"Waterfall Raindrops" and Ableton Live
"Waterfall Raindrops" is a song I composed during my brief obsession with DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations). At the time, my Spotify playlist was full of J-Pop, City Pop, and video game OSTs—specifically music from Atlus's Persona series.
The Idea
I’ve always wanted to successfully produce a song, but I often felt I didn’t know enough about audio engineering or songwriting to make it happen. Like with guitar and coding, I decided to invest time in learning and asked friends questions along the way to understand how to create something from scratch.
The Inspiration
As I mentioned, I was listening to music from the Persona series—specifically the P5 Strikers OST. I’ve always admired the sound of Shoji Meguro, and I knew I wanted to emulate it for this song. So I grabbed my guitar, experimented with jazz chords and indie-style strumming patterns, and got to work. The strumming pattern was inspired by Cosmo Pyke’s "Chronic Sunshine," particularly the chords in the chorus around 1:00.
"Chronic Sunshine" - Cosmo Pyke
Pretty much everything else, was inspiried from the P5 Strikers OST.
The DAW and First Sound
This was the hard part. I had used FL Studio in the past, and while it works well, I always felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of sounds available. I wanted something more minimal that worked better with my equipment. A friend suggested Ableton and showed me how he uses it, along with some songs he had created. It looked great! So I signed up for a free trial and experimented until I got sound coming out of my PC through my Focusrite. Afterward, I downloaded some free guitar plugins I found online (virus incoming lol) and adjusted my settings until they matched the sound I wanted to achieve.
The Song and 'Engineering'
While I didn’t know much about songwriting, I knew I wanted to organize the song into distinct sections such as a chorus, verses, and a bridge. I also had a clear idea of how I wanted certain instruments layered. For example, I wanted a lead guitar riff with jazz chords underneath it. I also wanted those chords paired with an electric keyboard, with synths filling in the background. The bass was my favorite part. I wanted it to move around each chord—especially the passing tones—so I drew from my high school experience with jazz bass and wrote a funky bassline that uses triplets between chords and borrows from neighboring scales.
I got feedback on each part from friends and even received help with the drums from a percussionist. Once I had each instrument recorded, it was time for the scary part: engineering. To this day, this is still my least favorite part of recording music. It’s also one of the reasons I haven’t touched my DAW in several years. I simply don’t have the patience to adjust the EQ of every single instrument, especially when I’m not entirely sure what sound I should be aiming for. It’s a tedious process, but it becomes rewarding once you start to understand how everything should sound. Eventually, I finished the track, had a friend help with the artwork (shoutout to Eli!), and published my song on YouTube!
The Reflection
Music production is rewarding once you have a finished product, but I don’t particularly enjoy the process itself. I love writing music, but not so much translating it onto a computer. That said, I do want to return to this at some point in the future. My love for learning knows no bounds, and I want to continue growing—not only to improve as a novice producer, but also to use any audio engineering skills I develop to support local churches that may not have the best sound in their services. That’s always been something I’ve cared about, and I know it can make a meaningful difference.
Oh yeah, and writing drum parts suck.