How I Did It
I Wonder What I'll Do Todayby tacet
Tools I Used
Cubase, GlaceVerb (free reverb plugin), Reason (for instrumentation)
Samples I Used
Most of the soundfonts used are from hammersound.net, loops from an old ZeroG CD.
Original Samples
Everything beyond the piano and vocal. Five additional instruments (and two drum loops).
Process
I started with the piano which oldDog contributed and the narva9's vocal. First I corrected the timing in Cubase, so they were both in sync. Then I switched to Reason, chose a soundfont and flipped back to Cubase.
I had a rough idea in my head for the string progression, so I tried a few combinations. I didn't want it to sound over-chordy, and tried to make it move like a real string section in an orchestra.
I soloed the strings against the vocal and then the piano, to check for discord, and loaded up an oboe. Same process, listening and comparing against the other instruments one at a time.
I then started thinking about structure. I wanted to have transitions, from piano to vocal to oboe solo, vocal and an ending as the track's focal points.
I needed a baseline, and found most of the sounds I tried were too thin because of the strong stereo vocal. I ended up with a slapped bass sound, heavily filtered, compressed and distorted.
...and the bass should be slightly funky, with an edge of unpredictability. Hopefully it doesn't sound too disjointed :)
Anyway, I chose a couple of complimentary drum loops, being careful to keep the vibe. I tweaked the bass slightly to follow the feel of the drum sequence.
Three hours later I started moving the parts around in Cubase to achieve the structure I wanted, filling in on cross fades.
At that point I decided the end phase needed something else. So I added a simple synth arpeggio and a very high glassy synth which you can hear towards the end of the track.
I then did some final touches, stereo field and EQing and exported the result.
Hope you like it :)
Other Notes
I feel I need better monitoring :) After decorating my main speakers are still packed away, so this was mixed on headphones and computer speakers. It's given me an interesting perspective, I just hope it doesn't sound shitty on proper monitors :)
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