Lesson video

In this lesson you will need a piece of paper and a pencil to take notes with.

You will also need your voice or an instrument or access to an online app or instrument or digital audio workstation such as BandLab.

This lesson is best with headphones but is not required.

If you need to pause the video to get any of the equipment you see on the screen or find a quiet space to work in, please do so now and press play when you are ready to begin.

Using music software.

You can create music using audio mixing software.

The demonstrations in this lesson use a free programme called BandLab.

BandLab is for use by over thirteens only and if you are over thirteen, you still need permission to use it from your parent or carer.

Recap.

Review lesson ten if you do not have a structure, lyrics, and chord sequences for each section.

Adding interest to chord sequence.

Adding interest to chord sequences.

In lesson six we looked at broken chords, divided chords, inversion chords, and adding melodic passing notes to chord sequences to make them more interested.

In lesson ten I developed my chorus chord progression with all of these techniques to make it more interesting.

But let's go through them all again individually as a recap and make my verse chord sequence more interesting.

We have our structure and as discussed when we repeat a chord sequence in the verses I would really encourage us to be developing them each time so the listener doesn't get bored of a single chord progression.

Before we do head over to BandLab let's just quickly recap what broken chords and divided chords are.

Can you spot the difference? Broken chords sound like this.

And the divided chords sound like this.

With broken chords we play the notes of the triad, in this case C, E and G.

Not together but one after each other.

And it's common to hear them in this triplet rhythm pattern.

With the divided chords we're playing just straight quavers and we're playing two notes of the chord at the same time.

We're playing two notes of the triad at the same time, E and G, followed by C, the root note.

And this is the pattern used in "Imagine." We also have talked about inversion chords where the bottom note changes so it's not always the root note of the chord on the bottom of the chord and the order is inverted so we can have C root, C, E, G, then C first inversion where the C goes from the bottom to the top of the chord and therefore we have E, G, C and for second inversion we invert that chord, we put the E to the top and we have G, C, E.

These chords are used to make it easier to play for a piano player but also to make baselines smoother.

For example instead of going from a G and jumping down to an F, we can go to a first inversion D major chord.

And just go down by a semitone.

So inversion chords are used to make baselines smoother as well.

Finally we looked at melodic passing notes where non-harmony notes are used to connect chords.

For example.

So now let's head to BandLab and make that verse chord progression more interesting.

Add interest to your chord sequence.

Choose at least one accompaniment style to make your chord progression more interesting in one section of your song.

Record your chord sequence with the new accompaniment style into BandLab.

Pause the video to complete your task and click resume once you're finished.

Here we are in BandLab.

I'm going to turn my chord progression which currently sounds like this.

Into this.

So I'm using the divided accompaniment style, divided chords accompaniment style, I have some inversion chords in there and a quick passing note at the end.

So let's see how we can change our chord sequence in BandLab to that right now.

Okay so we need to adjust the rhythm of our first chord.

We're no longer going to be filling the bar like that and I'm always going to be playing the top two notes and then having the bottom note play by itself so it's going to be like that.

And I could of course draw that in a million times more but I think it's going to be quicker and easier to use the copy and paste function.

So what I did was highlight all of the chord and I can right click and copy and then right click, paste or I can control C or command C on a Mac and as long as I put my selector in the right place and press paste or control V, command V, it will go in the right place.

So sounds like this at the moment.

Very good.

I'm going to keep the inversion that I already have.

I'm going to make the chord shorter in duration, make the bottom one separate, highlight, put my selector in the right place, and paste three times.

And do the same for the bottom one.

So I'm making the chord way shorter, moving the bottom note across, highlighting it, copy, moving to the right place, paste, paste, paste and finally same thing, move it over, moving the bottom note, select all, copy, paste, paste, paste, there we go.

If you are doing the divided chord pattern it might be beneficial for you to pause the video now and try and do this in BandLab so it's fresh in your memory.

The next thing I'm going to do is zoom out a little bit.

I'm going to get rid of.

I'm going to get rid of the next four chords and I'm going to copy what I've just done and paste it into box five to nine as well.

So let's see how that sounds like from the beginning.

There we go.

So I've changed my block chords into divided chords and already it sounds way, way, way better.

Let's see how it sounds running into the chorus as well.

Good and because I'm using chords, divided chords in both, it does have that sense of consistent.

I can repeat this chord with the new accompaniment style as many times as I would like but I would, I'm really conscious of not copy and pasting too much and having the same thing.

So what I would like to do is have that accompaniment style for the first two stanzas of my song and for the second two stanzas I'm going to do something else.

So I would put that in off camera and invite you to pause the video and to make your current chord sequences more interesting by adding new accompaniment styles.

Recapping lesson four where we talked about the roles of different instruments in a band.

Let's think about which parts need to be heard above others.

Is this going to be the same throughout the song? Now we've already talked about how the answer to that is most probably no.

In different sections we're going to have different textures, different layers, different instruments and those instruments as we know have different roles.

In my song I would really like to add a bassline, I would like to add some strings, and think about adding a very short riff or hook that the guitar could play.

Later in this lesson I will also be adding a drum beat as well.

But now is a really good opportunity to think about where in the structure I would like all of these instruments.

Adding instruments and drum patterns.

Use BandLab's instrument library to add at least two instruments to your song.

One of these instruments should be drums or percussion.

You might want to add more than one drum beat.

Add or remove instruments in different sections to change the texture.

Pause the video to complete your task and click resume once you're finished.

So let's add in some more instruments.

For this demonstration I'm going to be adding a bassline and also some strings but we need to be thinking about the roles of our instruments of course so my bass is obviously going to be playing a bassline and the strings are going to be playing some chords, maybe a peddle note, and we'll get to that very shortly.

So I've created by new track by clicking add track and I pressed on instruments and if you need to, if you want to change your instrument at any time you can just click on the track, instrument, and you have a whole list here.

I'm going to keep mine on bass for now.

If you don't like the sound of that bass then there are lots and lots of different basses.

I'll pick the, maybe, I'll just keep it on the standard bass.

Okay so we've talked about using inversions and having a smooth bassline so I'm not just going to be doing the root chords.

If I were to do that, which is the most popular thing to do is just if I'm playing a B minor chord, I'll play B, if I'm playing an A major chord, I'll play A, if I'm playing a C major chord, I'll play C, then that's fine and, actually.

Firstly I'll show, hang on.

First I will put in a bassline that just uses the root notes of the chord so my progression is B and we're making sure it's a bar.

Then D, then G, not G sharp, and then E for E minor like that.

Let's see how that sounds from the beginning.

It sounds good but it can sound better.

I talked about using inversion chords in my piano and I need to adjust my bassline accordingly.

So to make my bassline smoother I'm going to take my D down to an A because I'm playing an inversion chord in the piano part.

So instead of it being jumpy, it's now stepwise and I'm going to do.

So let's hear how that sounds now instead.

Great, I think that sounds a lot better.

Let's now add in some strings.

So let's listen to what that sounds like all together.

I like it.

I'm just going to turn the violin down or the string section down a little bit and I'm going to turn the bass up a little bit just to get that balance right, okay.

I think it's now about time to add a drum beat.

So to add drums to our track I'm going to click on add track and instead of clicking on instruments, I'm going to click on drum machine.

Automatically it adds in four bars of an A loop and four bars of a B loop.

So we can hear what that sounds like just as the default because it does start playing something by itself.

And I think that sounds really good and it's nice to get a flavour of what that full texture sounds like.

However wouldn't be very creative of us to just take that A pattern.

What is nice though is when you click on instrument you're presented with this drum machine or drum pad which we have familiarised ourselves with in lesson five and if you haven't please go and watch that first so that this isn't.

What is great about this is that you have different letters here on the right and you can input different patterns and say you wanted to use the, you could use B for the chorus, you could use C for the bridge section, D for the intro, and you could drag them in, really nice and neat and easy to deal with.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to actually get rid of the drum so that we can just have, we might as well be able to say that we've created this whole piece from scratch.

Drum patterns.

The drum patterns in your song can tell the listener the BPM, the style, and tempo of the music.

Your drum pattern must be appropriate for your song so no drum and bass patterns for a slow ballad.

If you haven't seen lesson five in this series, please go and watch that as we go through drum patterns in songs and drum patterns in pop songs in more detail.

We also look at how to use BandLab's drum machine in that lesson.

Okay so to make a drum beat, what you first have to do is put on in every other box.

I always play the drum beat as I'm going along.

The clap or the snare goes on the two to four.

I think I would like a clap there so I'm just going to change that to clap.

And then I can start putting in my drum.

Wonderful.

Let's see what that sounds like with the, what happened there, with the whole song.

Great.

Now over to you.

Can you create a drum beat for your verse or chorus section.

Once you have done that, it's then time to do a separate drum beat with a different drum pattern and you just have to click on C or A or B or whatever it is, it doesn't really matter, and do it, a different one, developed.

It could be more complicated, it could be much more simple, and then you can drop that in.

Every time your verse comes, have one.

Every time your chorus comes, have the other.

And then we're really starting to get somewhere with our piece.

Click pause to do that task and then come back when you're ready to continue.

Adding instruments and drum patterns.

Use BandLab's instrument library to add at least two instruments to your song.

One of these instruments should be drums or percussion.

You might want to add more than one drum beat.

Add and remove instruments in different sections to change the texture.

Finishing details and downloading your song.

Now we've added our drum beats, our extra instruments, and our textures varied.

We've got multiple sections, multiple chord sequences, melodies for our lyrics.

It's time to add the finishing touches.

We might now want to add automation.

Automation can change the dynamics of the tracks in our songs automatically.

This can be useful in a build up section or in the outro when we can fade out.

We might want to record our lyrics directly into BandLab.

So I'll show you how to do that shortly.

And I'll also show you how to download your song so you can play it on your phone or share it.

Okay so I'm going to show you those three things really, really quickly.

The first thing I'm going to show you is how to use automation.

So like I said automation can be used to automatically without you doing anything.

So imagine I want to fade out and I want the piece to get gradually quieter.

I click on the automation tab here and make sure that it says volume.

And on the piano track I'm going to make a couple of dots.

I'm going to zoom in so we can see more clearly.

So this dot represents the volume which is defaulted at zero.

If I were to create another dot at the end of the piece and drag it down, you can see that there's a line created in between these dots.

The computer will automatically turn down the volume as the selected bar goes over the piece.

If I close that tab and I play that right now we should be able to see this bar go down and hear the music which is in volume.

And that is exactly how I'm going to end my piece, just a slow piano that's been reduced in volume.

So that's automation.

You can use this as creatively as you would like, maybe in a build up section you can get louder and louder.

And next up is recording lyrics which is why I have my headphones on because when you're recording into BandLab it's definitely better to have headphones on if you have them.

It's no big deal if you don't but it definitely helps you hear the tracks and keeps you in time.

Now all you need to do, I've already done this here so I'll go from scratch, is add a track.

Click on voice or mic.

You may get a dialogue box that says you need to allow BandLab to access your microphone.

You can do that in your settings, you can have an adult help you with that.

Once you've done that you need to click on source and make sure you've clicked the right microphone that you want to use.

So I'm going to click on the default microphone like so and then all you need to do is find where you want to start recording, press record, and it gives you a one, two, three, four count, or it's four beeps, and then you start singing and it will start recording.

It's okay if you don't get it right the first time.

You can delete it, do it again.

You can delete it, do it again, take two, take three, until you are happy with it.

I am going to record just a short snippet and the great thing is that I can have my lyric box open here, record, read, scroll at the same time, and yes, so I'm going to do that off camera again because it won't let me record the video and the song at the same time.

So I will show you the finished product.

Okay so as you can see I've recorded a couple of verses, I did the rap.

It's going to sound a bit funky coming through the speakers but I can assure you in real life this is probably the best song ever written and the best vocals ever recorded and it's just such a shame that we have to listen to it through the microphone but I'll play you a little snippet anyway just to show you that, you know, it is possible and it can sound good and it really makes your track pop.

So if you can hear this, you can record using the speakers on your phone, your tablets, your devices, then I would recommend it to really, really finish your song.

Here it goes.

I'll pause it there.

Just to save time maybe I can release the full track at a later date but I'm not really interested in my songs for a better world, I'm interested in your songs for a better world.

So how do we download these and share them? Well you can go to, well make sure you're obviously saving your work over here.

I'm going to save, you should get a little box at the bottom, a little tick.

It's going to take a longer time since I've got this information here, lots of data in there.

And now I'll need to go to, I can go to file, download, tracks or mixdown as, you want the mixdown as.

That means it's going to take all of the tracks from the beginning to the end and once you get there it will save again for you.

It's always good, you can't save your work enough times.

It's a really good habit to get into.

It's then going to ask you what file you want to save yours in.

It's going to give you a couple of options.

One that's going to be a file called WAV and one that's going to be a file called MP3.

They're going to have different sizes.

Now it's up to you because you, you might not want to have a really huge file on your device, you might not have enough space so I would recommend the medium sized file but if you need to do the smaller one then that's okay and if you want to be sending it via email to different family members or whatever, it is better to have a smaller file size so just bear that in mind when choosing but WAV is sort of the industry standard file type.

MP3 is just as good.

So hopefully this doesn't take too long, I might cut this bit out.

Okay so here is a list of files that you get to choose from and medium quality MP3 will be fine.

WAV would be great as well but it is a larger file.

It does give you a brief description of which one you might prefer so this is great for sharing, this is great sound while still being fairly lightweight.

If you only care about quality which.

So once you clicked on your format you simply can click download.

It will export a progress bar which in my case went down very quickly and you will be able to rename your file and yeah, download it to your device.

That brings us to the end of the lesson and also the end of the unit and hopefully you have a song that is finished and that you are proud of.

I hope you had fun making your song for a better world and I hope that you learned a few things along the way.

Make sure to do the quiz after this lesson to check your understanding of the content.

Share your work with Oak National.

If you'd like to, please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak.