Alan Walker Fade Python cover

26 July 2019

Back in high school, I was very much interested in music. I took music lessons for different instruments and played in the morning assembly daily. We had a variety of instruments and I was really into music more than anything else. Then we moved to a different city and although I took my instruments with me I couldn’t continue with my music lessons, and it stalled to a complete stop. We sold off the instruments and I just kept a keyboard 🎹 and would occasionally play it, which stopped working right NOW, during the COVID quarantine! Although nothing beats playing music on an instrument, I still tried playing some on my PC & using some software.

I just found out about SuperCollider, it creates a server for audio synthesis. There’s another amazing tool, FoxDot which lets us write code for SuperCollider as we play it! It has a bunch of prepackaged instruments and a big collection to extend it. I’m having fun with this, and I think it’s worth checking even if you don’t like coding. It uses basic programming concepts like functions, loops, conditionals, etc, and lets you make some decent music. I tried to recreate one of Alan Walker’s tracks – Fade (just a random song).

Disclaimer ⚠️ I’m just having fun with the code so it’s nowhere nearly as good as his song. Just added some guitar and drums, added a simple drop and it’s all just a few lines of Python Code 🐍.

🚧🚧🛑🛑🛑🛑⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️🛑🛑🛑🛑🚧🚧

The code is not very clean 😛 proceed with caution, it’s work in progress, I’ll be working on it later

import time as t # for sleep / delay between sounds

#speed of track
def setTempo(time):
    Clock.bpm=time #set tempo(its like speed of beats but not exactly speed)
    Clock.mod(16)

# guitar sounds and tracks
def guitar(fill1,fill2):
    if(fill1):
        #for slow guitar play in the music, with some echo
        #these nos are for keys, next number for next key viz. added on new lines for better understanding of keys
        p1>>pluck([0,0,0,2,5,5,5,4,2,2,2,2,0,-1,-1,-1,0],dur=[1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1/2,1/2],sus=1) 
    if(fill2): 
        #for the second overlapping guitar with double notes
        p2>>pluck([0,0,0,0,0,0,2,2,2,2,5,5,5,5,5,5,4,4,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,0,-1,-1,-1,-1,-1,-1,-1,0],dur=[1/2,1/2,1/2,1/2,1/2,1/2, 1/4,1/4,1/4,1/4, 1/2,1/2,1/2,1/2,1/2,1/2, 1/2,1/2, 1/2,1/2,1/2,1/2,1/2,1/2, 1/4,1/4,1/4,1/4, 1/2, 1/2,1/2,1/2,1/2,1/2,1/2, 1/4,1/4 ],amp=0.5,sus=3)

#beats for track
def regularBeat(preBeatDrop=2,trigger=True,ampp=4):
    if(trigger):
        p3>>play("x",dur=[preBeatDrop],amp=ampp)
    else:
        p3.stop()
    
#beats change before DROP    
def beforeDropBeat():
    regularBeat(1)
    t.sleep(16)
    regularBeat(1/2)
    t.sleep(8)
    regularBeat(1/4)
    t.sleep(6)
    regularBeat(1/8,True,4.5)
    t.sleep(4)
    regularBeat(0,True)

#track after the drop
def drop():
    guitar(1,0)
    p4>>play("x-",dur=[1/2,1/2],sample=[17,17],sus=5,amp=[4,1])

#stop music
def stop():
    Clock.clear()
    
#all components of song
def alanWalkerFaded():
    setTempo(80)
    guitar(1,0)
    t.sleep(16)
    guitar(1,1)
    t.sleep(8)
    regularBeat()
    t.sleep(2)
    beforeDropBeat()
    drop()
    t.sleep(40)
    stop()

#play the song !
alanWalkerFaded()

This code just plays the song, you can record it with any software. I used Audacity to record and export it as an MP3 file. You can download it or listen to it here, in the player below. Link to complete file.