The Making of Laya

The Idea
Ideas for musical scores, songs or themes come to me randomly. Sometimes, I get inspired by a situation or works from other artists. The idea for this composition (read full article and listen to the composition here) came as a ‘need’ to compose a fusion track. I am still in the process of discovering my sound and experimenting is the only way to achieve it. Hence it makes perfect sense, at this point of time, to experiment with every genre of music under the sun! So fusion it is… this time!

Every composition has a ‘hook’ that grabs the listeners’ attention. "A hook is a musical idea, often a short riff, passage, or phrase that is used in popular music to make a song appealing and to "catch the ear of the listener" - Wikipedia. In this composition, strangely though, I see two hooks (in my head). The first hook ‘came’ to me when I was experimenting with the samples in my new “Sounds of India” audio sample CD I recently bought. I was playing some tunes on Indian veena and I came up with the first hook. It’s a simple melody on a 4/4 scale.

Figure 1: First hook on Indian veena
(NOTE: Click on the images in this post to enlarge them)

The Indian Classical Music (ICM) notation would read: Sa Sa ri Sa – Sa ri Sa. Once I have a hook in place, I can use it as a baseline to compose other sections of the track. Before doing that I prefer to decide on the major instruments I’d like to use in the track. There are always changes in the choice of instruments to suit the theme/flow of the track, but some instrument choices are pretty obvious from the start.

Choice of Instruments
The choice of instruments is somewhat-strictly based on the genre of music that the track is being composed in. Since I chose to compose a fusion track, the choice becomes wide. I chose to use Indian and western instruments. My initial choice was Indian veena and guitar as string instruments, bass guitar for bass (pronounced 'base') and western drums for percussion. Later, as the composition progressed and I improvised on the composition, I added Indian flute for intro, Indian tanpura as a drone and other Indian instruments as backing tracks.

Composing and Arranging
My style of composition falls into the ‘compose-play-improvise’ category. I come up with a basic structure for the track – either using a melodic hook or percussion, add other tracks to it and improvise on it until I am satisfied with the final mix. I use Image-Line FL Studio for programming, arranging, recording, editing, mixing and mastering my compositions. FL Studio (FLS) is a powerful Digital Audio Workstation (DAW), is easy to use and is relatively cheaper than other DAWs in the market.

Coming back to the topic of composition, the first hook was where it all started. I programmed (arranging the notes in a step-sequencer that will play the notes) the composition in FLS and after listening to it for a few times, I was able to compose the percussion track. The first hook is the veena playing the notes shown in Figure 1. A section of the composition so far sounded like the one in the audio clip below:

Making of Laya - Veena with Beats by nitinsgirish

Audio Clip 1: Veena with Beats

The task ahead is to improvise on the basic structure and add backing tracks/instruments and embellish the track. Improvisation leads a composer in many different directions. The challenge is to stick to the theme of the track as much as possible and at the same time, not to overdo it as well. The first step I took (at least in this composition) was to add a bass track. Adding bass makes it possible to cover the lower part of the audible frequency spectrum (between 20 to 200 Hz). A song, theme or an instrumental without bass lacks the sonic depth. Hence bass is an important track in a composition.

Once bass was added to the track, the audio snippet sounded like the one below:

Making of Laya - Veena with Beats and Bass by nitinsgirish

Audio Clip 2: Veena with Beats and Bass

After having composed the first hook and some basic percussion and bass, it’s time to improvise on the main hook and extend it. After playing around and experimenting with the notes, I came up with an extension to the hook. The individual pieces of veena melody are shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Veena Melody

To set the progression of the track and sticking to the theme at the same time is challenging. I completed the main veena melody with backing bass and percussion tracks. The transition to the next section is always challenging to me. Many things can go wrong here. The challenge lies in changing the melody, rhythm and progression of the track without an obnoxious contrast between the sections. There are many ways musicians choose to do this. One method I have liked is to go with the flow – the preceding section of the track sort of guides the succeeding section till that section is able to capture the listeners’ attention on its own. I did that when I composed Mercury, where the marcato section follows the violin before it takes control.

In this track, I chose to add some rhythm guitar in the middle section. The guitar takes control from veena in a ‘hand off’ fashion. The rhythm takes off where veena ends and continues till the next section (composed for Indian sitar) is ready to take the track to the next melodic journey. The rhythm is a simple chord progression, built around three power chords: G, A# and C.

Figure 3: Rhythm

The next section flaunts a melody using Indian sitar. This melody compliments the main veena melody (hook). The melody starts where the rhythm ends. A better way to compose/arrange the melody was to have some sort of a melody hand-over from veena to sitar. That would’ve served the purpose of the theme better and would have served the theme better than the two instruments playing their respective melodies in a disconnected fashion. My guru in Seattle, Arijit-da of Seattle Indian Music Academy, actually suggested me that idea when I sent him the track for his feedback. I must admit that it’s hard to implement many of his suggestions. They are musically challenging to an amateur like myself! Needless to say, I am working on the feedback I get from different sources.

Figure 4: Sitar Melody

Making of Laya - Sitar by nitinsgirish

Audio Clip 3: Sitar Melody

The track concludes in a western fashion with heavy rhythm and metal taking over. I could’ve added some Indian flavor to the ending, but I concluded the track the way it is now, again due to my lack of knowledge in music. The track is now in a decent shape, ready to be improvised and ornamented with backing tracks.

Improvisation and Embellishment
When I listen to the track I just composed and arranged it’s highly improbable that it’ll end up as the final track/mix as it is. I most certainly will come up with some more ideas every time I listen to the track till a point where my brain orders a timeout. In this track, for example, every time I heard the entry of veena melody, the sound of tanpura as a background track came to my mind.

After having tanpura as a background track (or drone as they call it), I started the ritual of compose-play-improvise again. When I listened to the track for couple of times, the sound of Indian flute echoed in my mind again and again as soon as the vibrations of tanpura made its way into the third measure of the song. I grabbed my MIDI keyboard, hooked it into my computer and followed my mind. Although the first set of notes didn’t sound heavenly, it gave me a sonic direction I should take. I improvised on the melody and came up with a simple track using the Indian key flute. This track is now the intro track to the whole piece.

Making of Laya - Flute Intro by nitinsgirish

Audio Clip 4: Intro flute track

The other backing tracks like Indian ghungroo and taalam didn’t take much time to be integrated into the main track. Once the backing tracks are arranged, it’s time for mixing and mastering the track.

Mixing and Mastering
Mixing is a stage, where the individual tracks of a song/theme/instrumental are mixed into a single track (which we listen to) using a DAW or some computer audio software. It is in this process that the levels of individual tracks are decided and set.

Let me explain the mixing process with an example of how the heavy metal band Metallica mixed their tracks then (25 years ago) and now. When they went into the recording studio for their ‘Metallica’ (Black) album, they adopted an interesting approach to recording and mixing their tracks. Bob Rock (their producer) had an interesting way of producing albums. The band members (Lars, James, Kirk and Jason) would sit in the studio and play the songs live. Bob would reign over the mixing console and would record just the drum tracks to the master track. Later, every member would come in, listen to the drum tracks and record their bit in the song. Once the drums, guitars and bass were recorded, James would go ahead and record his voice. They’d record again and again until Bob (and the band) was satisfied with the audio quality and the overall feel of the song. This is what (among one of the important things) a record producer does. He works with the band and gets the best out of them. Once they had all the tracks ready, the sound engineer would mix the tracks and we’d get the master track. This process was all done on tape.

Now, we have the luxury of using sophisticated computer software and digital content at our disposal to make our job easy. The way mixing is done now is every musician (or a member of the band) will come in and record his/her bit. The producer/composer then works with the sound engineer and puts together all the pieces to produce the final mix. All this is done digitally – no more tapes! Most of the effects (like echo, delay etc.) are added in this stage.

I followed the same approach while mixing Laya. The advantage of FLS is that it acts as my sequencer and mixer at the same time. I tend to do most of the mixing settings when I am arranging my tracks. When I am finally done with the composition, improvisation and arrangement, I’ll have very little mixing work to be done. Figures 5 and 6 show the FL Studio mixing console and arrangement for Laya.

I have not done (or got done) professional mastering of Laya, mostly because mastering is a very challenging process (technically) that requires professional-level knowledge of sound engineering and because it can only be done using high end software or hardware equipment. I have done some basic clean-up of the sound using equalizers, compressors and other effects.

Figure 5: Laya - Mixing Console

Figure 6: Laya – Arrangement

Final Track
Once mixing and mastering is complete, the audio track can be rendered as a song in many formats (WAV, MP3 etc.). I have done the same and I have uploaded it on YouTube with a simple-yet-informative video clip.

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