Pro Sound Web: As sound engineers, we’re tasked with shaping the sound of the artist’s performance. When we’re running our consoles, we’re literally “putting together the pieces” of a song into the product that the audience hears.
I’ve found that gaining an understanding of how a song “works” – how different sounds play different roles in the arrangement – help my chances of relating the song to the audience in a way that’s enjoyable and engaging. An awareness of how different instrumental parts define the sections of a song will hopefully help those ideas translate thorough our mixes.
2 comments:
Although I've been playing music for about 10 years, arranging has always been a mystery to me. Reading through the article the first time was a little daunting because it seemed to be a far jump from anything I had ever done, but once I finished it I realized the idea was pretty simple: the timing of when the instruments come in in a song greatly effects the song itself regardless of any impact/lack of impact on the actual tune. I can imagine that this kind of thinking would be very important in sound design, because the amount of noise and any overlap of two noises you hear at any given time effects your mood and interpretation of the peace just as much as what that noise actually sounds like. I also thought it was interesting how the author mentioned that having too many overlapping instruments is a recurring problem in pop music and that having only a few instruments playing at any given time can actually improve the quality of the song.
This article makes a lot of great points and explains some sort of abstract concepts in a very straightforward manner. As Lucy noted, one of the biggest things with arranging the parts of a song is how many instruments you have overlapping and when they are coming in. Sometimes the most exciting parts of songs are when a bunch of instruments all drop out, maybe just leaving the drums and bass, or when a song builds with different instruments joining or trading off. As the author notes, this can get very detailed. The way that “Call Me Maybe” uses different kick drum samples is an important detail – I can definitely think of plenty of dance tracks that use the same heavy bass kick throughout, and when I hear that from the first measure I’m kind of like “really?” It’s also so true that some songs feel like they “overstay their welcome” after re-re-repeating the chorus. The author’s note on “loudness wars” is also very true, as pop songs try to fill every last bit of space, producing a wave-form that looks more like a sausage than a song.
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