As part of our class unit on Hip Hop music, we were tasked with composing a rap song. To do this we were given a few video tutorials we could base ourselves off of on how to write lyrics, and how to create a breakbeat in soundation.
Initially, i tried to use ableton to create the track, but after hours and hours of struggling with the programme and with microphone connections, i realised i wouldn’t be able to master it enough to create something decent, so i switched back to soundation.
There, i restarted from scratch, found a few samples in the sound library i thought sounded good, and built from there. I knew i needed at least two verses and a chorus so i started by finding two drum loops that went ok together (one for verse, one for chorus), and then added other shorter drum samples in certain places to fill it out. This was the easy route – i’ previously tried to create my own beat from scratch with beatmakers and shorter samples but i never created or found anything that i thought sounded good or professional at all so i gave up on that idea.
On top of the beat i added a bass line and a track of synth chords which make up all of the melodic elements of the track aside from vocals. The bass line is quite repetitive with occasional variations (in blue as opposed to green on the screenshot), and on the synth i went with mostly simple minor chords, with a shift to major in the choruses.
For the lyrics, i didn’t want to talk about anything very personal because i felt like it wouldn’t land well, so i decided to focus on the state of the world instead. The text is essentially just my pessimistic view of how bad everything is at the moment (politics, climate etc.), how hard it is to put in the effort to care about it, and the unlikelihood that anyone (including myself) will actually ever get over themselves enough to get involved in a meaningful way.
I used my phone mic to record and then imported it onto my computer, and synced the audio up to the beat by having 20 or so seconds of tapping out the beat before starting to sing. I recorded several takes, but probably could have polished my delivery of the verses further before committing to a finished product. The choruses are both sung individually and layered with my own voice in harmony.
Lyrics
So the world’s on fire, what you gonna do?
Scroll a little faster? Pretend it aint true?
Sink into your couch, join the ranks of keyboard warriors,
Blissfully unaware that we’re out of ‘new era’s?
Every headline reeks suspiciously of onion,
Truths get bent to match today’s opinion.
Outrage on demand, pick a side, hit send,
We don’t fix the mess, just repost it again.
Hands over eyes, but i still see the glow,
Bad news buzzing like a late night show,
Say “not today”, keep moving along,
Trying to stay sane while it all goes wrong.
Care too much and it hollows you out,
Care too little and you drown in doubt,
Every cause a wave i’m too tired to ride,
So I watch from the shore and set my guilt aside.
They say “look away and you’re part of the blame”
But staring straight at it just fries your brain
If nothing i do really changes the scene
Then maybe looking away is how I stay me.
Hands over eyes, but i still see the glow,
Bad news buzzing like a late night show,
Say “not today”, keep moving along,
Trying to stay sane while it all goes wrong.
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