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Research Into Different Techniques Used in Different Styles of Music
Examples for Modern 80s Pop
Charlie Puth - Light Switch
This is Charlie's first single off the new album and his new style is very 80s pop. It has a lot of synth, electric guitar and electric drums. It is a very upbeat song which is very repetitive, but in a good way, that makes it catchy. The production is amazing and is what stops the repetition getting boring; something changes in every single chorus. Charlie himself has stated that the drums get one decibel louder in each chorus.
Aurora - A Temporary High
One of the new songs off of her new album, A Temporary High really embodies the 80s pop theme in both music and the video. The powerful bass synth that has a very fast rhythm gives the song a forward moving feeling and adding the pounding bass drum on top of that just adds to it more. The song is full of synths but also combines this with more common instruments such as guitar. There is an acoustic guitar that is played with a lot of power.
The main features of a modern 80s pop song, as seen in both of these examples, is having a lot of synths, a drum beat that is quick moving and lots of repetition but differences in production. Throwing a modern flair on top of that with modern synths and mixing in some guitar makes it feel new. These tracks take a lot to produce as you have to find some way to keep changing it up and keeping it interesting.
Example for Indie Rock
Stranger - Vistas
From a very underrated Scottish rock group, Stranger is a very typical indie rock song. It has loads of distorted guitars, heavy drums but also has a synth that plays the same melody that vocals sing in the chorus. This adds a new dimension that would have otherwise been missing. Other than that, the song is rather simple with a catchy melody that gets stuck in your head easily, and a lot of repetition in the chorus.
Example for Acoustic Pop
Sing - Ed Sheeran
This was one of Ed's first singles off of his second studio album, X. As he said in an interview, he was very nervous to release this song as it was different to what he had previously released. However, it went on to define how the acoustic pop industry should sound.
As seen in this song, most acoustic pop songs have a lot of acoustic guitar, a bit of electric guitar in the background, random bits of percussion and a drum kit. Instrumentally, these songs tend to be very simple with very basic structure. They rely on catchy melodies that people can sing easily to gain popularity.
Example for Piano Ballad
Hurt Locker - FINNEAS
One of the songs off his album "Optimist", "Hurt Locker" is a classic FINNEAS piano ballad. The song includes a lot of piano (obviously) with drums that gradually make themselves more present as the song goes on, plus a lot of very rich, powerful vocals that layers and layers of harmonies on them to create a huge sound.
I'm Sorry - Blanks
This is one of the songs of Blanks' first studio album "Nothing Lasts Forever and That's OK" and it takes the form of a piano ballad. It is a very simple song and is about an apology to someone. It is mainly made up of piano and vocals and there is a bit of guitar that comes in during the second verse. To keep it interesting, he adds little sound effects like the sound of vinyl crackle and crickets chirping in the background. This song brings in a lot of emotion which makes up for the lack of instrumentation.
All of these things, from both songs, are what make up a typical piano ballad song and are all things that I would like to add to my song. FINNEAS likes to throw in a little bit of synth just to add to the sound and blanks likes to throw in some little noises that you wouldn't typically find in music, however, this is not typically in a piano ballad. I would like my piano ballad song to take after these to songs, so I will write it in a minor key and try to keep the instrumentation simple.
Example for Piano Solo
Peaches Etude - FINNEAS
It's not often you get a nice piano solo piece of music on an album, but this was a welcome addition to the "Optimist" album. There are obviously not many features to this song as it is purely a piano solo. It sounds very much like a classical song but has no other instruments getting in the way so you can focus entirely on the piano.
Example for Electronic Pop
I Don't Miss You at All
This was one of the more underrated songs of FINNEAS' EP, "Blood Harmony". It is a short, Electric Pop song that has a catchy main riff and solid beat.
Electric Pop songs share a lot of their features with 80s pop songs but have a different feel overall. The typical electric pop song would include a lot of different synths, programmed electric drums and a lot of effects on the vocals. Other than that, there is nothing else as all the bass and extra sound effects are done through synths.
Marketing Campaigns
Aurora
For the release of Aurora’s album “All My Demons Greeting Me As A Friend”, they decided to build a set of tools that allowed the fans to share the love they had for the artist. They did this by using Aurora’s fan page “Warriors and Weirdos”. This gave the fans the feeling they were close to the artist and gave them exclusive content. They also got fans involved on twitter by asking them to tweet, which would help to switch on a bunch of lights and gradually reveal the album art work. They also created a world first interactive Spotify home page, where users could choose a moth and release it into the light. This got people interested who may not have known who Aurora was.
They had a £5,000 to £10,000 campaign budget and their target audience was the 18-24 age bracket and 59% majority females. They focused on getting the global audience involved by only really using online resources and sites to spread the word.
This campaign yielded great results, getting immense growth across all of her social media channels. Coming from zero she gained 67 million Vevo views, 350 thousand YouTube subscribers, gained 1.6 million monthly listeners on Spotify and also 200 thousand followers on Spotify as well. The campaign allowed people who weren't aware of Aurora to discover more about her work.
Ed Sheeran
Before the release of this album, Ed Sheeran had just taken a full year out of the public eye. This made this campaign extremely important as they had to get people talking about him again. To start off, on the anniversary of his departure from social media, they turned his profile pic blue, which was the main colour theme of the album (Divide). This sparked the first bit of interest which was continued by a short video that followed that stated new music was coming. They slowly started running six second ads on YouTube and eventually released a 30 second clip of “Shape of You” on Snapchat without telling anybody. This caused fans to spread the word as soon as they realised it was there. They also made the decision to release the whole album on Ed’s YouTube channel so that they could reach the extra 23 million plus people he had subscribed to him at the time. On the release day of the album, Ed went into a HMV shop, unannounced, and started serving fans the new record. They took a video of this and released to Ed’s Facebook which gained a lot of traction.
They had a £25,000 campaign budget and their target audience was pretty much any age and 65% majority female. They were trying to target the whole of the UK but were hoping it would also have a global impact.
The campaign was a massive success and scored Ed the number 1 album of the year. Along side this, the Divide tour also went on to become the best selling tour of all time, overtaking the record previously set by U2.
Imagine Dragons
Having been inspired by an arcade takeover idea, they decided to recreate the idea by hosting a pop-up arcade in am eighties-themed club called Cherry Discotheque. The main objective was to increase awareness of the latest album (Evolve) and try to drive record sales. The arcade consisted of 12 vintage arcade consoles, a beer pong table and an air hockey table. They wanted to make sure the event was special for fans, so they did things like making custom drinks that they called things like “Believer” drink and “Thunder” drink, named after different song on the album. They hired a local promoting organisation to help advertise the event on both social media and on physical signs. They also put a header on their website named “Takeover”. The event was a great success:
· Before the event, the album got to the top ten
· After the event, the album got to the top five
· It also caused their previous album, “Night Visions” to re-enter the charts at number 34
They had a campaign budget of £5,000 to £10,000 and a target audience of 14-24- and 34–44-year-olds and 56% majority male. They focused mainly on targeting Singapore with the promoting organisation they used, but it also had a strong online effect.
Trip to Derby Uni
On Wednesday 30th March, me and the rest of my class went on a trip to Derby University for their music open day. Whilst we were there, we had talks from different producers and had lectures on different roles in the music industry. We also had someone from Novation come in and shows us the basics on synthesis and sampling, which I found really helpful and I will be adding what I've learnt to my music.
We also got to have a look around the on-site studios and theatres and get a look at how all the equipment works. Here are some of the pictures I took whilst we were exploring.
Sound Design Research
Part A:
Investigate and identify a range of sound design techniques and/or sources relevant to the music you will produce. For example:
• Searching for samples that exist in published music
• Finding sample libraries with loops or one shots
• Finding VST patches that other producers have created
Learning to create sounds from scratch through video tutorials or magazine articles
Part B:
Discuss how you can use some of these ideas and techniques to develop your own music.
You can present this work with examples of the sounds you have found or created along with commentary on your selection or creative process.
Make sure you provide links to the sources of your research, whether these are magazine articles, websites, tutorials or otherwise. This work should be complied as part of your research portfolio along with other research tasks and any other relevant research you do for the final major project.
Part A
I am focusing this on the pop music genre as this is where my interest lies the most. For this genre, FINNEAS is one of the main people that is able to sample random sounds into his music. For example, he has stated in several interviews how he liked the sound of an Australian crosswalk, so he sampled it and added to "Bad Guy" by Billie Eilish. There is also a dentist's drill in the background of "Bury a Friend" and there is also glass breaking in that song as well. In his own music he has different sounds, such as thunder or crowds of people.
Part B
Being able to add these everyday sorts of sounds to music is something that I want to be able to add to my music. It adds an almost familiar feel and if you can do it right you don't even notice what it is.
In my music I have added the sounds of a city along with a vinyl crackle, birds and a night-time pond. I have added these sounds in way that adds to the song without you noticing and when you listen to the song without them, it feels as though something is missing.
How to Make a Reverse Symbol Sound in Logic
Using a reverse symbol is a good way to build up a song into a bigger section or build a song up to a drop. I have never used one before so here is how to do it.
First you need to create a new instrument track with a drum preset by right clicking the empty space beneath the tracks and click new instrument track. Then go over to the left and choose any drum kit preset.
Once you have played the note, stretch it out to the preferred length by double clicking the new green midi score. This will open up the editor so that you can make any desired changes.
Then, you need to double click this audio file to open up the audio editor. By default, it will open up on the green tab that is labeled "Track". You will need to go onto the next tab along labeled "File"
Then you need to play a symbol note into your project. This is normally the C# note on a MIDI keyboard or you can create and empty midi score, find the correct note and draw it in.
Once you have done all this, you need to bounce the file in place. To do this, you need to right click the midi score and click "Bounce in Place". This will open a menu at the top of the page where you can change the name. Then click bounce and it will create a new track and place the bounced or file into it.
Once you have done this, go over to functions towards the top left and go down to where it says reverse and click this. This will reverse the audio and you will have a reverse symbol sound. You can then choose if you want to add any fades or effects to it, such as reverb.
I have added this effect into the track I have been working on. As seen in this screenshot, it is labeled as rise up and it occurs just before the drop into the big instrumental section.
For this research I referred to the tutorial posted on YouTube by Prod.SpaceCadet. I have linked the video to the right.
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