A3 - Music Styles
Contemporary Folk -
Examples: "Betty" and "Illicit Affairs" by Taylor Swift
- traditional folk element with modern pop add ons
- instrumentation = acoustic (e.g., guitars, banjos, violins etc.)
- heartfelt lyrics that tell stories or convey emotions
- memorable melodies that encourage audience interaction
- pedal steel guitar used in IA
Examples: "Exile" by Taylor Swift and Bon Iver
https://youtu.be/56Sn9ldrrS0?si=iu6xK5lTxmwnUCWp
From Above:
- Sliding violins
- Having many vocals from different places around the microphone and different pitchers; gives bigger sound
- MANY layers
- Lots of "weird" sounds - high pitched "whines", sound weird on their own but fit in the mix
- Plucked guitar
- Make electric guitar sound to help the song build
- Simple bass pad
- Lots of reverb on high pitched instruments (e.g., steel pedal guitar) to make it more ambient
- Using shaker as well as high hats
- Simple drum beat
- Intermittent snare roll - response with brush on cardboard box
Pop -
Examples:
https://youtu.be/apRTuV-2qgs?si=ppqHo9-99HX-VXnU
- start with brass; slight chorus and make it last slightly longer
- harmonise with higher, light keys, dulled sound
- drum arrangement = not just basic rhythm, small little bits of toms and things to make a rhythm like a melody - tap something out beforehand? - add bit of distortion and bit crushing - filter on drums until it opens up at verse of just before singing starts
- arpeggiation on tinkly notes? - reverb - reverse - panning from side to side
- crescendo on strings leading up to something
- two synth plinky plonking and panned to either side of the headphones - pull down tone for thin, bright sound
- higher brass, thin sound, lots of reverb, delay and chorus
Another video:
https://youtu.be/7_cmSbb3gC4?si=5mRGtV0cHLKtM2AJ
Mixing and Mastering to create styles
We spoke about sending multiple tracks to a bus in order to have the exact same reverb (and other stuff) for everything so it all sounds like it's in the same room and also, adding reverb to each individual track causes Logic to not work as well as it has to load more things so this is also more efficient.
Dithering - adds swooshing sounds to your tracks to make it more pleasing to listen to and makes it sounds more natural as it covers up any digital or computer noises.
We also learnt about listening to our tracks in different ways - speakers, headphones, laptop, phone etc. We learned about how, when listening to speakers, the bass frequency spreads (like syrup or a liquid of some kind, it pours out of the speakers in all directions) however, the higher frequencies go in more of a direct line and spread out like a cone shape. Due to this, when listening through speakers, the best way to hear it properly is to sit far away from the two speakers in the middle so that it creates a triangle between the two speaker and your ears - this also means you have to have your ears at the same level as where the high frequencies will come out. Good quality headphones are also needed for when mixing with headphones on.
Due to this, you need to have completely different mixes for digital music compared to vinyl which is why people often specialise in mixing and mastering either digital or vinyl music as vinyl needs more dynamic range to sound good due to needing to it also being better at giving this sound but digital is more flexible with the sound it gives.
Normalisation - Puts the loudest sound at 0 decibels and then brings all the other sound up to that 0 decibels so it sounds more balanced.
Pop:
For my Pop style song, I wrote a song in a 4/4 time signature as this is typical of the style. I had it slowly build up over the course of the first verse and prechorus to give the sense of development and a journey. I did this by having it start with just my voice and the guitar, then I added just a kick drum at the prechorus with the bass guitar (just holding root notes for each bar) and then all the instruments came in during the chorus (where the bass guitar changes rhythm to imitate the rhythm of the piano) to give it a punchy sound and a rhythmic sound that would make you want to dance along. The progression is shown below:
I enhanced this aspect by also doubling up the vocals which I did because Taylor Swift does this in many of her pop songs such as "Bad Blood" and "I Did Something Bad". Another thing I had consistently throughout the song was have a bar before each chorus where only the kick drum played on the beat and then I sing on the fourth beat to lead into the chorus - I did this in order to add contrast between volumes and to make the chorus seem even more powerful. I got this idea from Taylor Swift as, in "I Did Something Bad", she cuts it down to only very low brass before coming in with the punchy chorus.
Additionally, I added pizzicato violins later on (playing in the song due to the face that Taylor Swift also had them in the same song and I thought it suited the style very well as the sound is small but effective). I had them play the root notes on each beat and it added more pace and tension to the pre chorus (shown below).
I also added them in during the bridge where they played only during the first two beats of the first two chords of each part of the chord progression and they play a quaver and then two semiquavers. For the second time round the chord progression, they play this on all four bars except they play crotchets on the beat on the last one in the lead up to the chorus to create a build up. This is shown below.
Taylor Swift is also a big fan of using lots of harmonies throughout songs but also like an extra instrument in holding chords beneath the main melody, because of this, I added harmonies higher and lower on the ends of each chorus as well as a small harmony on one of the lines where I slightly changed the melody anyway. Also, on the second pre chorus, I added some ooos underneath the second part as it gave it more depth and made it sound more developed than the first one which gives the audience the feel of progress which is what happens in most pop songs.
Once I'd finished all the recording, I went back through to do the automation and balance out all of the volume and I realised that it was really quite loud during the chorus and so I went through and I turned down the bass guitar, the piano (only a little) and the second voice on the double up vocal. This worked and made the chorus much more pleasant to listen to. I also made sure that the reverb all fit together with each instrument to make it sound cohesive and like it's all in the same room. Another typical feature of pop music is to have a crescendo on the strings when leading up to things, I had this at the end of each of my choruses and in between the ooos at the end of the song as it lifted the song to drop you into the next part.
On top of this, I added panning to different instruments (most notably the strings) in order to make the song feel more immersive as this is important to a pop song to make the listener feel included in some way (whether that's they're being sung to or they're singing along). I also added synths with a smooth sound to imitate the synths that Taylor Swift used during her album 1989.
I attempted to export the drum machine as a midi track and then put it into Logic in order to get a better sound for the drums. However, I ran into an issue with timing. I'm not entirely sure why it's doing it but the timing changes for the exported track despite me selecting it not to and even making sure the project I'm using on Logic is the same tempo as my Pop project just in case.
I just tried doing it again and I was going wrong as I kept selecting "import tempo" which means that it then changed the tempo of the track I put into Logic. It works now.
I used it to change the drum kit sound into sounding less like a drum machine and more like a real drum kit because I wanted it to have a more similar sound to Taylor Swift's 1989 album as there would've been a real drummer recorded for that. I also gave the bass a better sound with it sounding more like a bassist for the same reason as above. As well as this I decided to change the synth to be slightly more mellow as distortion isn't a common feature of 1989 but it had a small crescendo and then immediate diminuendo at the beginning of each note to give it a more interesting and varied sound.
Folk:
For my folk style song, I kept the arrangement rather minimal as to show the contrast between this song and my pop song. I did this by only having a guitar, a drum kit and then vocals.
I played the guitar in twice the same and then panned it to either side of the headphones to give an immersive feel which is typical of contemporary folk and can be seen in songs such as "Exile" by Taylor Swift and Bon Iver.
On top of this, I added a choir effect on the choruses and the bridge where I sung the same part multiple times but from different angles and distances from the microphone and it makes it feel very large whilst still seeming light. I panned these voices slightly to different ears to further emphasise the idea of being immersed in the music.
I also added reverb to everything to make it feel more ambient and calm but also slightly tense. I kept the drum beat really simple by only having a basic four on the floor beat during the chorus and then only playing the kick drum the rest of the time. I also wanted some kind of build so I started the song with just one main vocal and the guitar playing notes from each chord as a fingerstyle technique where I played the lowest note of the chord and then the three highest in a descending pattern. Using a fingerstyle technique was thought of because of songs such as "Illicit Affairs" and "Betty" by Taylor Swift where it is used a lot, especially during the intro to the songs. I also played this again for the second verse where it also had the guitar playing chords underneath it.
At the end of the song, I had the other vocals trail out to just leave the guitar and my main vocal left at the end to give a sense of starting small, journeying through a big world and then returning back to where you started but slightly differently as the guitars are both playing strummed chords. I did this due to this also being typical of lots of contemporary folk songs such as the ones mentioned previously. To add variety and interest, I sang extra bits of the second verse with one vocal further away from the microphone and this develops the song and makes it feel unlike it's the same the whole way through.
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