Write Countersignature Arrangement with airSlate SignNow

Write countersignature arrangement

so a couple of days ago I released a version of carly Rae Jepsen's run away with me for 17 piece ensemble in that arrangement we went all out with strings and horns and seven string gents and all the stuff I thought it would be fun to talk a little bit about how the whole thing was conceptualized and some of the more specific techniques that went into it for example number one side to chain emulation side chaining is a popular electronic music production technique where the audio of one track is duct or made quieter by the kick drum so what you get is this kind of now you don't actually need a sidechain compressor to get that kind of vibe you could for example get a similar kind of pulsing effect with a guitar and a volume pedal that you time to open when the kick drum is not playing chorus of Molly's gonna be like a fake sidechain which sounds like this going [Music] wind instruments can also get a similar kind of effect they could for example play long tones but articulate with a little bit more air on the offbeat's to get that kind of sucking Hoover effect so we're gonna be rehearsing some horns [Music] [Applause] these individual elements might sound a little ridiculous out of context but I think they sound quite nice in the context of the groove [Music] an example of the esthetic of electronic music influencing arranging techniques for acoustic instruments pretty sweet anyway I know most people don't care about that what they really care about are those sweet delicious jazz chords so let's talk about that two unusual modal mixture a lot of the melodies of modern pop songs will center around a single note there's an infamous video essay that calls this phenomenon the death of melody and while I can't really argue for or against why this kind of aesthetic thing might be good or bad I can definitively say that from an arranging standpoint it's kind of a fun thing because if you stick on one note like the course to run away with me you can do some interesting things it sticks on the note B flat because the melody note B flat is the fifth and the key of E flat it doesn't actually give us any information on to whether or not this song is in minor or major it's in E flat minor by the way but the B flat does not tell us that because of this while we're insistently sticking on the note B flat we can go back and forth between harmonies and E flat minor and E flat major [Music] [Music] in the common practice most of the time modal mixture would take the form of say in the key of E flat the four chord a flat resolving to the four minor chord a flat minor and finally resolving to the tonic one this back in the day would almost always happen in major keys so if you want a little bit more of a modern aesthetic and the key of E flat minor try borrowing chords from a flat major immediately to get more of that sort of anyway speaking of harmonic vibes let's talk about this chord three this chord this chord is a D flat major seven in third inversion so the major seventh is actually voiced in the bass a C it can sound pretty dissonant and crunchy when it's voiced like this because of the distance between the C on the bottom and this D flat up here which is the interval of a minor ninth old school jazz arrangers would call this a prime dissonance and it's something to be treated with a lot of care there's ways of mitigating that dissonance though for example you could play the C an octave lower and all of a sudden that distance doesn't feel quite as intense as it does up here how you voice a chord where you place the individual notes of it really affects the emotional characteristics of it for example the notes ABC when played in order have a lot of tension to them but when you spread them out it's a much different emotional characteristic there's more warmth that feels more open and maybe hopeful context also matters quite a lot where the Harmony is traveling to will affect your perception of the distance and the feelings that it contains this is the chord out of context and this is the chord in context [Music] and the sound of a string quartet just sounds so good which brings me to 0.44 right for string quartet because the sound of a full string section or full string orchestra sounds so massive and so huge most sample packs and string libraries and string emulation that is used in modern production aims to create the feeling of a full string orchestra which is cool but there's something about the intimacy and the immediacy of a string quartet just four string players playing in a room that I think sounds absolutely awesome or legato really everybody drops me only that hey guys sorry before we go on can we can we just do another take from 132 to the end [Music] granted I didn't actually use this orchestration of just vocals and string quartet in the final arrangement but it's something that I've been wanting to at least rant about a little bit on this channel for a while I love string quartets and I love that intimacy in that particular feeling that comes with them provided of course they play in tune these players by the way played amazingly well in tune they were only the best hired by my fine folks at patreon thanks guys anyway let's talk 808 v 808 because one thing that I've noticed in the past couple years in trap and hip-hop music is the use of 808 s' tuned kick drums as literal bass lines in other words the sound of the kick drum is being tuned up and down to create chord progressions through songs historically bass players have tried to lock in with the kick drum but in this case they are the same thing one thing that I've had a lot of fun with recently and I think works really well is assigning the sound of an 808 kick drum to a keyboard and playing it like a synth bass [Applause] [Music] now I haven't seen a lot of people do this yet live play 808s on a keyboard but hopefully that will change because it's a lot of fun to do especially with all those effects now speaking of effects let's talk about that auto-tune is 6:02 so out of any kind of modern sound auto-tune definitely seems to be the most polarizing this level of vitriol is really interesting to me do people hate it because it sounds like a robot probably not because the same people would be just fine with Peter Frampton in his talk box do people hate it because they feel like they're being deceived by somebody whose vocal ability their ability to sing I don't think that's it either because it doesn't sound anything like a human and besides Kate Steinberg can sing free just millenia loops all day long I honestly don't know where the hate comes from because other generational Tambor's like the 808 kick drum for example don't get quite as much pushback anyway that's my little rant on auto-tune if you want to actually get the sound you're going to need to turn the retune speed down to like zero milliseconds that way any slight deviation in pitch including things like fiber ATO or track as a pitch correction you can also tune the formants which are the natural resonant harmonic peaks of the vocal cords down a little bit giving you Kenna's weird detuned effect to get that big pop sound you're gonna have the singer sing a couple of vocal doubles where they sing the exact same thing and then pan those tracks hard left and right [Music] and yeah then you have a vibe that people seem to hate [Music] anyway number seven syncopate stuff in twelve eight twelve eight and other compound time signatures are rather uncommon in modern pop music and when they are used they're used to evoke a doo-wop 50s sort of vibe like Rihanna's love on the brain for example carly Rae Jepsen's run away with me has a slightly different sort of feel to it and because of that we can explore syncopations that are fairly rare in modern pop music three four five six for example this version of twelve eight is felt in four evenly spaced pulses which makes it feel fairly normal each pulse is divided into groups of three within each pulse the second of the three subdivisions what we might call the PO of triple it triple it can have a really strange feeling to it sometimes let's make sure we're all hit the second eighth note of - yeah we're trying to figure out the rhythmic soul pitch for triplets home pull it's a pole to pole the pole of - it's not a triplet you guys like this [ __ ] [Music] [Music] so to me these syncopations by themselves sound a little strange and out of place however add in that vocal melody the one which is very insistent on the B flat and the syncopations start to have this kind of response feeling to them the syncopations are kind of like a conversation that's happening with the vocal melody [Music] Oh so I hope you enjoyed these Bick arranging techniques these are just a couple of the ones that I used on the run away with me arrangement last week definitely go check out the full arrangement to run away with me link is in the description where you can hear these techniques in action and actually give context whatever it is that I've been rambling about for this whole video if you enjoy what I do here on this channel please consider donating to my patreon because it's the patrons over at my patreon that really allow this channel to be what it is and allow me to make this content week after week I'm very much indebted to everybody who has donated I have uploaded the score to run away with me up on my patreon so definitely go check that out anyway guys thank you so much for watching [Music]