How I Did It
Quiet Dragonflyby Beluga Ten
Tools I Used
Sonar Home Studio XL
Goldwave
Studiologic S990 MIDI workstation
Behringer BCF2000 control surface
Tapco 6306 mixer
Edirol Virtual Sound Canvas (soft synth)
Yamaha V50 synth
Creative Audigy 2 (as synth)
M-Audio 2496 (recording/mixing)
Samples I Used
Vocals and piano accompaniment from Dragonfly by Snowflake (CC-BY)
Original Samples
Created all musical accompaniment other than the main piano part in the chorus & bridge.
Process
Processed original samples in Goldwave before importing to Sonar. Wrote many lines of accompaniment, threw half of them away, and tweaked what was left. Mixed it all down and wrangled with Sonar to bounce all tracks to a single file.
Other Notes
It had been at least 6 months since I last wrote some music, so this was a bit of a challenge. I had decided to submit something to by_and_by, but started writing just 2 days before the deadline. Still, I like a challenge...
I stumbled on Snowflake's material by chance. The original version is excellent, but I was excited about several possibilities I could see for remixing. The idea I went with was for slower, softer melodies coupled with a bit more drama.
I'm happy with the finished track - I could do more tweaking, but maybe I'll just let others have a play with the .MID file.
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