Empire of the Moon?

The past few weeks have been a really crazy learning curve for me. I feel like I have had a really big introduction into what working in a studio would be like. I was working on a two projects. The first project was a sample pack that is inspired by 80s synthesisers and the sample pack has taken on an eerie, dark vibe. The second project is a song that is inspired by the band Empire of the Sun and was written and composed with 3 other people. I spent 2 full days in the studio. Spending 8 hours one day and 12 hours the next day was a very challenging yet important learning curve in understanding the music industry.

I’d like to focus on the second project which is the song that is inspired by Empire of the Sun. This task has been particularly difficult as it is hard to match the sound that Empire of the Sun produce. As well as this, we had to produce our own song with lyrics which was pretty exciting. Our biggest challenge as a group was matching the sound that was required. We wrote a melody which initially sounded alright and we were fairly happy. As we worked on the song, we started to take a different direction and strayed a bit to what kind of genre Empire of the sun follow. We decided as a group to rewrite the song and analyse the music and lyrics of a few of their song again, to get ourselves back on track.

We decided to have a synth leading the song, with an acoustic guitar. Originally we wanted to have both electric and acoustic guitar in the song, however the electric guitar and the synth lead didn’t work well together, so we decided to simplify the song and only use the acoustic.

When deciding what we wanted to write about, we analysed a few of their songs. We noticed that Empire of the Sun do not really sing about love and relationships, so we took that into account when writing out lyrics and avoided writing a love song. Eventually we landed up with a demo that we were fairly happy with. Our first vocalist fell through so we decided on a female vocalist which actually worked better with the song.

After we got feedback on our song, we realised that the song was following more of an indie style instead of electronic which is more inclined with Empire of the Sun. We were given advice to balance the song more and increase the electronic elements of the song to stay true to the style of Empire of the Sun.

As a group working on the project, we decided that the song doesn’t build as much as we were hoping for. As well as this we were hoping to add in a guitar lead over the instrumental section of song so that the song doesn’t sound too repetitive. We followed the basic song structure that Empire of the Sun used, although we are trying to stay true to them as a band, we feel that the song structure may not work entirely with the song that we have written. Take a look at our different tracks that are in the demo track below, and listen to the demo track as well!

As a group we have learnt so much from this experience and have a lot more to work on before our song is completed! Enjoy :)