Today, I picked up where I left off yesterday with my capstone project. There was a tight deadline to get these edits done, as my recording session at the school was scheduled for Thursday. 

I began by building the arrangement a bit, as the synths were all added on top of one chorus. I wanted to spread these layers out a bit so the arrangement could build a bit more.

Here was the rough arrangement I was working with so far:

• Intro = piano only
• Verse 1 = Add synth bass
• Chorus 1 = Add warm synth pad and synth plucks
• Verse 2 = Add strings, no synth pad and plucks
• Chorus 2 = Add synth pads and plucks back in with strings
• Bridge = Back to just piano, synth bass and strings
• Chorus 3 1st half = Strings and piano
• Chorus 3 2nd half = All textures in + sharp synth

Once this arrangement was complete, I joined all the MIDI tracks so it was easier to export. I needed to export a few versions of this project for the different musicians. For the vocalist and drummer, I needed to bounce a version with everything in so they could practice over. I bounced this as a 24bit, 48kHz file. For the pianist, I needed to bounce a version with just the piano soloed so they could hear what Brandon was doing. James (pianist) will be playing Brandon’s MIDI piano part on a grand piano on the recording day. I also needed to bounce all the individual layers Brandon tracked as MIDI files so he could import them to Pro Tools to work on crafting sounds. 

Another element requested from me was to export the sheet music for the drummer and James’ reference. Since I didn’t have too much time to make a chart, I decided to export the pre-made chart Logic created from the piano MIDI information. These were the steps needed to do this:

1. Open score view in the MIDI window
2. Click on print
3. Click save as PDF

As I noticed, the format wasn’t perfect by any means, but it got the job done. If you want to further edit the score by adding chord symbols, dynamic markings, etc, you can also export the score as an XML file, and then open the XML file in music notation software. Alternatively, you can export the MIDI file and open it up in notation software that way.

In addition to the editing I did for my capstone today, I also had my mastering session for my 4th year directed study project. The mastering engineer was Reuben Ghose or Mojito Mastering. 

I really liked the way Reuben mastered my EP. He added very subtle EQ and compression gestures that helped make the master file feel brighter and well balanced! My main key takeaway from this session was to make sure to always compare your mix to the gestures you apply on your master. This helps you judge whether or not you like the gestures or not.