also looked up a bit about the process of making it. In this department, I mostly just watched Adam Neely and Andrew Huang on YouTube. Adam is a god of music theory and Andrew is a wizard of music production (he also knows a lot about music theory but it’s not the main focus of his channel). The only problem is that I have no clue about either of those things so most of the time I don’t even understand what they’re saying. The world of music theory is terrifying to me. I know it’s learnable, but it is so foreign to me that it’s hard to grasp anything.
I think this is similar to drawing for me. It is also an art form which I admire and therefore I wish to know how to do it. And like drawing too, I don’t have any predispositions or natural talent to help me do it. I would say I am musical, meaning I know what sounds good, but when it comes to making something on my own, that is a whole other story. I have struggled with this so much, tried many different things and even though I know I don’t like how my song sounds, I didn’t know how to change it, to make it good.
In the end, as it had happened many times before, time was the deciding factor in this project too. If one week wasn’t short enough for a project like this, I am also in the middle of moving, so I basically had one day to do this. I do feel bad I didn’t have more time for it because it really is a really big wish of mine, but that’s how sometimes it must be. Without further ado, I present to you the first song I ever made, and hopefully not the last since this one is really bad 😀
Boring stuff
It is really hard to write the boring stuff since I mostly just played around with the software, or DAW (Digital Audio Workstation), as it is known in the audio community. In order to have some idea of what I’m doing, I’ve watched a couple of videos to learn some basics. I’ve watched Andrew Huang’s Music Theory in 30 minutes, How to make a song in FL Studio 20 by Sweetwater (since that was my DAW of choice), and A beginner’s guide to music theory by InspirAspir because I needed all I can get to have a chance of making anything.
I decided to use the key of G major because G is my initial and major because I’m not a minor. And with that the most infamous chord progression used in every pop song – I V vi IV – which in this key means – G D Em C. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, I barely know myself, so if you are interested in more details about this, I highly recommend any of the two music theory videos I’ve mentioned in the previous paragraph. The music theory world is fascinating but it’s still way above my head.
After that, I just played around in FL Studio, tried some instruments, tried and failed to make a decent beat, and tried and failed to make a decent melody and chord progression. I thought the basics might be enough to make something basic, but I was wrong. After several hours I had to admit my defeat and publish what I’ve had, even though I wasn’t satisfied with it.