The task at hand was to create a piece of music consisting mainly of the sounds that fish make to communicate with each other.
We had to share material between us (Diploma of Composition students) that we found on the internet or recorded ourselves of said sounds, or sounds that were inspired by fish and their environment. I came across a few good videos on youtube so I converted them to mp3 and chopped them up and set out to make a tune from them.
Because of this method, the mix leaves a lot to be desired for but I still manage to get my point across as just about every sound you hear in the song is that of a fish.
Below, the sounds and my writing process is explained.
The song consists mainly of sounds taken from a video from BBC Earth Unplugged.
They use a hydrophone to record sounds under the sea. The man talking about the fish is professor Steve Simpson. I like to use dialogue in songs as it's another interesting element for the listener and helps get the idea of the tune across.
For the intro I cheated a bit by looping an arpeggiated piano line that was used in the video by the creators. I use this throughout the song as it gives it a key (F# Major?) and a bit of a melody to go by. The trade off for that though was it made it hard adding more dialogue and sounds from the video as that piano line was behind a lot of it.
The 'crackling' sound you hear is that of thousands of Snapping Shrimp.
At 7 seconds, you hear a kind of grunting noise. And that is a Spined Squirrelfish having a bit of a talk. He is very percussive and I added the UAD EP-34 Tape Echo to him and automated the delay time to make it self oscillate faster and faster. You'll notice I use this trick in a lot of my projects and definitely more than once in this track.
The 'knocking' sound you hear at 46 seconds is that of a Saddleback Clownfish. It's also creating a very percussive sound here although these guys make a range of different sounds.
You'll also hear an Ambon Damselfish chirping away in the background while the narrator is talking. They sound very similar to some birds, especially the pigeon that's on repeat outside my window as I'm typing this. The sound is so light that it hardly visualizes as a waveform in my Logic project so I haven't added that screenshot.
The 'grunting' kind of noise you can also hear in the background is that of a Soldierfish.
The percussion so far has been water splashing sounds from the game 'Fortnite'. Although I have never played this game, I think they are menu sounds for when you are choosing what to do and where to go. I just googled 'water sounds' and that came up as a free download. I also use an 'underwater' type recording in the intro from the same sample pack.
Right at the very end of the intro, after Steve stops talking, you here the Batfish. His sound rises in tone so I thought it would be very fitting to use just before the 'drop'. I also added some warmth and beef using UAD's Thermionic Culture Vulture.
I chose to write this project in the BPM of 140 as I find this leaves a lot of room for sounds to be 'showcased' and I have a fondness for the more 'organic' and soulful side of Dubstep. I suppose I thought I could make something easy listening and kind of peaceful out of fish sounds and their environment, as that is how I feel when I'm under water.
The sound I used for the kick drum is the sound an Oystered Toadfish makes when he wants to communicate.
I didn't layer it with anything, only used a transient designer to increase the initial attack of the sound.
Oystered Toadfish ----------->
For the snares and hi-hats I've used more samples from the 'Fortnite' sample pack, and I've added in different instances of professor Steve's voice in different pitches and added time based effects for a bit of trippy-ness.
The next fish sound you will hear has a very sub bass-like feeling to it that pitches down after the initial transient. It's something that you would usually have to create using synthesis, but no, It's just the Banded Drumfish having a bit of a chat with his mates.
Below you can see how I really extended the lower register (20 - 100Hz) to bring out the 'sub' in this bass sound.
I also added a bit of distortion with hardly any drive, only to make it a bit louder.
Thank you Banded Drum.
The last notable communicating sea creature in my song is the Midshipman.
He has a face only a mother could love (sorry mate), but he makes arguably the most interesting and sonically pleasing sound in the whole song.
He makes a very phased out foghorn type sound when he's trying to find a nice lady or something to eat so I added a tremolo and automated the rate to give the sound some more movement. I also added some distortion and sent him to a reverb bus to really cement his unique language in the track.
So there you have it. A bit of a song made from the sounds that fish make when they're communicating with each other. All be it a horrible mix of chopped up mp3 files, I definitely learned a thing or two about our underwater friends//
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