Sequencing
<>
This is the cover of HER's "Best Part" featuring Daniel Caesar. The song is comprised of three backing tracks with bass, acoustic guitar, and jazz electric guitar. There is also percussive claps and a melody played by alto sax.
Here is the Pro Tools edit window and as you can see the MIDI tracks have automated panning. The melody has some relative pitch bends but not much. I used the velocity to the claps to determine the volume at which they are heard. This adds variety and keeps the underlying rhythm interesting. I doubled the chords in the guitar with an acoustic and electric jazz guitar to give a full sound. When the jazz guitar comes in the panning splits the guitars to the Left and Right speakers for a more full and wide sound.
Here is the Xpand for the percussion. I originally was going to add some snare, kick, and high hats. However, I decided to leave those out to keep the simplicity of the beat.
Here is the melody Xpand. This is just an alto saxophone that I thought went well with the smooth R&B vibes of the song.
Here is the Xpand for the guitars. I divided the guitar instrumental into two MIDI tracks. One for Acoustic and one for Jazz. The panning automation can be seen on the Xpand during playback. The Hard Steel was going to be included but I decided to not mud up the backing tracks with the harsh sound.
This is the Xpand for the bass and I decided to use a soft fingered bass because it went well with the Reverb plugin and I liked the smooth feel to the sound.