Under (Song) Construction

This blog is taking a bit of a different approach. I was feeling stuck where to go with my ableton project as well as having other priorities is my life that took away from me working on my own stuff in my own time.

The past few weeks have been very creatively stimulating for my musical side and I have really enjoyed the challenge! On the 21st of March I heard Mark McCewan from studio underground give a guest lecture at SAE in perth to the Audio students. This was really an eye opening lecture for me. Growing up, I was constantly listening to music and writing my own songs. I wrote based on the music that I listened to and not so much from studying musical composition. This lecture really solidified major points in musical composition and songwriting that I was always aware of but never really thought of it in a practical sense.

Some of the things that he addressed were the bringing in and taking out of musical instruments to keep the song interesting. He also spoke about how you can use the vocals to keep a song interesting. His main point was to up the vocal octave for the chorus and keep the vocal highs throughout the second verse. He said that this was a technique that kept the song interesting and made the listener want to listen more.

These points as well as some other points that he mentions have really got me thinking about how I structure the music that I make and play. In our next project coming up “Sound a like”, we have to create a song inspired by Empire of the Sun (one of my favourite bands!!). When analysing the music and how Empire of the Sun compose their songs, a lot of the points that Mark McCewan spoke about really came in handy when planning how we are going to create our song.

The project also involves an element of electronic music. So I have done a lot of thinking in terms of how can I translate some of these points that Mark McCewan spoke about into working with electronic elements of a song.

The first thing that came to mind was the use of a riser and a filter (as spoken about in my past blog) to build up the song to keep the listener hooked.

(the riser with a fade and auto filter )

As well as this, treatment of drums within the song can really influence the buildup of the song and the power of the chorus.

Audio effects on the vocals are something that I think we should experiment with as well. To have a monotone vocal throughout the song with basic reverb will sound fairly boring, so I think if we put certain effects on the vocals as well as those techniques that Mark McCewan spoke about will make a massive difference to the sound of the song.

It’s also important for us to examine how Empire of the Sun compose their music and what kind of technqiues and audio effects that use in their songs to keep it interesting!