Blog 5

Blog 5: Review a selected track of your choice. All genres are welcome. Describe how the music works in terms of its instrumentation, form, use of technology, etc. This entry should be at least 3 paragraphs long.

I want to talk about a song by a band called VersaEmerge called "Theatrics" which is the intro for a song called "The Hider". I only recently became interested in this band, half probably because they have a female vocalist and second, because the guitarists use some cool effects.

The song actually begins with a low drone sound followed by piano playing over the top. There is short pause, the piano drops out and strings come in and play the same melodic lines. Bells are also used for accents. There are also some ticking sounds near the end of the intro, which creates an anxiety and build up for the song to begin.

This is a very smooth build up into the song. I would have normally expected the song to jump right into full gear. The song actually comes back down and starts with soft vocals with more bells. Electronic drums come in the background to start building the song back up for the rest of the band to come in.

The band come back in full force with a very cool lead line. The lead guitar uses some effects to make a the tone very smooth, almost keyboard like. The bands also come in on the chorus which is a powerful effect.

A verse comes next which again involves an awesome guitar effect. The guitarists uses a fast delay and palm mutes on the strings to make it very staccato. The drummer also uses a dance type beat with an open hi hat. There is a prechorus and then another chorus.

After the chorus is a solo section with the guitar doing a short and simple lead line. Vocals come back in for a bridge section with keyboards in the background to change things up a little. The band then drops out except for the lead line and vocals for the first two measures of the chorus. This effect is also used in dance music to create strong dynamics. There are also backing vocals that act like a synth pad in the background.

The vocalist has a very strong voice, but I also thing the song writing is strong as well. The lead guitarists uses lots of cool delay effects through the other songs as well. Synths are also present in many other songs. In my opinion, Versaemerge really stands out in this style of music. They are a newer band, so we will see where they go.

Project 4

EDIT: Imeem has recently changed how they host songs, and you can only listen to 30 second in the player. You can click "Play full song here" on the player to hear the full song.


Project 4 was to create a 2 minute track in a certain style. I chose to do mine in the style of trance.

I am not completely satisfied with the project. I feel like it is Trance lite, not quite as heavy and driving as what I would have liked.

I used the Snoman book to help me with the essentials. I started with a nice simple drum beat to drive the piece forward. I first tried using ReDrum but could not find a kit I like. I then opened up the drum program in Logic Pro and used the Trance Remix kit. The beat itself is 4 to the floor with 16th note high hats, and snare on 2 and 4. I really wanted to overlay a snare and a clap, but the kit didn't have a clap so I used two snares to really make it snap.

Next I recorded a bass line. I used Rewire with Reason for all my sounds. I found a really smooth tone in the subtractor that I thought would sit in the mix nicely. The bass just plays on the up beats where there is no kick.

Snoman then suggested to write the motif rather than a chord progression. The key to trance is to keep it simple. I think I achieved my goal since my friends are humming the melody after I show them the song. I then added an arpeggiator over the top to add a little more texture. I ended up adding delay to thicken it up a little.

Before I went into another repetition I would use a drum fill, using the snare and hi hats, to signal a change. The next section had a very similar melody line but with a different tone. In order to keep it interesting, the next section had a new melody line. The new melody repeats and I add in new chords.

After a drum fill, everything drops out except the arpeggios and the lead line from the beginning. By dropping so the bass and drums have a really strong on the dynamics. It then goes from the slowest part to the heaviest part when the drums come back in with the bass and the altered lead line. The arpeggios continue on after 8 measures along with a kick drum and slowly fade out.

I am pretty happy with the song structure, but I do not feel as if I really encapsulated the driving feel of trance. I need to listen to more trance music to get a better feel for it.

Trance - Sean

Final Project Proposal

I am sure many ideas will change in the process but I have tried to outline what I intend to do for the final project.

I have a lot of ideas floating around for the final project. After listening to Aphex Twin in class, I have really gotten into his music. What especially intrigues me is the use of ambient music, soft sustained synths and melodies, with the use of breakbeats more generally found in drum and bass. In this project I would like to dedicate some time to emulate his style. As of now, I don’t know how to do the break beats but my buddy used some in his last project and I hope he can show me how he did it. I figure I can get some interesting sounds out of Radial.

I would like to incorporate other styles as well. I am especially interested in the trance and its ability to engage the listener with its simplicity. I want to spend some time with the Snoman book and try to create really tight sounding drums as described in the text. Creating drum sounds can take a long time, especially when dealing with compressions, noise gates, filters, envelope filters, and other effects to really nail the sound.

In general I would like to spend more time dealing with effects as well. One cool effect I saw in order to make ghostly voice was to reverse a track, put reverb, and then reverse it back. I want to find interesting combinations and tricks to get different sounds. I also want to include some samples which I can edit in Recycle.

I want to try to alternate between the two styles and then try to blend them in the end and a big climax. This will be very interesting compositionally since ambient music tells a story and trance just changes every 8 measures or so. I am not sure how I will do it yet, but I will experiment with it.