B+ (Be Positive): Novice in Wonderland

I have shared a series of posts on how I went around learning about digital recording process at home. Since then, I have been using this learning to have endless fun doing recordings and in the process discovering more new things regularly. However, my focus was on audio as the music was provided by a ready made Karaoke track, and my contribution to the song was confined to vocals. I have deep fascination for the sound of music that seems to be a mix of so many different instruments. I wished I could create such music myself, but I did not know how to go about it. This post is the story of my attempts to make a move from singing and audio mixing to music creation. Since it is about music, it will be more than a dry text, and will have many samples of my recordings for you to listen to. So prepare yourself by putting on your headphones!

Getting Started

As a part of Synopsys’ band Enchanting Engineers, I got an opportunity to observe some of the finest musicians like Jagminder Chugh and Radhika Gupta from a close distance. These people have invested a huge amount of time on their passion and devoted years in practice. They have such mastery on the instruments they play that their performances are a treat to listen and pure magic to watch.

I myself had tried my hand on a few instruments like harmonium, keyboard, flute, mouth organ, and random beats on the table (not Tabla) with varying success, but since I see myself primarily as a singer, I could never get reasonable proficiency in any of them. However, with my adventures in the audio world, I had started to get a feeling that it should be possible to combine technology with art and come up something reasonable without being an expert musician. But how to do it?

Learning Keyboard Basics

So, I started exploring electronic keyboard for an answer to this puzzle. A keyboard is an ideal place to start creating music since it has the easiest to play interface, with options to choose the instrument. It can also add accompaniment of drum beats in various styles. Modern keyboards use sampled instrument technique to create good sounding music with ease. So, I practiced and learned to play some of my favorite songs on keyboard. However, they sounded very raw without supporting music. Leveraging my audio experience, I supplemented them with Karaoke tracks so that I listened to the Karaoke track and played the lead part on keyboard in sync with it while recording it on computer. To my delight, it started sounding like a reasonable instrumental track. Listen to the song “Bekaraar Karke” below to get an idea of what I mean:

The Magic of Midi

This was a good finding, so I started using it on more songs, and then I discovered Midi. Midi stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. It is a standard language for music programming supported by most keyboards and computers. It is a popular tool used by musicians, since it allows music notes to be stored on multiple parallel channels. For my next song, I tried to record notes from my keyboard in Midi format. The main improvement I got was that I could hook up any instrument to play these notes later. Listen to the “Jaane Kahan Gaye” recording below, in which I used Midi recording and changed to Saxophone to play it during mixing.

The next logical step was to try to use different instruments for different parts of the song creating variety in the music. In this case, I played the song on keyboard and recorded Midi notes on computer, and then edited Midi file to change instruments in different parts of the song. The results were really interesting to hear. As an example, I tried this method to record “Hoto se choo lo” in the track below:

Midi opened another possibility for me. Maybe it was no longer necessary to play the song on keyboard; how about using a Midi editor on computer to enter the notes of the song directly. When I tried out this idea, it worked, but was not satisfactory since it sounded more mechanical than natural. Due to this, I had to drop this approach. The track below illustrates what I mean:

Understanding Music and the Structure of a Song

My efforts to create music so far did not yield the outcome that I was trying to get. The music I played sounded flat and bare bone. What was I missing here? To find an answer, I had to learn essential theory of music – about notes, staff notation, scales, beats and rhythm, intervals and chords, and so on. It was an interesting revelation that a lot of music theory has scientific foundation and the great mathematician Pythagoras himself contributed to the Circle of Fifth theorem in music. Armed with this knowledge, I set out to understand the various components of a song. Using Reaper, I took apart many Midi songs, and learned after hours of experimentation that a song’s groove contains a mix of drums, bass guitar, rhythm guitar, piano, and strings sounds, all playing identical chords in sync. In most songs, we can not tell these sounds distinctly due to their low volume in the mix, but they contribute to the feel of the groove. For my music tracks to sound good, they would need such a mix as well. Listen to the song “Pukarata Chala Hun” below that was the source of this insight. (Not my recording).

Exploring Loops and Accompaniments

I was keen to use my new findings to create music for a song for which a Karaoke track is not available. One such song was Karvan Guzar Gaya gubar dekhte rahe. I used my keyboard to get a suitable Tabla groove for this song, recorded a few bars of this groove in Reaper, and used it as a ‘loop’ to create the background music. This means that a small sample of the groove is repeated again and again throughout the song. I am happy that this method allowed me to do my favorite number with good results, but after a while I could feel that the music is sounding bare since there are no other instruments. Listen to the resulting song below.

Next, I tried to get add some rhythm instruments using the accompaniment feature of my keyboard. I came across a beautiful poem by my friend Sanjay Srivastava, and I used my keyboard to create the background for it. It sounded much better with the chord sounds added, but since it was the same chord, it added a touch of monotony after a while. The recording below illustrates the point:

When Jagminder suggested a song to be done in Enchanting Engineers with our own composition, I tried to compose a draft of its background music by using a Midi editor and picking up parts from Midi files and rearranging it. We could never get to do this in Enchanting Engineers, but this effort got me a track that came very close to what I was looking for. The track below was the result:

Band in a Box - Finally

By now, I had realized that to create a good music track, I need to find a way to get drums, bass guitar, strings, rhythm guitar, piano to play together in a specific pattern. One possibility was to play them on keyboard one at a time and used layered recording to mix the sounds, but it was too much for my music skills. I was looking for a technology solution to the problem; and then I came across Band in a Box, a music software tool that is the exact solution I was looking for. Like a keyboard, it offers various rhythm styles like Rock, Pop, Disco, etc., allows you to program the chord progression for a song, and play the melody part on your keyboard. In no time, I could use it to create music of my favorite song Bekaraar Karke Hame, and was very happy with the results. This was exactly what I had been trying to do!

Band in a Box also have some styles with solo guitar that gives a feel of performing with a live guitarist. I used such a style to create cover for Batein Kuch Ankahi Si, and when I sang with it, it gave me exactly the same feel that I had while doing this number live with Jagminder. This was amazing indeed!

I found it to be an ideal tool for a composer, since it allows melody to be captured and stored in small chunks, so you need to play only a piece at a time. By now, I was feeling adventurous, so I decided to try and create a cover for a full song. I chose what I believed was a simple song – Hoton Se, but it turned out to be much more difficult than that. I could finally get it right with a few day’s effort, and was pleased to see my first full cover for a song.

Band in a Box is like a band of musicians ready to play what you ask them to. It is very easy to program for playing a chord progression for a song. The preset drum styles allow user defined variations and fills. It supports Midi record and play for user melody parts. With support for viewing and editing staff notation, it is a good music learning tool as well. However, to get good results out of it, you have to know the chords and melody of the song well. I tried one more song on it, Hai Apna Dil to Awara, which also turned out to be equally interesting:

As far as my memory goes, the music of Come September by Billy Vaughn has been my childhood fantasy. The guitar notes in in were a treat to listen to. I tried it in past on keyboard with laughable results. I could recently find this song on YouTube and decided to give it one more try. It was an enjoyable experience trying to recreate the magic of this beautiful number:

The Journey Goes On

So, this is a story of my adventures with music so far. Hope I did not bore you with too many details. Can I call myself a musician now? Not really; At best, I am just a novice in music wonderland. I feel a little comfortable working with music concepts now, but there is so much to explore, so much to learn, and hours of enjoyment ahead. However, one thing can be said with certainty that in last two years, I transitioned from Audio Wonderland to Music Wonderland; and the journey continues..

Read next post in the series - A Recipe for Karaoke Recordings

Music Series - My Experiences

Welcome to my Music Series blogs. There are following posts in this series;

B+ (Be Positive)

Novice in Wonderland – Audio to Music