'Night Thoughts' the making of

 

 

 

 

'Night Thoughts' idea came about from listening to Lofi girl at work in the background. I thought just for fun, over the weekend - and trying to stay away from  doomscrolling over things I have apparently little or no control about in world events. I thought it would be better for my spiritual and mental health to spend my time trying to write some music. 

This time I did something different than usual,
I set myself the task to < start and finish > <and upload > a tune
in one day. 

 

I started with an 80 Bpm drum pattern on LMMS

From this one beat, I made a few other similar ones with minor variation

 

 

 

The beats still needed something, so I found a drum loop to go underneath. I changed the tempo from 82 to 80.

Next I went through all the loops I had looking for a repetitive chord sequence (I also thought I'd not write a 'middle 8' for a change).

 

I found this one which I changed the tempo down to 80 Bpm.

And so the drums and chord sequence were beginning to build.
I still LMMS, a "free, open source, multiplatform digital audio workstation" as it does the work I ask of it for getting tunes started.

 

 

 

So after getting the beats and chords going, it needed a bass guitar.

My actual bass guitar is over at someones house, so I used a free midi VSTi bass, which is works well enough. Ample Bass PII Lite.

 

 

I played this with the midi keyboard and got it down in just  a few takes, as I wanted it to sound improvised, which it was, against the loops. 

So, here is some of the piano roll showing the notes

The tune was starting to sound more like a song with the natural bass runs.

Next I improvised a clean guitar track over it. LMMS doesn't record audio so, I want to another DAW to record it and fed it back into LMMS.

In LMMS I stacked on the FX. I haven't done this before, as LMMS is really for EDM and so I thought I'd try it out. 

 

 

 

 

 

Back into the DAW (Sonar Lite)

 It needed some juicy loops for atmosphere so I went to Looperman which is one of my favourite sites for loops, as it also is free. In return, I have uploaded a few guitar loops a few years back which appear to have been used well. ('eastperson' is my username there)

Anyway, I digress.

 

I searched in Loopeman through many different loops in A minor at 80 Bpm until I could compile a list of loops.

With these loops I cut and pasted, removed, split, deleted, added in again, walked away from, came back to for hours until I thought I should stop. It looked something like this:

 

Mastering and mixing isn't really my forte but I always just mix until it sounds good to my own ears (I'm not pretending to be professional). Finally, I use Ozone 8 in Audacity to give it more sparkle.

 

I could have gone on for days (which I usually do) but I stuck to finishing it and uploading it.

 

And so there it is.

 

Here is a short video putting it together: