The influence I had for this piece was the excitement of childlike wonder. When I made this, I was thinking about how kids grow up and what learning new things feels like for them. It is very refreshing and beautiful the way the mind develops and in this song. I think it captures the feeling of those moments of watching children learn and discover new things. I think this would be a good song for a commercial or small documentary. This piece is within the realm of pop songs.


   The songs meter is in 4/4 and the structure of the rhythm and bass tracks were made to lead the song from a “what is this?” moment to a “look at what I am learning” moment. It is a transition from curiosity to gaining knowledge. The first sixteen bars of the song has a rising melody and the second half of the song has a rising and falling melody to it. The tempo of the song is 120 bpm. The rhythm of the song also transitions from a tightly structured groove to a very playful and open transition.

   The song as a whole is in the key of E major. The chords played in this song were as follows (E, E major 7th, F#, B, A, G#m, B, F#m.). For the melody I wanted it to sound playful and fun so the sound I chose for it was Marimba which is very similar to xylophones. I reflected on when I was younger and in our music class, we would all play xylophones and recorders. I wanted the melody to sound like someone just playing on a xylophone and having fun. The harmony for this song starts off rising and, in the transition, it rises and falls. My idea around doing this is that the rise builds up the tension for the second half of the piece where everything becomes excited and new.

The audio I used in this song was a xylophone sample on track 10, a recorded sample on track 8, salt and pepper shakers, and a book that I recorded. I edited the salt and pepper shakers, and a book sounds in the ESX24 sampler on track 9 to make them sound more like instruments. It was slightly difficult to get the shakers to sound clear I had to adjust the gain of the mic several times and do a few edits to the audio files. Both of the synths I created were made in the plugin ES P on logic. The first synth on track 11 is a pad and the second synth on track 12 is a plucked synth. Every sound that I made and recorded I wanted to sound like something from a children’s cartoon. 

For the 2 dynamic and time-based effects, I put them on the piano chords and the arpeggiated chords to give a fullness to the song. The piano chords on track 5 have an adaptive limiter and delay that is being used on it. The arpeggiated chords on track 6 have a compressor with a stereo delay on it as well. The aux sends for the effects were on the aux tracks 6-9. The two delays I picked for the two chords tracks had several option and functions that allowed me to give more life and room to the sound of the piano and arpeggiation. I put a compressor on the arpeggiated chords because at some parts they were overpowering the piano chords. I placed an adaptive limiter on the piano because I wanted to adjust the levels of the piano and reduce some of the noise so it would sit nicely in the overall mix of the song.