Posts Tagged ‘ Structure ’
It’s a funny word, but it’s critically important. Proportion in music best understood as the relationship between the amount of musical material in a song and the length of time that the song goes for. By ‘musical material’, I’m referring to the unique ideas – not counting repeats or slight variations. Another way of thinking [ READ MORE ]
It’s pretty tempting. You’ve spent days developing your utterly brilliant eight-bar loop.It sounds full and thick. All your EQs and compressors are perfectly set. It almost makes you want to get up and dance. But it’s only sixteen seconds long. And you didn’t want to make a sixteen second song. You want to stretch it [ READ MORE ]
This is a deceptively simple question. Will some of you will answer “3:30″ without hesitation? Do you even have a standard length that you aim for? Nothing wrong with having a standard length, by the way. Some genres call for it. Hard to have a club hit that’s 2:30 (unless you have an extended version [ READ MORE ]
Another important aspect to consider in preproduction is the structure of the song. For vocal songs, this is often addressed when working on the lyrics. Sometimes this is enough, sometimes it isn’t. Approaching structure separately is often necessary when there is a strong instrumental component to the song. This includes vocal songs that have distinctive [ READ MORE ]
Buildups are important in many styles of music. Essentially, buildups are transition sections that gradually change from low energy to high energy. They’re often useful for creating anticipation leading into a high energy section. There are many ways of making this transition from low energy to high energy, although it’s easy to always resort to [ READ MORE ]
Contour is the overall ‘shape’ of a song. While structure refers to the order and length of sections within the song, contour refers to how those sections relate, how they react to each other, and how they flow. Contour includes the rises and falls in energy level, the establishment and return to main themes, and [ READ MORE ]
Development and momentum are two concepts in composition and production. They make longer term structure effective. They are the difference between a collection of sections in a logical order and a complete unified song that tells a coherent story. Development A song having a sense of development means that the listener hears the song grow [ READ MORE ]
Nested structures are quite simple to understand, but can add new levels of order and structure to your music. If we start with two basic structures: Binary: A B Ternary: A B A Nested structures refers to the idea that each of the structure “elements” (A, B, whatever) can actually be (or have) a whole [ READ MORE ]
If you have a transitional state between two sections that have similar rhythm, pace, tonality, register, texture, etc; it doesn’t take much time to move between them. However, if you try to move between two very different sections, more time will be required (for the same rate of change). The time required to move from one [ READ MORE ]
Normally when we compose a piece of music, we are working on it in a non-linear fashion. That means we can work a little on the start, then work on the end, then maybe add a new section in the middle, whatever. Also, our perception of the piece is non-linear – being so intimately involved [ READ MORE ]
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