If I’m honest, I didn’t actually start my thought process with drums at all so I don’t think I’ll be directly following the bullets but nonetheless, I’ll hit them so let’s start. First, I chose a key to set and I picked F#m mainly because I wanted to pick a scale with a decent amount of black keys (sharps/flats). I had finally downloaded the trumpets and horns and was excited to use them in production so I kinda did. I meant to later change the Austin sounds to something synthesized but I grew attached to the sound I started with and decided that I would dedicate my drums to machine work. I then proceeded to find my chords for the harmony part and landed on what you hear in the “Hell’s Kitchen (solo)” file (VI i). I don’t know if I’m annalyzing this correctly but to me it feels like a consistent rise and fall, not just in the notes but a push and pull that you can almost feel. I used this to try to amplify the feeling with the melody. After then turning on the click to find a good tempo to play these at, I wound up back at the starting point of 120bpm. With that set, I officially laid violins (Studio Violins). I wanted to paint a sort of contrast in playing the high parts of the melody in sync with the low notes of the harmonized chords and vise versa for the low melodic part and high harmonic chords. The falling staccato within the second set of strings (Abbey Wood) are without a doubt the first thing I played on the keys as I used a stop and play form of loop recording to find the next piece of the section that I would play. I believe next was the section of notes that are rising from a low F#m(3) of course, in parallel to my falling notes. I played with changing the pace during the end of the final measure and in doing so, went BACK to the falling notes and gave them a rise to go a long with the final motif and finally added in a part to act as a counter melody in the form of playing E(4) and F#m(4) back and forth. I personally think this section as a whole came out pretty nicely. Next. That bass. It’s a Studio Double. As a reminder, the contrasting aspects in this one are what I’m flowing with so I played the bass in a way that both the low stab and the higher one would hit in the high section of the harmony and play partially into the low part as well. I’m not exactly playing on the bass cleft with my piano and upright but this is about the part where I decided to add it in but when I played low, things got a bit muddy and I didn’t want to do too much mixing just yet until I loved everything I heard, anyway these keys would be what you’re hearing more focused in your left channel. From here I messed around with kicks in different patches until I landed on Atlanta and just played something I thought would be interesting to rap over myself. I went into Ultrabeat to find a decent clap sound as well as a hi hat and played those into existence. Once this was done I wanted to spice up the kicks a little more so I painted a couple of kick rolls. And then I added a rim that I moved into the binaural panning mode and should feel like its hitting right above your right shoulder, slightly behind your ear. Mixing wise, I throw in the automated intro to let you know this is a suspenseful piece and represents my thought process when deciding levels. I actually set the Launchkey to have the knobs control my volume and the set automation to latch and slowly turn up my high hats to the level that I wanted them to sit. So my automation plan here essentially (effectively) worked in two ways. It created a slight buildup and allowed me to make an intro out of it with the 16 measures that I had and while also allowing me to find the levels I wanted in a “hands on” type of way rather than point, click, drag. Lastly, suspense needs reverb to help it feel dark if used right. I put a stereo delay on the hi hats as well to fill in the space and let them feel as if they sort of travel and spread a bit. For the second half, I stripped out most of the sounds and left the kick, but changed it up a bit. Kept the original hi hat and clap combo as well as the studio double bass. He'll Kitchen switches up a bit and I play with an 808 sample and a percussion hit from a drum kit I have titled "Pi'erre Sounds" from Hipstrumentals.