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My overall general reflection of this track is more an urban slash hip hop-ish type of beat which is the genre I was aiming for. The sounds you hear are what you typically hear within a hip hop beat in my opinion. I intended to use the beat as an instrumental that I can rap to as I also perform my own written material. So its function is to be served basically as an instrumental that can hopefully be used as a song on an album. 

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The “Meter” of this track is 4/4, the tempo is set at 100 bpm as I played around with slower tempo, but it did not work as well as I thought it would be. So not the typical hip hop tempo but it works for the style of music I produce. I stuck with the 4 on the floor backbeat with the kick and the bass. The groove was harmonized with the chords and melody perfectly in my opinion. I did throw a few effects on the “hit hat” track that transformed the original sound into a more robotic type noise which you should be able to hear clearly within the track. 

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I created the track in the key of C using the following harmony chords: C Gm Am C. I inverted the I chord with the root of C being raised an octave. I attempted to invert other chords, but to me none other chords inverted sounded good. So I stuck with inverting one chord instead of 2 due to how the music sound to my ears. The melodic shape of the melody is aligned with the bass and harmonic chords which gives the entire track life in my opinion. This makes the sound more robust and edgy when I listen to it. That bob your head type of feel. If you listen closely, the first 16 bars was intended to put the harmony in groove with the backbeat, however, the second half of the track; I moved the chords back a bit to have some delayed effect when listening to the back half of the beat. Wasn't originally intended, but I made mistake which gave it the sound you hear and I kind of like it that way. What do you think?

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For my recorded audio I plugged up my Scarlett 1820i and recorded me tapping a bottle cap against a water bottle to get the tapping sound you hear between measure 5 -13 and again your hear it between 15 - 21.  The name of that track is called recording so you know which track has the recorded audio. I also added 2 sends that contained a tape delay and phat FX to give it a better sound as the recorded sound came out crappy.  I also used the ES P for the “Original Synthesized Track”. The name of that track is “Kick” as I set the parameters of the settings to get the kick sound. 

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Last but not least, I wanted to make sure the mix wasn't clipping;  in addition, to adding at minimum 2 dynamic effects. Along with at least 2 time-based effects to the mix. This was accomplished  by adding a Noise Gate (Dynamic) and Compressor (Dynamic) to the track named Kick (ES P Sampler). I also added a Tape Delay (Time-Based) to my recorded sound as previously mention earlier in the description. I incorporated several other effects as well to get the sound you hear. Hope you enjoy!