Project and Portfolio 4
Theme and Variations on
Eyes by the Chad Hollister Band
I spent a good amount of time auditioning many songs from the Cambridge music library, trying to find one that I thought would not only be fun to work on but also posed a challenge. I landed on Eyes by the Chad Hollister Band because I liked the opportunity to mix a horn section, the simple yet elegant lead vocal tone, and because, being in a country genre, is a style that I haven't gotten to mix a lot of yet. In all of my variations, I wanted to keep the integrity of the original piece and not completely change the way the song sounded. I chose to do the bulk of this project using ProTools, but did experiment in Logic as well. It was a fun project to work on and I plan to continue to make new variations in the future.
Original Solo Section
For the first variation, I created new drums for the song. This was a fun challenge because there was a lot of drum bleed into the vocal microphones at the time of recording, below is a short example with the vocal microphones on their own.
Vocals Only- Chorus
Drums Variation
Here is the same section with the new drums added. I kept a pretty similar feel, but wanted to add something that was a little more busy and brought a new life into the song. I also played with half-time and double-time feels which are heard in the guitar solo section.
Here are the new drums on their own. I used the drummer track in Logic to create these new sounds.
Original Verse Two & Chorus
In the second variation, I added additional content using a few virtual instruments and some sound design elements. This was also very fun to do as it allowed me to experiment with some of the different tools and plugins to create a new sound.
Sound Design Variation
Within this variation are added synth tracks, auxiliary percussion, phaser plugins, chorus effects, creative panning, and others. Similar to the drums variation, the song itself is kept intact, with these elements added in.
On of the fun things I did within this variation was a phaser effect on the horn section. Here that is on its own.
Original Ending
In this last variation, live recorded elements were added to the original song. The original plan was to record a few of my musician friends in playing a few parts for this project, but that ended up not being able to happen. So instead, I made this variation one where more creative foley was used in place of live musicians, still capturing the idea of live, recorded elements.
Live Recording Variation
This variation utilizes a few different, and unique elements to add new texture into the song. Included are things like a shaker made from rice and a container, a tennis racket and a bike cassette. One of my favorite things from this variation was experimenting with different microphone choices and placements for each element.
Original Theme
Verse 2 -> Chorus ->
Solos -> Ending
Variations
Verse 2 -> Chorus ->
Solos -> Ending