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How to Make a Song Out of Random Sounds

Knowing how to manipulate and arrange random sounds to create a musical composition is a skill required of modern composers. Composers learn to take everyday sounds and place them in a logical sequence to create patterns and form in a composition. The trick to learning to do this well is to think through the entire composition before attempting to write. Answering fundamental questions, such as how the piece will develop, and how to best convey your message, are crucial to creating an effective piece. Regardless of the audio editing program you choose to record with, the steps are essentially the same.

Step 1 Download and install an audio editor to aid in manipulating and constructing your sounds.

Step 2 Record several sounds with your computer by attaching a microphone to the mic input, labeled with a microphone, on your computer.

Step 3 Plan a schematic for how you will place the sounds. The most basic pieces have a beginning, middle and end, which can be written as ABA, with the first and last section repeating material. If you want several sections, use additional letters, such as ABCBA. Each letter represents a section, and when a letter repeats, the section also repeats.

Step 4 Group the sounds into categories. You could have high, middle and low pitch categories, or maybe loud and soft categories. Think about creative ways to relate sounds to each other. Even though they may appear to be random sounds, these sounds likely share some similarities.

Step 5 Write out an engaging way to present the sounds to the listener with patterns. One possibility is to place a high range pitch followed by two loud pitches. People recognize patterns, so find creative ways to introduce random sounds in a logical order.

Step 6 Create sections that correspond to the schematic created in Step 2. Determine how to represent each section. For instance, you can use different combinations of sounds, increase their frequency or use sounds spaced over longer periods of time to change the tempo of the piece. There are no rules for how to correctly position random sounds.

Step 7 Drag the sounds into the audio editing pane in the order that you have decided to introduce them. You can move the sounds around by using a different track for each sound or by placing sounds at different points throughout the music.

Step 8 Finalize the piece by using the "Normalize" command in your audio editor. Finally, use the "Compressor" function to give the piece a professional sound.

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