Today, I arrived early to my advanced production class to help setup for a classmates production time. The setup was fairly minimal, as the student, Amjad, brought in a Logic file, and already had several layers in place.

My role for today was to help support Amjad in the building on his arrangement. He brought in a cool original house track, which wasn’t a style I was as familiar with. We also only had an hour to record before the next student needed to start, so I also helped make sure he stayed on track and ensure he got the tasks completed that he needed.

The other instruments that needed to be tracked were a funky guitar as well as a synth. While we were waiting for the musician to arrive, we planned the arrangement together. He had a reference track that he played me, and we listened to the textures that we in place. One suggestion I made was delaying the entry of the full kit groove. I thought it might be cool to start with just 90’s electronic hats first, and then bring in the rest of the groove later, which Amjad liked.

Once the guitarist arrived, we helped him setup, and then experimented with different wah sounds within Logic. Once we found one we all liked, Amjad asked if the guitarist could play a few different variations of a 8-16 bar groove, so he could copy and paste it into his tune. I liked this approach, and also asked if the guitarist could record of version of just percussive strumming.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have a ton of time to work on synth parts since the next student had to start their project, but Amjad said he could record some of these parts outside of class time. After he tracked 1 or 2 ideas, I helped the next students setup for their session.