Mysteeri Nashvillessä

Yhdysvaltalaisen Lady Antebellumin kolmannella levyllä on bonuskappaleena ns. akustinen versio yhtyeen megahitistä Need You Now. Kysymyksessä ei ole esimerkiksi tunnelmallinen livetaltiointi, vaan todennäköisesti melkolailla fiksattuun tempoon menevä viimeistelty studiodemo. Lähdin selvittämään asiaa täysin väärästä paikasta.

Ensimmäistä blogausta tehdessä eteen tuli toinenkin mysteeri. Miksi Behind Scenes-tyylisellä musiikkivideolla on slidekitara, mutta minun levyilläni ei.

No kun tuossa videolla on US-versio ja täälläpäin maailmaa taas tarjotaan outside-US-versiota – levy-yhtiöissä kun oletetaan että meille eurooppalaisille ei kantrielementit oikein nappaa…

Katsotaanpa vielä pätkä, jossa Cromwell nakuttelee Lady Antebellum-sessiossa.

”Ja minähän en YouTube-kommentteja lueskele!”

Ehkä välillä kannattaisi.  Ja kannattaa myös välillä katsoa kuka videon on ladannut. Sattuu nyt tällä kertaa olemaan Lady Antebellumin basisti Craig Young.

Joten nyt on #muuten mahdollisuus ensimmäisen asteen metodiin: kysytään asiasta paremmin tietävältä.

Joten jätin kommenttikenttään seuraavan viestin: ”Thank You Craig for sharing this and thanks all the great work on Lady Antebellum albums! Seems that Chad is playing on some kind loop – is that some kind of click track or guide track?” Suurella jännityksellä jään odottamaan vastaako kiireinen ykkösketjun soittaja…

Videon kommenttikentässä Craig kertoo: ”the drums take 4 hours, and then everyone else get 5 minutes…”

Eli ensin taotaan ylivoimainen rumpuraita ja siihen päälle muiden selvittävä pohjalta ensimmäisellä otolla…

Kun tarkkaan kuuntelee, Cromwell soittaa jonkinlaisen loopin päälle. Kyseessä tuskin on Need You Now – ehkäpä joku muu levyn tai levylle pääsemätön medium-tempoinen kappale.

Eli tällä kertaa taotaan Nashville-perinteestä hieman poiketen klikin päälle. Ehkä tarkemmin ilmaistuna guide-trackin päälle.

Guide trackissä on klikin lisäksi kappaleen rakenne, peruslaulut ja perusharmoniat – esim. peruskomppikitara. Lopulliseen versioon äänitetään ensin rummut ja basso. Tuo alunperin mainittu bonusraita lienee toiminut ainakin osittain guide-trackinä Cromwellille.

Ansiokkaita nettilinkkejä guide-trackin tekemiseen:

Music Stack Exchance-sivusto

Recording Revolution-sivusto ja täältä videota

Cobalt Audio-sivusto

Ja lopuksi kaikkein herkullisin linkki:

Sound On Sound -sivuston laaja tuottaja Paul Worleyn ja ääniteknikko Clarke Schleicherin haastattelu.

Aiheena haastattelussa mm.

• esituotanto
• tuottajan työ
• live-soittajakeskeisyys Nashvillessä
• songwriting – työskentely laulunkirjoittajien kanssa
• teknistä dataa, mm. mikeistä (paljon!)
• harjoittelusta ja sovittamisesta, harjoitusdemojen tekemisestä
• jenkki- ja muun maailman versiot

Mysteeri ei vielä aivan selvinnyt, mutta kysellään ja kommentoikaa ihmeessä! Lopuksi blogauksen sovelluskohteet:

• guide-trackin tekeminen
• äänittäminen
• yleinen musiikkituotanto

 

 

 

 

Lady Antebellum – Need You Now

Need You Now on yhdysvaltalaisen country-pop-yhtyeen Lady Antebellumin suuri hitti vuodelta 2010. Yhdysvalloissa kappale oli country- ja adult contemporary-listojen kärjessä ja käväisipä Billboard Hot 100-listan kakkosenakin. Yhdysvaltojen lisäksi Grammy-palkittu kappale oli hitti muuallakin maailmassa, mikä ei välttämättä ole tyypillistä countryksi luokiteltavalle musiikille.

Laulun ovat säveltäneet yhtyeen jäsenet Hillary Scott, Charles Kelley ja Dave Haywood – sekä Josh Kear. Kappale on yhtyeen toiselta, samannimiselta albumilta, jonka on tuottanut yhtyeen lisäksi Paul Worley.

Laulu on medium-tempoinen (110 bpm). Melodiat voidaan katsoa muodostuneen korkeintaan parista kolmesta motiivista. Kertosäkeen melodia on tavallaan ”jo kuultu” kertosäkeeseen mennessä. Laulun sävellaji on E-duuri, joskin ensimmäisen asteen E-sointu rävähtää ensimmäistä kertaa vasta kertosäkeessä. Nämä piirteet ovat tyypillisiä ns. ruotsalaiselle laulunkirjoitukselle, mutta en mitenkään tiedä kuinka tietoisia vahvasta country-perinteestä ponnistavat muusikot tästä ovat…

Kappale on Nashville-tuotantoa, eli kappaleessa soittavat elävät soittajat ja etenkin kitaroita on käytetty runsaasti. Nashvillessä luodaan usein sävyjä kitaroihin capon käytöllä, kuten tässäkin kappaleessa. Youtube-videolla Dave Haywood kertoo kitaraosuudestaan. Soinnuissa käytetään runsaasti add9-tehoja – jopa soinnun terssi korvaten. Kitaristisesti kappaleessa on vaikutteita myös indie-tyylisestä soitosta ja Policen Andy Summersin soitosta.

Erityisen huomion kappaleessa ansaitsee rumpali Chad Cromwellin osuus. Cromwell soittaa äärimmäisen dynaamisesti ja huomioi laulumelodiat hienovaraisesti. Cromwellin soitto on myös äärimmäisen ilmavaa. Cromwellin soitto on näiden seikkojen lisäksi myös persoonallista ja tunnistettavaa, mikä mielestäni nostaa hänet samaan kastiin John Bonhamin, Steve Gaddin, Jeff Porcaron ja muutaman muun ehdottoman huipun kanssa. Voi olla että tämä video on juuri tämän Need You Now’n äänityksistä.

Laitan loppuun vielä analyysin kappaleen instrumentaatiosta. Käytän tuollaista ammattilyhennettyä musaenglantia – se on helpompaa minulle ja ehkä joku voi jopa hyötyä siitä suomalaisen kielialueen ulkopuolellakin…

Analyysi tehty iTunesista ostetun singlen pohjalta. Ratkaisevin ero videoon verrattuna on puuttuva slide-kitara.

Intro

1. 4: Synth Pad, Piano melody only
2. 4: + El gtr left (1), El gtr right (2), Delay gtr (3) Ac gtr, Bass, Drums: kick & snare only

Verse 1

1. 8: Hillary solo, El gtrs 1 fills, Ac gtr, b, Drums: kick & snare – Delay gtr off
2. 8: Hillary & Charles duet, Hillary solo El gtrs 1 & 2, b, Drums: crash pan 11 o’clock

Chorus 1  (11 bars)

Hillary lead, Charles & Dave harmonies, + 12-string acoustic, El gtrs 1&2 indie style,   Drums: +ride cymbal

Interlude 1 (4 bars)

El gtr 2 off, + Piano melody, Drums: + hi-hat

Verse 2

1. 8: Charles solo, Ac gtrs off!, + Delay gtr, El gtrs 1&2 very slight fills, louder synth pad, Pedal Steel (?), Piano fills, Police/Lanois-style sound, note Cromwell’s genial snare crescendo-fill to the bridge pick-up bar!
2. 8: Hillary & Charles duet, Charles solo, ac gtrs long chords, note quite loud drum fill to the chorus!

Chorus 2 (11 bars) – as Chorus 1 – maybe more acoustic guitars…

C Section (8 bars)

+ Guitar solo, Charles vocal fills

Last bridge

Hillary + harmony, Drums off, ac gtr arpeggios, bass fills, piano fills

Chorus 3

1. 4: Hillary solo
2. 4: Charles solo
3. 3: Hillary + harmonies

Ending

1. 8: harmony vocals, piano melody in octaves, indie electric gtrs
2. 8: Hillary solo fill, note Cromwell’s superb work
3. piano melody, synth fades out

 

 

 

 

Katy Perry: Roar – short analysis of composition

Katy Perry’s new single Roar has leaked to net day before its official release 08/12/13. I listened tune from Billboard-site. Roar is probably written by Perry, Bonnie McKee, Dr. Luke and Max Martin – I’m waiting for ASCAP information.

Roar is mostly four-chord-tune in Bb major. Roar chords are Bb – Cm – Gm – Eb (1264). Dominant chord F comes in C section. Tempo is about 90 bpm. I think this is first Max Martin tune for Katy Perry in this tempo – but not first for Max Martin who has several direct hits in this tempo: Baby One More Time (Britney Spears), Behind These Hazel Eyes (Kelly Clarkson), Whatya Want from Me (Adam Lambert/Pink)…

Chords changes goes so that Bb is at beat one, Cm changes at second bars third beat – and so its with Gm and Eb also.

Vocal melody is almost completely based on Bb-major pentatonic scale: Bb,C,D,F,G. Verse ranges major sixth from Bb3 to G4 and chorus also major sixth between F4 and D5.

Verses phrases starts first on off-beat of one and then on beat one (1/16 up-beat) and off-beat for next eight bars. There are strong rhythmic motives also…

Most dominant melodic feature in chorus in use of motive Bb4 – G4 – F4. You can hear here also melodic motive from 90’s Backstreet Boys hit As Long as You Love Me…

Structure is typical. Short intro – verse – chorus – verse – chorus – lower energy C-section – and to end choruses.

I think that this is really great tune – I’m sure that you will really hear that tune many times in coming months…

Read also my analysis of …Baby One More Time.

Luo omaa musiikkiasi iPadillasi tai koneellasi!

Oman musiikin tekeminen on nykyisin helpompaa kuin koskaan!

Opetuksessani on musiikin luominen etusijalla – näppäinkomennot ja muu tekniikka kyllä seuraa perässä. Tärkeintä on tekemisen flow!

Opetuksessani aloitetaan silmukkapohjaisesta (”loopit”) musiikintekemisestä ja opetellaan muitakin uusia asioita tunti tunnilta. Opetuksessa käytettävä ohjelma/sovellus on GarageBand. Musiikkisi tekemiseen tarvitset iPadin tai oman koneen – onnistuu myös iPhonella!

Olen opettajana erikoistunut tekemiseen ja luomiseen pohjautuvaan oppimiseen (creativity based learning) ja musiikkiteknologian hyödyntämiseen. Musiikkikasvatuksen pro gradu -tutkielmani (tarkastusvaiheessa) käsittelee tekemiseen pohjautuvaa musiikintekemisen oppimista yläkoulun musiikkiluokilla.

Musiikintekemisoppituntien hinta 31€/45min vuoden 2013 loppuun saakka.

Myös mahdollista 60 min sessiot 2-3 hengen ryhmissä.

Kysyttävää? Soita tai meilaa vaikka heti: 040 4 808 444 tai antti.sunell(ä)gmail.com

Limit yourself – guitar

Sometimes setting extreme limits to ones playing and composing can be very effective. With instrument you must really think technical things and break away from common patterns and fingerings. When composing, with limited material you really had to think musicality and musical solutions.

Actually extreme limits does unlock creativity.

I made a little project with guitar. I made new little solo guitar piece every weekday. First limit was time. Tune had to be completed in twenty minutes – no more. And every day. One week week was limited technically: first week was in open position, second A-,D-,G- and B-strings only. Every day there was also another limit – some musical thing: modes, chords, arpeggios… Every tune was also made public – the most difficult thing was seeing myself playing not so polished – overproduced – musical material.

You can listen examples at my YouTube Channel.

GarageBand – to teach or not to teach? Part 1.

Ok, I’ve been teaching music in schools since 1996, but I don’t still have my master exam in music education – I have a MA-exam with major in musicology, but I hardly can confess that – I try to be practical musician and teacher – not a paper-tasty sahara-dry ”Beatles-researcher”. Classical piano is still missing from full exam – and a Master Thesis!

I decided to make my thesis in the field of music technology pedagogy. The subject is the usage of digital audio workstation (DAW) – I chose GarageBand.

So I started a music technology project in my job in school in a big city in Finland. I’m teaching grades 7-9 – including so called music classes. Music classes have three music lessons in a week. They are talented, exuberant and demanding young people – I can tell that there’s lots of work with them! I made the project with four groups.

In my school there is only two PC workstations in the music class. And they are slow and hasn’t any DAWs installed in them.  So I brought my old MacBook Pro to school.

In the first two to three hours I taught some very basic features in GarageBand: loops, making midi- and audiotracks, making new tracks, simple project settings and so on. Then we made some technical exercices with these basic features.

I made a little workstation in the very little room near the class: MBP, ordinary computer speakers and and old Yamaha-keyboard. Something like that – sorry about bad quality of picture…

After the teaching session students made their projects in groups of two or three. They had three hours to complete their project. I didn’t give any instructions about what the project ”should” be. Just: ”Make your own tune.”

And they did.

After all had made their project, I made a little survey. Here is some observations:

– very few had experience making music with DAW.

– nobody wanted teacher being watching their project (I made ordinary music lessons during their projects).

– almost every group made things things that I didn’t taught. There were automations, custom synths, effects and so on

– almost every group felt that three hours were running and their project was just beginning

– almost everyone had positive toughts about project

I also checked the web-browser after their project. There weren’t any game sites, Facebook and so on in the history. There were almost nothing in the web histories – maybe some YouTube music videos or GarageBand instructions.

I think the groups experienced some kind of Flow during their GarageBand-project. But the flow, letting space for experimentation and controlling too much are subjects in the future…

Reserch plan for Jyväskylä Universitity Music education department in comments – in finnish, sorry…

Opetan myös musiikintekemistä. I teach also creating music.

…Baby One More Time – Some analysis of rhythmic-motivic work in melody

Britney Spears mega-hit …Baby One More Time from 1999 is written by Max Martin and produced by Martin, Rami Yacoub and Denniz PoP. It’s a great example of the production and writing style of Cheiron Studios in 90’s Stockholm. As a composition Baby One More Time is example of using very restricted amount of musical material.

Lets listen…

Opening piano riff is just genial! And the piano riff is core in motivic development of this song. Actually rhythmically this motive is similar to opening motive Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony…

Just adding two extra eight-notes we get ”ooh baby baby”-motive. The first eight bars are rhytmically different placements of this motive – just adding two quarter notes at the end of phrases. Next four bars uses that motive backwards (”show me…”).

Chorus is combination of these things with very strong ending phrase.

There is lot of short 3:4 polyrhythms here – along with the strong rhythmical motives common in Max Martin tunes.

About sounds – I think there is lots of Korg Trinity…

I don’t know how much Martin knows about classical techniques in musical composition, but there is very similar – if not exactly same – techniques in for example in Schubert Lieder and classical period composers tunes.

Musical key to Music För Svenska Deckare parts 5-10

This is the second part of explanation of my Music För Svenska Deckare -series. The series was originally inspired by swedish film music. All music examples are copyrighted ©Antti Sunell/Audacom 2011.

In the Shadow of Turning Torso (part 5, working title Malmö Blues) is one of last composed tunes in series. It practically has nothing new elements – mostly it is a combination of part three and my arrangement of catalan folk song El Testament               d´Amelia  (=part 7). There is variation of the jazz/blues-style theme appearing also in parts 3 and 9.

Action style tune part 6 starts with  funky 16th-note hi-hat figure, wah-wah guitar and multi-layered synth pad that was inspired by finnish symphonic orchestral music of 1990´s. Piano doubled bass line is also essential motive in the whole series. You can hear lots of piano/bass-combination in 70´s action film scores – just think film composer Lalo Shifrins music.

Variation of that harmonic progression appers also in part 4.

El Testament d´Amelia is traditional catalan folk song. I have wrote about composition process earlier.

Slide theme is in Malmö Blues too.

Chord progression of the middle section of Amelia can be also heard in differend part of series.

Part 8 differs completely of rest of the series. This americana-style tune is in major key – only one the series.

Part 9 is is mostly combination of earlier themes and motives. Last part, End Credits, is the oldest one in series. I recorded most of the guitars in summer 2008. Later I completed tune with elements from other parts from SD-series.

In The Shadow of Turning Torso is in equal dreams music store.

The whole series can be streamed on SoundCloud.

Read musical key to parts 1-4 here.

Musical Key to Musik För Svenska Deckare, parts 1 – 4.

My ten-piece series Musik För Svenska Deckare (=music for swedish crime fiction) is a thematic work. It means that music is composed on few musical ideas – themes and motives – which are repeated and variated in through the whole series. Let´s check out the themes and motives in order of appearance. Music examples are copyrighted © Antti Sunell 2010-2011.

First motive in part one is parallel major seventh chords.

These parallel maj7-chords appers in almost every part in the series in different rhythms and transposition.

In part one is also 7/8 -crossrhythm motive, which actually is based on piano figure that dominates intro of third part. In a cross-rhythm function this figure appears on first and last part (End Credits) of series.

Part two introduces many motives that appears in whole series. First is schubertian walk-motive.

The main theme appers on part 9 also.

Eight bar chord progression.

Piano figure in the third part appears in many places in different rhythmic and harmonic variations.

Piano figure in part 4.

Part 4 main theme.

Both appers also in End Credits (part 10).

You can buy In The Shadow of Turning Torso (part 5) in equal dreams -shop.

You can listen the whole series in Audacom´s SoundCloud -profile.

Next time we look on things in parts 5 – 10.

Background for composing series Musik för Svenska Deckare

I´m a great fan of swedish crime fiction both as books and films. They are never black-and-white and always includes some social aspects. They can be very violent and brutal, but they still have some human touch in them. Oh yes, small criminals has always finnish name…

There are some common aspects in that film music also, here are few examples:

– minimalistic piano (for example Adam Nordens music for 12 first ”Henrikson-Wallanders”, Spotify-link)

– more guitar than, for example, in finnish and american film music – I like as guitarist that!

– folkloristic elements

– rhythmic ambiguity

– original swedish sense of sound design: very tastefully mixed film soundscapes to the music

Let´s listen Johan Nilsson´s great opening title for Höök (SVT 2007)

– time signature is more 3+3+2/8 than 4/4

– listen the sounds of northern-swedish Luleå in opening!

– use of traditional swedish instruments: strings, flute, percussion

Music is really shamanistic! Music brings the listener immediatly to the dark land of ice and snow! By the way, Höök´s second season begins in FST5 friday 6. August!

In the spring 2009, I began to make music that was deeply inspired by swedish film music. Work goes still on. In future I will explain more detailed things about these tunes. Part of that music can heard in my Soundcloud-page.