Tag Archive for: storytelling

Creating Depth in Music

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I don’t know many people who took theatre in school, or aspired to become an actor or comedian. For me, having a background in theatre has shaped my vision of music, performance, and storytelling. In Québec, we have a “theatre sport” called Improvisation, where teams meet in a rink to create stories and characters, out of the blue. After practicing this for 20 years or so, it’s shaped how I perceive songs and sets. There are so many parallels to music in theatre: how a story develops, the use of a main character, supporting roles, etc., all of which can be applied to the use of sounds in a track.

A story is never great without quality supporting roles. Support adds depth to any story, and richness to the main character. Think of all the evil nemeses James Bond has faced—the more colorful they were, the more memorable the story, and the same goes for songs.

You might have a strong idea for your song, but if it has a good supporting idea or two, then you’ll end up with a song that keeps you engaged until the end.

I’ve been really into minimalist music lately; I like music that has a solid core idea that evolves. I was reading a really nice post on Reddit about Dub Techno where one of the main criterion discussed was the importance of simplicity. Simplicity doesn’t make something dull or dumb—in music it can be a reduction of all unnecessary elements, in dub techno resulting in a conversation between the deep bass and the pads and other layers.

If you’re immersed in electronic music, you’re generally used hearing multiple layers and often multiple conversations between sounds. Percussion layers will be often related to themselves, but the main idea is usually supported by a second layer. I often hear this in some indie rock songs too, especially ones that have some electronic elements in them. The way the human ear works, is that we will always hear the main component of a song as the centre of attention, but attention will shift back-and-forth between different layers. The advantage of having depth in music is that it encourages repeat listening. For a listener to replay a song and hear something new is exciting; some songs will grow on them even though they may have felt overwhelming during the first listen.

How can you create secondary ideas and “supporting roles”?

There are multiple ways to do to add depth to your songs.

Negative Space

The most important part when you program or write a melody, is to leave some empty space in it, which I call “negative spacing.” This space is where your secondary ideas can appear, supporting or replying to the main idea. I usually start by writing a complex melody, and then will remove some notes that I will use elsewhere, either in a second synth, bass, or percussive elements. Here are some suggestions as to what you can do with the MIDI notes you remove from the first draft of your melody:

  • Use the same MIDI notes from your melody, but apply them to multiple synths or other sounds to create variations and multiple layers that all work together.
  • Use the MIDI tool chords and arpeggios to build evolving ideas that come from the same root.
  • Look into some MIDI-generating Max for Live patches that can give you alternative ideas. I’ve had some fun with patches like Magenta, but also with the VST Riffer or Random Riff Generator which are really interesting.

The “Fruit of the Tree” Exercise

This is an exercise that is a bit time-consuming that I have a love/hate relationship with. You spend time playing the main idea through intense sound altering plugins. So, if your main idea is a melody, imagine you send it through granular synthesis, pitch-shifting, a harmonizer, random amplitude modulation, etc.—you’ll end up with a bunch of messed up material that can be shaped into a secondary idea while still being related to your original idea. The idea is to transform what you have into something slightly different. There are multiple plugins you can look into for achieving this:

  • Vocoders, mTransform, mHarmonizer, mMorph: These all work by merging an incoming signal and with a second signal. So, let’s say you have your main idea or melody—you can feed it into something completely different, such as a voice, some forest sounds, textures, or percussion, and you’ll obtain pretty original results.
  • Shaperbox 2 is the ultimate toolbox to completely transform your sound by slicing, gating, and filtering it, with the help of LFOs. This is pretty much my go-to to create alternative tools quickly. One thing I like to do a lot, is to run two side-by-side on different channels, and then use them to create movement that answers one another. For instance, one will duck while the other plays. You can also use side-chaining in the newest version, which can create lovely reactivity, if you use it along with the filter to shape the tone by an incoming sound. This allows you to do low-pass gating, for instance, which isn’t really in Ableton’s basic tools.

Background Sounds

The lack of background sounds, or noise-floor, always leaves people with the impression that there’s something missing in a track. This can be resolved with a reverb at low volume that leaves a nice overall roundness if you keep it pretty dark in its tone. Low reverb creates an impression that a song is also doubled, or wide. Another good way to make background sounds is to load up a bunch of sounds that can be played multiple times in different sections of your song, at very low volume. I was checking out this producer who does EDM/festival music, and he would use sounds of people cheering at a very low volume in moments where the chorus of the song would hit, to create more density and excitement. However, at a high volume, this approach can conversely create a “wall of noise”, so it should be crafted carefully.

If you simply drop a background sound into a project, such as forest sounds, you’re missing out on one of the most enjoyable activities in making music, which is to create your own live sounds. A forest has a bunch of—what seems like—random sounds. You can alter this, and say have a basic 5-second background of noise-floor and then decide when the bird chirping comes in via automation and perhaps have them sync to the tempo. This creates a bit of a groove too. A good exercise is to try to create sounds that emulate nature as you’ll have a bit more control over the sounds (and you’ll learn more about sound design in the process).

Ghost Notes

Ghost notes are mostly discussed as they relate to percussion, but they can be used, as a technique, with anything. A common example of ghost notes is their use in hi-hats, as a bunch of in-between hats at a very low volume to fill up space, which stretches the groove and but avoids too much negative space. Aside from using this technique on the low end—where sounds need a lot of space and room to breathe—make sure everything doesn’t sound mushy. The use of a delay in 16th or 32th notes can be a good way to create ghost notes.

A tap delay, where you can program where the delays fall, is also super fun in terms of creating ghost notes, as you can use one to make complex poly-rhythms. However, I suggest cutting some part of the high-end from the delays to avoid clashing with the main transients, and make sure the volume is very low. Using a AUX/Send bus for delays can be quite useful.

SEE ALSO : Improving intensity in music

Learning how to make melodies

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One of most difficult things for a self-taught musician to get the hang of is writing melodies. Even for a trained musician I believe melody is still a challenge; using theoretical knowledge to come up with the right melodic vocabulary to really express what one wants to express can be difficult. When I started to make music more seriously, I was hanging out with a few friends like Mateo Murphy, Mitchel Akiyama, and Tim Hecker. At the time, Mitch taught music theory and piano. I once asked him if he could teach me as well, because I wasn’t feeling confident with melodies at that time. Learning more theory really felt it was the right thing to do; if I was going to write music, I thought more theory would be for sure be an essential part of improving.

Mitch loved my music and after thinking about it, said:

There’s nothing wrong with your melodies. I understand you might not like them, but learning more music theory doesn’t mean that you’ll like them more. I think [music] classes would pull you in the wrong direction and I’m more interested to hear what you’ll do on your own in the years to come.

This is one of the most surprising things I’ve probably been told, even in the time that’s passed since Mitch gave me this feedback. At first I was confused if Mitch’s answer meant that I already knew enough “naturally”, or that I had a “beginner’s mind” which was lucky or naively interesting to him. In art, having a naive approach can have certain charm but can also be awkwardly odd. I read a quote from Picasso during my studies in arts that has stayed with me (I did theater and stage comedy for years before making music). Picasso once said “it took me four years to paint like Raphael but a lifetime to paint like a child.”

Children create and express themselves in a very spontaneous way, and I believe that Picasso was referring to their state of mind. Tim Hecker had the same kind of vision, and if you listen to his music, you’ll hear a lot of letting go in how things happen, but his approach is still controlled. While he was doing a lot of granular synthesis in metal music, I was dealing with melodies coming from a sound source or sample.

The beauty of electronic music is how we sample music to reinterpret it into a different form. Some will use a sample as-is, others prefer changing it a bit, and then there are the people who change it completely. In all cases, working from a source gives an artist healthy limitations in working with other tones and notes that must all work together.

One thing you can do is use Ableton’s Sampler and slice out parts from a musical loop you like, then with the MIDI notes you can change the order around and you’ll automatically have something new. If you don’t like the sound (say a piano) but you like the notes, then you can bounce the new melody and use Ableton’s melody extractor to have new MIDI to send to a synth or sampler using a different sound.

Next comes the need to add extra notes, but what if they’re off? What if they’re completely messing everything up? Again, what seems to most people like the best answer to this problem lies in learning more music theory.

There are multiple ways in which knowing more theory would potentially help, but let’s first consider some facts.

First off, if you like electronic music or more low key music, I’m sure you all know some songs that have very little musical content. Some songs are made on 2-3 notes/chords and can still pull it off. So why not try to see how far you can go with whatever material you already have before making it more complex? You’d be surprised sometimes that less might actually be better. The clearer the message, the more powerful the bond you can create with the listener, and sometimes this implies to reducing melodies to essentials.

However, some people think that if you stick with only simple content, you’ll never really evolve as a musician. I don’t believe this. I could say the same thing about sound design, synth design, mixing, and mastering. You can’t expect to know everything so fast and that you’ll instantly be great at it. But the more you work with one thing, the more comfortable you become. Once you have a good base skill set, you start to take risks that intuitively lead you to the results you are looking for. Same thing goes for percussion design. People often think that using a sample is not being creative, but it actually makes you study the best sample for a particular percussive element, and when you find great ones, then you’ll want to know how they’re made. If you start by designing sounds before sampling, you are venturing into territory where your references might be poor. And again, this also goes for melodies and production.

In other words, it’s more important to practice and actually finish songs; keep it low key and constantly be on the lookout to find inspiring references or source material.

Again, some will say that music theory would do no harm in helping. Of course it won’t, and if you dig, you can find multiple music theory classes or tutorials online. There are also plugins like Scaler that can help you with propositions. But for me, I find myself agreeing with Mitch and encourage people to try to approach melodies more personally.

One of my current musician buddies is Bryan Highbloom who is a jazz musician who I’ve collaborated with. With his 40+ years of playing, he’s seen a lot of shows and explored many different approaches [to music], so I often like to ask him questions to hear his views. Yesterday I asked him about the importance of progressions, theory, and such.

The most exciting time of my life when I started to learn to play was when guys like Coltrane came up with something that was completely different from anyone else. He had his own vocabulary. At the time, people were really fed up of doing the same progression, scales, and routines. It felt like we were making music for others to get, not music the way we want to make it. Coltrane was fresh. He knew what he was doing, but it was also because he wanted to break rules and get out of the cage. I’m a free jazz guy. I like to try new things all the time. I feel like I see more that way and then it gives me ideas for the next jam based on what was inspiring me. But the thing is to be in the moment and to record yourself, all the time.

Though he didn’t mention it specifically, listening to past sessions we’ve recorded, he liked to have a melody frozen in time, something you don’t catch and have to let go. But with MIDI, we usually trim out the parts we like less and move them around. So in a way, to get interesting content you need to spend a lot of time in the arranger and move things around. Trust your ears – they should know when something is off. If you’re unsure, use Ableton’s Scales and you know you’ll be in tune.

From my circle of friends, Mateo was on the other side of the spectrum with his approach to melody. His view was that it was important to have structured melodies and that it would have to “work” harmonically speaking. His background and main interest at that time was DJ’ing, so melodic and harmonic structures were essential to help him achieve his sets. I like to have one person I talk to that has a different view, because it keeps me structured in my work and stops it from being too all over the place. Mateo’s and my common interest for DJ-oriented music has always been there, and having that always in the back of my head made me think about pushing my boundaries somewhere between Mitch’s vision and something more accessible.

This is why I learned about progression and theory only when I felt I needed to have one point clarified when I really needed it. But not to create an entire melody, all at once.

I once had a contract where I was asked to finish a melodic song. The first thing that I noticed was that the melody was out of tune and sounded very off. But the client loved it as it was. I showed him that just by adding scales, we could “remove” off keys so he sees the real tones of his phrase. But of course, this would change the vibe completely, which was not what he wanted. We both asked a few people to validate the track, and while everyone pointed out that there was a problem, the client wanted to keep it the way it was.

The moral of this story is, if you’re in doubt about a melody, ask around. If you’re tone deaf, it’s important to learn this about yourself sooner rather than later, and work to improve it. But then again, if you actually love dissonance that’s all well and good, but be ready to face a lot of frowns. Not being good at writing melodies doesn’t mean you can’t get anything done, maybe you have other strengths that you can focus on!

SEE ALSO : A Guide to Percussion

Basic Song Arrangements Tips

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Given the quantity of hours of mixing I do regularly, I work on lot of projects from a wide variety of clients. I also have to do a lot of “cleaning up” before I get to work on the actual mixing of a song. I wanted to share with you basic song arrangement tips that you can do which will speed up song construction and help make it sound better in the end.

Cleaning a project for clarity

“Cleaning” is something many people overlook, but it will help you better understand what’s happening in a song. I strongly encourage people to work on multiple projects at once with my non-linear production technique; a clean project will help you understand where you left off on your last session.

Here are some tips for a cleaner, clearer project:

  • Name your channels/samples something simple. For example, rename that loop “rolling_AD252” to “percussion”. Keep things simple and clear as well as have your own vocabulary.
  • Color each channel based on content. For instance, red for kick, brown for bass, blue for melody, etc. On Live v10, you can then apply that color to the clips.
  • Create a comprehensive timeline in your arrangement. This is where 90% fail! The first sounds in your song should be moved way up to the front and top, and as sounds come in, they should be dropped in below. Since the arranger moves from left to right, you will sounds appear in order of appearance, just like how they make it for movies.
  • Drop markers to see the key points. Markers on the timeline help you see how things are repeating in a logical matter as well as for you to see where to drop in your transitions.
  • Consolidate blocks of sounds, change color if there are changes. Consolidate all the little blocks so you can duplicate them easily and see your arrangements more clearly.
  • Arrangements aren’t mixing. Don’t add all your effects and compression yet, focus on the timeline of things, then you can easily group and do your mixing if everything has been labeled and colored properly.

Before consolidation

Clips consolidated

And duplicated

Think Balance

When you make a song, you have to think of a few key points to keep people interested:

  • Keep things moving to avoid redundancy.
  • Have logical development.
  • Bring in some surprises.
  • Have solid transitions.

All this can be seen visually if your project is clean and clear. Here’s how:

The image above is a good clean start. You can see these blocks are pretty straight-forward and repetitive. Usually when I hear a song like that, I will automatically visualize the blocks coming in and out; I call that type of arrangement “blocky.” There’s not much happening, nothing is too exciting, and the balancing of “blocky” songs is extremely rigid, dull.

However, having a “blocky” song can easily be fixed.

  • A sound can be appreciated agan if you “reset” it. You can “reset” a sound by turning it off, removing it, then bringing it back at a key point. This is a good way for the listener to appreciate different combinations of sounds all together. If you leave all your clips playing all the time, you can’t appreciate if X plays with Y alone. This is why I find that a song with 3 hats and or 3 percussion tracks gives you a really broad range of combinations, but you’ll need to be creative to have them all explored in a song. That can be done by occasionally muting certain sounds.
  • Transitions, transitions, transitions. Did I say this enough? You can make nice transitions with en effect, a silence, a flam (rolling, repeating sounds), a swap of sound(s), a volume automation, etc. Explore!
  • Automation, fade-ins. If your sounds all come in at once, try having some fade-ins from time to time.
  • Create variations. If the sounds were programmed in a specific way in a section, have them varied in the following section.
  • Varied patterns length. If you have multiple patterns that are one bar long, try having some that are 2 bars long, others 4, some half a bar. The richness of the combinations where sounds shuffle over time will be exciting to listen to.
  • Don’t drop all of your musical assets right at the start. Try to keep new sounds appearing per sections.

This last image shows what a project like with some holes added, which will add a lot more dynamism and surprise to your song. Take your time! You can trust the listener by letting things go and let things evolve. If you’re not into ever-evolving songs and more into stripped-down, tracky arrangements, its pretty much the same thing: take your time to get things come in and use automation.

I hope this helps!

Storytelling through arrangements and song arrangement techniques

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When it comes to mixing and mastering, my work involves to listening to many, many songs. Some are great, while others need more love, but from the numerous songs I hear daily I can pinpoint one important thing that makes a song stand out the most: arrangements. I believe your arrangements and your song arrangement techniques are what really show your maturity as an artist.

Your track can have amazing sounds, a crazy good kick, and a really lovely mix, but if you have nothing to say, your song will not be memorable. Although, paradoxically, some songs are also memorable because they have no arrangements at all; no arrangements can also be a form of storytelling.

In this post, I’ll approach arrangements in two ways: the “technical” and “total”; a philosophical point of view. While so many people have different opinions about arrangements, there’s one thing that I feel is important to highlight: to invite you to step outside of the box of anything “commercial” sounding; so many articles at the moment are pointing out how every song sounds the same. I’ll also explain why.

Keep in mind: there is no magic wand recipe or solution for arrangements.

So fundamentally, how can we explain storytelling in electronic music? There are two critical points to keep in mind:

  1. Arrangements start with a simple idea that evolves. The clearer the idea, the more it becomes understandable from the listener. The catchier it is, the most memorable it is. Catchiness comes from being able to make something that people can have an emotional connection with. It is also known that, if we examine at the last 50 years of pop music, there are always songs trends through time. What makes a song “a hit” is usually when someone understand the current trend (which is “in demand”) and adds their own, personal twist to give it a “same old but different” feeling.
  2. Technical arrangements aim at creating music for DJs. One of the most exciting thing about making music for DJs is about being able to architect music that creates a structure that will find a logical place to move into another song, or to create a new song (as in 1+1=3, track 1, track 2 and the mix of both).

These two types of arrangements are different but can also be combined. They have different goals. The reason I find it important to relate this is, as a listener, you don’t listen to them in the same way. The first type, is what makes a track be a song. In terms of vocabulary, a track is music more oriented for DJs, that you can layer while a song is more about music that can be listened on its own and have its own story. Too often, I find that people who listen to tracks will go “something’s missing” but in theory, if that music is made to be layered, it’s because it has space for another song to be layered over it. I like to say that the track is part of a story that will be created by others and it’s important to let go of adding more and more layers. If you leave no space, how can another DJ use it?

So let’s talk about arrangements for tracks and what is useful to do/use.

  • Use a motif: For anything, always use a motif which can be a few notes or a loop. Sometimes the simplest ideas are the best. If for instance, your motif is a simple two note melody repeating (note: Batman’s powerful motif was just two simple notes too!), then keep in mind that those two notes are simply the core, then add variants or supporting notes; ideas.
  • Define your logic and stick to it: Usually the first 1/3 of your song will define the logic of the rest of your song. For instance, if you mute the kick after 4 bars, keep that logic for the entire song. So, whatever you define in terms of muting,  or adding, stick to it until the end of the song.
  • Divide your song in thirds (1st third is the intro, 2nd is core, 3rd is the outro): Keep in mind that each section has a purpose and demands balance. It should have a surprise, some coherence, a punch and a transition.
  • Leave space: Miles Davis loved the silence between notes and often said they were what would give the true meaning of any phrase. If you find your entire hook for the middle part of your song, make sure you have variants of that idea, with holes/silence.

The importance of defining your own language in your music is important to create your own persona. We all know music is a form of communication and therefore, certain codes can be used in order to create phrases in your music. Everyone has a different view, but I’d like to share my personal lexicon. But let’s consider this: techno is 4/4 music which means a “round” is basically 4 bars long; this is also where DJs try to mix in/out. Each of your songs based on this premise will have better coherence if you keep to a similar logic, and the music will be understood faster by DJs.

  • A phrase is basically a bar long (4 beats). A paragraph is 4 or 8 bars long.
  • Making sounds repeat, is a period (“.”). You usually want to do it at the end of a bar if you are doing a long phrase, but you can also have a period to underline a sound that needs to express something. Rolling sounds help move on to the other bar as it creates energy.
  • Muting the kick or multiple sounds at once is a comma (“,”), it can also mark the end of portion and prepare for another. Muting creates a mini tension and creates anticipation.

Now, these are the basics we can play with.

  • You can slice your entire song structure to clearly see all of your 4 bars in distinctive blocks. This crucial action really helps see the outline of your song and see the organization.
  • I usually go sound by sound (channel by channel) and decide that some sounds will have a change at some point, let’s say X number of bars. For example: hi-hats have a tiny change (a period) every 4 bars, toms will have one every 2 and claps, every bars. Then you slice all the bars in shorter one to be able to edit in details.
  • Add decoration if needed in the same logic. If you started muting and creating space here and there, those areas can be good spaces to insert effects; little, subtle blurbs of sounds.
  • Be very aware of where your song has its main elements, and if it is respecting the logic you have set in the first third of your song.

A song that has balance and repeating events will never feel empty, boring, or pointless because people will consciously (or not) understand the language behind it.

Now look at how it repeats and also, I will try to keep sequences of blocks repeating. For instance, if I have 4 blocks repeating and then there’s a 2 bar silence, I will repeat that through the song.

This is a good example of what I call arrangement logic. You decide of how things happen then follow through.

TIP: Always vary how sound come in and out. You have 2 choices: the sound starts playing or fades-in. Try to have variation between the sounds and how to come in and out later on as well.

The most important part – and I’ll finish with this – is to keep in mind that you should always have a surprise for the listener, and if you surprise him/her, he/she will want to listen to your song again; so be audacious and sometimes, unpredictable. I love the 1-2 punch method: do something, repeat it so the listener goes “ah yes!” then when the listener expects it again, punch him/her with something he/she didn’t see coming.

I hope this helps!