Daddy's Sense of Humour
My kids regularly tell me that my sense of humour is terrible. They're wrong but apparently resolute in their assessment. What can you do? The answer: Sample a voice message they left me reminding me of this fact and build a cheesy happy song around it!
Happy Music
Recently, music Youtuber Guy Michelmore posted a video talking about writing happy music. He explored the common traits of happy music, major keys, simple and predictive melodies, a fast tempo, all that sort of thing. He invited viewers to create their own happy music. So I did.
I've been messing around in F major recently so that was as good a key as any to start in. For the chord progression I hopped on to Hook Theory for some inspiration and quickly came away with a I-vi-IV-V that sounded pretty happy to me. I smashed in some synth pads playing this and topped it off with some cheesy piano playing a pop pattern (accents on the 1, 2&, 4).
For the melody I took the chord progression as a framework and just sort of noodled around until I had something. It's not great and it sounds quite a lot like other poor attempts of mine, interestingly this is obviously what my brain defaults to. I tried to keep it interesting with tricks like repetition, varying the note length and jumps of 4th and a 5th. I duplicated the melody across two synths for added texture. Nice.
Now I needed some drums. I'm not a drummer but I had UJAM's Phat plugin sitting around, and that did the job nicely allowing for some variations in the rhythm and for fills.
The bass line injects further interest, following the kick for the most part but adding in some 8th passing notes in most bars. Then in the 8th bar I do this funky walk up the chord and down again. Very satisfying. In the 16th bar I did an open 5th ostinato instead. To keep it interesting.
Things were now coming together but the track needed a focus. Unbeknownst to them, through a Saturday afternoon of messing about leaving me little voice messages through WhatsApp my kids provided the inspiration I needed. I took their harsh criticism of my sense of humour, turning their message into the sampled heart of the track. I added some response from me and ended the thing with a chuckle and a "you're welcome".
Finally, to maximise the cheese I modulated whole thing up a tone from F to G major for the final chorus. The piece crashes home to a resolution on the I-chord right at the end.
The Kids
I needed to credit the kids on the track of course. I'm not so pretentious that I called my kids either Persephone or The Axolotl, funny though that would have been. These are obviously stage names.
My daughter didn't want her vocals publicly on the Internet so, for the released version of the track, I switched her true voice to a AI-generated child's voice instead. With a bit of time correction in Cubase it ended up reasonably close to her original.
My son was more than happy to add the "blibbling". I shoved it through reverb and a delay to make it sound epic. I don't think it's necessarily the sound that an axolotl makes though.
Production and Mastering
I found it quite tricky to get this mixed yet leaving the vocal samples clear, I've never tried mixing a track like this before and there is definitely a lot of skill involved. I tip my hat to producers who work with vocals!
I used EQ to tame the low frequencies, leaving the bass and the kick the only instruments down at the bottom end. The UJAM kick is layered with a one-shot kick from Venus Theory's Chimera pack for added sub-bass 'thunk'.
The synths are bright so they got EQ'd to carve a bit of space for the vocals out of the middle, then I used Trackspacer (a dynamic sidechained EQ) on top to dynamically make more room.
Everything was compressed lightly on a per-channel basis then a little more heavily at the group level.
On the master bus I applied passive EQ from Manley to brighten up everything and enhance the sides and then compression from Shadow Hills to glue it all together. I've settled on those plugins recently - both are modelling classic analogue tube outboard gear - as they seem to sound really good, to my poor ears anyway. Finally, I put Ozone across the master to really crack the track. I spent ages listening to the track on different speakers, it's impossible to make it sound totally good everywhere but I wanted to avoid losing the vocals on a phone speaker. I just about managed it, though I got through half a dozen failed mixes along the way.
The most surprising thing, comparing my initial mix attempt and the one I finally settled on, is how far down in the mix the synth pads could be. I originally had them far too high. Turning them down almost to the point of texture was the key, then the master bus compression can work to keep them balanced with the rest of the elements.
The resulting waveform and spectral frequency display. The kick cuts through the mix the most, that's probably right, and the vocals are cleared on account of the swingeing EQ rather than plain amplitude.
Final Thoughts
I'm super pleased with how this turned out. The result is upbeat and still makes me smile no matter how many times I hear it. Style-wise I realised it's more than a little bit "nineties Mike Oldfield" (cf. Altered State from Tubular Bells II, and Top of the Morning from Tubular Bells III), but as I grew up in the nineties adoring that sort of stuff, I am not upset by this realisation.
Listening to the mix again, the vocals are perhaps too upfront, especially my daughter's samples. But I could agonise over this endlessly and it is time to call this project completed.
Full list of VSTs
Piano - NI Alicia's Keys
Inro Synth - UVI Organic Keys
Lead Synths - UVI Falcon Factory Keys
Pads - UVI Organic Pads & NI Twenty-Five
Bass - NI Scarbee Rickenbacker
Drums - UJAM PHAT & Venus Theory Chimera
Reverb - NI Raum
Additional Vocals - Daddy
Processing: Cubase Stock plugins, Wavesfactory Trackspacer, Waves RCompressor & H-Delay, Noveltech Vocal Enhancer, Softube VCA Comp & Vari Comp, SPL Iron
Mastering: Softube Passive EQ, Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor, iZotope Ozone
Software: Cubase Pro, Premiere Pro, After Effects, Audition, Photoshop