Make your song stand out by using these simple techniques!
June 13th, 2011
One important key aspect to creating songs that capture (and keep) a listener’s attention is to ensure your song’s overall structure is ‘interesting’.
Duh! Now that is not really a revelation!
In this post however, I want to present some specific methods for creating that interest
Structure
This is probably the most basic method of maintaining a listener’s interest and all of you will probably be familiar with this even if you never actively thought about it
If all sections of your song sound exactly the same or you repeat the same melodies over and over and over, your song will fade into the background of your listeners’ attention very rapidly.
If on the other hand, your song changes to something completely new every few measures, people will be unable to follow the structure of your song and, again, lose interest.
It strikes a good balance between introducing enough variation to remain fresh and enough repetition to create a feeling of familiarity.
Just as people’s attention starts to wane after the second chorus, a bridge or solo introduces something new before the song ends with the familiar pattern of the chorus.
Of course this is not the only song structure that works well – but I think it is probably the most commonly used. Experiment around and have a listen to your favourite songs to see what structure works for what type of songs
Emotional Intensity
Even if you have a good song structure, your song might lack emotional intensity to have much of an impact.
The chorus is the heart of your song and should convey the core of your song’s message to your listener. As the most important section it should also be the most emotionally engaging.
Have you ever noticed that when we get emotional, we raise our voices in both volume and pitch? This idea also applies to music:
we associate high pitch and volume with stronger emotions which is why in most popular songs, the chorus is louder and the vocal line is higher in pitch than in any other part of the song.
For vocals especially, since they carry the message of the song, it makes sense to have them softer during the verse and raise them in power and pitch during the chorus. In hardcore/metal music, often the verse will be shouted and the chorus will be sung.
Here are two prime examples of this concept in action
Linkin Park – Waiting For The End
All That Remains – Not Alone
I am currently working on a song called ‘Rise Up’ and was having trouble making my chorus stand out against the verse because both sections were using similar chords and the vocals remained at about the same pitch level.
Here is what it used to sound like (the piano plays the vocal melody, sorry for the midi quality):
[audio:examples/14_05_2011_KeepingInterest/14_05_2011_Rise_Up_Segment_Flat_Emotion.mp3|titles=Rise Up - Flat Intensity]
Now that is not too bad as the patterns of all the instruments changes during the transition. The guitar strum pattern changes and both bass and drums become more lively.
However, I wanted the chorus to be more emotionally engaging and interesting and for that I had to bring the vocal line up in pitch compared to the verse.
I ended up transposing my chorus by a fourth from E minor to A minor. Have a listen to the new version:
[audio:examples/14_05_2011_KeepingInterest/14_05_2011_Rise_Up_Segment_Increased_Emotion.mp3|titles=Rise Up - Increased Intensity]
The chorus stands out more and feels more emotional in contrast to the verse – I like it much better this way
Withholding & Expectations
This section covers two different but closely related ideas:
You can make certain sections stand out by using notes and chords that have not been used in the previous (or any other) part of your song
You can create tension and interest by withholding chords and notes a little longer than your listeners are expecting
Assume someone tells you a about a movie they watched recently but gives away the ending too early. Kind of a let down, isn’t it? The twist of the story will be more exciting when it is not given away too early. The same applies to song composition. A chord or a note will sound more exciting if it was not used in the previous section. If your chorus kicks in with a fresh chord and the vocal line moves over notes that did not occur in the verse, it will introduce excitement into your song.
Have a listen to this small song fragment:
[audio:examples/14_05_2011_KeepingInterest/12_06_2011_Never_Falter_Bad_Vocals.mp3|titles=Never Falter - Bad Vocal Line]
The piano contrasts nicely with the verse as both the pattern and the key changes. Additionally a previously unheard chord, Ab, is introduced.
However, notice that the vocal line does not have the same impact and freshness.
The reason for this is that the first note, the C, has been preemptively “given away” in the verse and therefore does not sound surprising any more.
If we withhold the C in the verse and use it as the first note in the chorus, we can make the transition more exciting! I know there are plenty of other things we can do to improve this piece, but have a listen to how this simple change alone affects the feeling when the chorus comes in:
Another way of adding tension and interest is withholding a section of a song a little longer by using padding measures.
If we go back to our movie analogy for a moment, think of a padding measure as the scene where the hero jumps around a corner ready to shoot the bad guys, but finds himself standing alone in an empty alley. The viewer will be surprised as their expectations haven’t been met.
Of course a good movie never lets the viewer wait long until the hero runs around the next corner and the shoot out with the bad guys does actually occur.
In music, we can use padding measures to introduce that ‘empty alley’ moment to raise tension and add interest
30 Seconds To Mars use padding measures frequently to increase the tension before certain parts of their songs. Have a listen to 2:11 of Capricorn – a single 4/4 measure has been inserted just before the chorus to withhold it just a little longer from the listener and give it extra punch when it does kick in. It can almost be considered a very short pre-chorus.
30 Seconds To Mars – Capricorn
Odd Time Signatures
Another way to spice up your songs is to break the stable and familiar pattern of time signature and measures.
Most songs will consist of sections which contain either 4 or 8 measures and the time signature remains constant all the way through.
Utilising odd time signature measures can work very well to create interest by introducing something different into your song.
One of my favourite songs that uses a verse containing three 4/4 measures and one 2/4 measure is Master of Puppets by Metallica. Have a listen to the verse around 0:53. Notice how the 2/4 measure breaks up the verse and emphasises the beginning of every new 4 bar measure as it falls back to the 4/4 timing.
The verse also creates a nice contrast with the chorus which uses straight 4/4 time signature measures.
Metallica – Master of Puppets
When I first heard Spark by Tori Amos I had a really hard time working out what timing was being used. The odd timing together with the flowing and gentle nature of the song created something unique and intriguing. Have a listen for yourself and see if you can figure out the timing
Tori Amos – Spark
Of course there are plenty of other ways to make your songs exciting!
This post simply summarises some of the most commonly used techniques. Have a listen to your favourite songs and I am sure you will find them used almost everywhere
Use chord inversions to improve your song's harmonic progression
March 5th, 2011
Today I want to talk about chord inversions and how they can be used to make your compositions sound more elegant and colourful.
All examples in this post will be using simple major and minor chords, but the theory presented here applies to all types of chords.
Chords consist of a number of notes that are played either simultaneously or sequentially (arpeggio).
Major and minor chords are triads of notes. These triads consist of a root note, a third and a fifth. The fifth is a perfect fifth, being exactly 7 semitones higher than the root note and the third can either be 3 (minor third) or 4 (major third) semitones above the root.
E minor consists of E (root), G (minor third) and B (fifth). When you create a chord progression, let’s say Em – Am – F – G, you might be inclined to just shift your fingers to the new chord, so you would play: E,G,B – A,C,E – F,A,C – G,B,D. However, this chord progression would sound rather clumsy, because the cords do neither flow naturally into each other nor are there any variations in the feel of the chords – except the change from major to minor of course.
How can you add more colour to your chord progressions? With chord inversions
E minor consists of the 3 notes E, G and B. Now if we took the E from the bottom and placed it at the top of the chord, above the B, we would still be playing an E minor chord, but with a G in the bass. This chord is usually written as Em/G (“E minor with G in the bass”) and is the first inversion of E minor.
The second inversion is Em/B, consisting of the notes B, E and G. The following picture shows the root position, first and second inversions for the E minor and major chords:
Have a listen to both the E minor and major chords and their inversions:
[audio:examples/27_02_2011_chord_inversion/e_minor_A.mp3|titles=E minor chord inversions (Em - Em/G - Em/B)]
[audio:examples/27_02_2011_chord_inversion/e_major_A.mp3|titles=E major chord inversions (E - E/G# - E/B)]
It might be hard to tell the feel of the chords apart simply because the notes are so obviously being shifted up and each one chord sounds higher than the previous one.
I have created another example, using the exact same chord inversions, but rather than playing just the triad, I am playing the chord in the root position with the right hand and am playing a bass note with the left. For each inversion, I am only changing the bass note. This might make it easier to discern the feel the chords create:
[audio:examples/27_02_2011_chord_inversion/e_minor_B.mp3|titles=E minor chord inversions with bass note]
[audio:examples/27_02_2011_chord_inversion/e_major_B.mp3|titles=E major chord inversions with bass note]
Now while the chords consist of the same notes independent of the inversion, they feel very different. They are all conchords (rather than dischords) so they will sound harmonious, however you will notice that
The chord in the root position sounds very solid, grounded and stable
The first inversion adds slight tension and feels less stable
The second inversion creates alot of tension and wants to resolve to another chord – preferrably a chord in root position.
The second inversion can work well at the end of a verse or bridge for that very reason.
Coming back to our initial chord progression Em – Am – F – G, we can make this progression sound alot more interesting by using chord inversions
By applying clever chord inversions we can
a) make the transitions less clunky by minimising the changes in notes required for each chord change and
b) add colour to the sequence by introducing some tension
One possibly way to play the chord progression would be E,G,B – E,A,C – F,A,C – G,B,D. If you play this sequence, it will sound alot more fluent than the initial, clunky version. Note that the transition from F to G is still a parallel shift of notes, which may or may not be desired.
Again, this is just one possibility. Experiment with how many variations you could come up with for this simple chord sequence and decide for yourself which one you like best!
Finally, I have created two little song fragments to demonstrate the theory of this post in the context of a composition
Both fragments make use of exactly the same chord progression: F – A – C – G – F – A – G – G (repeated). However, one of them does not make use of chord inversions, whereas the other one does.
First off, here is the composition for the version that does not employ chord inversions:
I have a bass guitar in the arrangement, but it only plays the root notes of the chords. Have a listen and you will hear the obvious shifts during the chord transitions. While not horrible, there is something unnatural and disconnected about this sequence.
[audio:examples/27_02_2011_chord_inversion/chord_inversion_demo_no_inversion.mp3|titles=Song fragment - without chord inversions]
The second version of the song fragment uses chord inversions for both minimising note changes for the piano as well as introducing colour and tension where appropriate. Here is the composition for this improved version of the song:
Now have a listen to this version of the song. The bass guitar plays the bass note as depicted in the score above, e.g. during G/B, the bass will play the B. I especially like G/B, G/d inversions at the end of the second bar and the transition back to the F.
[audio:examples/27_02_2011_chord_inversion/chord_inversion_demo_with_inversion.mp3|titles=Song fragment - with chord inversions]
Chord inversions are very simple to employ, yet they can add alot of elegance, colour and variations to your songs. Next time you create a chord sequence, experiment a little with the inversions – you will be surprised how much most progressions can still be improved
Why harmonic minor is my favourite mode to play in
December 11th, 2010
One of my all time favourite scales is the harmonic minor scale. It is just like the natural minor scale but the seventh degree is raised by a semitone.
I love how the D# adds alot of tension and a touch of mystery to the scale. The D# creates tension by wanting to resolve towards the tonic of the scale, the E. Harmonic minor is used very widely in jazz and rock music.
I always have to think of Slash from Guns ‘n’ Roses when I hear the harmonic minor scale since he uses it extensively in his soli.
Have a listen to the Sweet Child of Mine solo (at 2:34). The first half and the high speed fill are entirely in Eb harmonic minor (it’s just E harmonic minor but his guitar is tuned down by a semitone) and then the scale resolves to Eb natural minor which creates the ‘release’ feeling.
Here is a bit of music theory about why harmonic minor is actually called ‘harmonic’ – it all has to do with chordal harmony. But don’t worry, it’s very simple
E major consists of E F# G# A B C# D# and the chords you can build with this scale are
I – E (the tonic chord)
II – F#m (the supertonic chord)
III – G#m (the mediant chord)
IV – A (the subdominant chord)
V – B (the dominant chord)
VI – C#m (the submediant chord)
VII D# dim (the subtonic chord)
A very classical chord progression is I – IV – V – I, which in E major would be E – A – B – E. Here is what it sounds like
[audio:examples/11_12_2010_harmonic_minor/e_major_sequence.mp3|titles=E - A - B - E]
It does have a very classical feel to it doesn’t it? I like the tension created by the dominant chord (the B) and the resolution to the tonic.
Now let’s see what happens when we do this chord progression in a natural minor scale. In E natural minor, the chord progression is Em – Am – Bm -Em. Have a listen!
[audio:examples/11_12_2010_harmonic_minor/e_natural_minor_sequence.mp3|titles=Em - Am - Bm - Em]
Hm, kinda lacks the tension doesn’t it? That’s because the dominant is actually a minor chord. The chord lacks the D# that would make it a major chord to create the tension and lead back to the tonic of the scale. In order to give this natural minor scale a more harmonic feeling, we need to make the dominant chord (the Bm) a major chord. We do this by raising the seventh degree, the D#, by a semitone – and thus we get harmonic minor.
[audio:examples/11_12_2010_harmonic_minor/e_harmonic_minor_sequence.mp3|titles=Em - Am - B - Em]
The progression has the feeling of a minor scale, but the same harmonic tension as the progression for the E major scale. Harmonic minor is a great sounding scale and you can
easily switch between the D and the D# while the harmonies of the song progress over the E minor scale. Have a listen to some other of Slash’s soli – he has an amazing feel for when to introduce more tension by using the harmonic minor scale
Compression is used extensively in most modern musical styles and is a great tool to have in your skill set. Compression is a complex tool and while it is (fairly) easy to get your head around it, it takes a lot of time and practice to master. Even I still have a long way to go, but I want to share what I have learnt so far anyways
What is compression and why should you care?
Rather than just talking about it, let us use a concrete example instead. Listen to the following bass line!
[audio:examples/27_11_2010_Compression/bassline_original.mp3|titles=Bass Line - Original]
I hope that does sound awful to your ears – because it is! The dynamics of the bass are all over the place, there are really soft and really loud notes played erratically and it’s hard to get a good feel for the rhythm. If you look at the waveform of the bass line, you can clearly see the abrupt changes in volume.
Now if you ever record a track like that, I’d urge you to “flush and re-record”. Working with a horrible recording makes mixing difficult and your final sound quality will suffer if you end up processing the signal too much! However, for the sake of this example, let’s assume you have no chance to re-record and are stuck with this inconsistent bass line. Good news is that we can apply compression to even out the dynamics of the track
Essentially, compression takes all sound waves above a certain volume threshold and reduces their excess volume by a specified (compression) ratio. It is important to remember that only the overshoot will be compressed, not the entire signal. This allows us to push down the peaks of a signal and reduce the volume fluctuations of the instrument track.
For our bass line example, I will start off with a threshold of -24dB and a compression ratio of 1:4. This will cause any sound louder than -24dB to have its excess volume reduced to 1/4th of its original output volume.
The red lines mark the -24dB line that we will be using as our compression threshold.
Notice that after compression all levels that exceeded the -24dB threshold have been reduced.
Listen to the compressed version.
[audio:examples/27_11_2010_Compression/bassline_compressed_24_4_8.3.mp3|titles=Bass line - Compressed]
You should be able to hear that the overall volume fluctuations of the bass line have been reduced and the bass line sounds more consistent. Notice that the overall volume of the signal has diminished. However, by compressing the peaks of the signal, we have freed up some headroom so we can increase the gain of the entire signal by a certain amount, called the make-up gain, to compensate for this loss in volume. I will use a make-up gain of 8.3dB to bring the level back up to where it was before compression. Be careful to avoid clipping when using make-up gain.
The following image shows the waveform of the compressed bass line after the make-up gain has been applied.
Again, here is the audio example. Compare it to the original bass line.
[audio:examples/27_11_2010_Compression/bassline_compressed_gain_24_4_8.3.mp3|titles=Bass line - Compressed & gain adjusted]
It’s not perfect, but can you hear how much more even the sound of the bass line has become? Compression is a great way to control the dynamics of an instrument and even them out. The loudness of the overall bass line has also increased because we pushed down the peaks and raised the level of the entire signal up to compensate.
One thing you have to be wary of is overcompression. Too much compression can lead to a very flat and dead sound and, because you typically apply make-up gain to make the quieter parts more prominent, you also increase the volume of any noise in the signal and decrease the signal-to-noise ratio (which is not a good thing). Here is an example of the above bass line overcompressed with a threshold of -40dB, a compression ratio of 1:8 and a make-up gain of 23.5dB.
Notice how our threshold is so low that almost the entire signal will be compressed and not just the peaks.
The waveform of the overcompressed bass line looks almost like a square – all dynamics have been squeezed out of it.
Have a listen to this overcompressed bass.
[audio:examples/27_11_2010_Compression/bassline_compressed_gain_40_8_23.5.mp3|titles=Bass line - Overcompressed]
In this example, the life as well as the natural sound of the bass has been squeezed out of the bass line and a lot of low noise that was present in the signal has been increased in volume by using too much make-up gain.
While compression has a distinct sound that experienced sound engineers can pick up on very easily, most people (including me to some extend) will hardly notice even strong compression. I do hope you notice the ugly compression sound in the overcompressed example tho
Compressed instruments usually sound thicker, more compact and punchier, which makes compressors popular to use for kick, snare or bass tracks. It is also used for vocal tracks, but simply to even out the dynamics a little like we did in this example.
In order to preserve the natural sound of your instrument track, it is usually better to compress a signal more frequently by a little bit than to compress it a lot once.
I like to start off with a fairly high threshold (so little of my signal is affected) and a small compression ratio (approximately 1:4 is fairly common) and then adjust your parameters based on what it is I am mixing. Compression is best learnt through experimentation and feel free to download the above bass line and play around with it
Wait!
Stop!
You didn’t mention the attack and release parameters!
Yeah I know, but I’m feeling like this post is already getting way too long and those compressor parameters are important enough to warrant a separate post to cover them properly. I will write about them soon – promise
Everyone has a different approach for transforming their music from an initial idea, a riff, a melody or a lyrical line into a completed and mixed song. Some people are very disciplined enough to bring their song form start to finish with one continuous stretch of work, others collect a million fragments of music over the years and slowly stich them together as inspiration strikes.
I definitely belong more into the latter category but have recently been trying to adopt a more disciplined approach in order to end up with a few good results rather than with many unfinished beginnings. In general there are as many different approaches to music creation are there are people in this world and neither approach is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. However, I do believe that by looking at other people’s methods, we can learn, be inspired, adopt a few techniques and thus improve our own process.
The intention in presenting my personal process here is to potentially give you a few ideas that you can incorporate into the way you create your own music. Or – if you think I’m doing something horribly wrong – feel free to email me and let me know. Look at it as a friendly knowledge exchange
The other reason for this post is simply that I want to write down how I am doing things at the moment so I can look back at it in a few years time and (besides getting a few laughs out of it) see if I have improved.
My current process can be broken down into 4 broad phases that each song is going through:
Each phase is feeding back into the previous one and I think it’s important to be able to say ‘wait, this is not good enough’ and take a step backwards to re-record, re-arrange or even re-invent parts of your song. Of course this will introduce alot of extra work and I find myself generally being quite careful from the moment I start arranging and composing to only move to the next phase once I am happy with the outcome of the current phase.
Today, we will be looking more closely at the first phase: Conception.
Phase 1 – Conception
I am not very good at sitting down with a “let’s be creative” attitude and invent something. It works sometimes, but most of the time I find that whatever music I come up with is very mediocre and not worth persuing any further. To me, inspiration comes when I let my mind drift, for example towards the end of an instrument practice session when I lose focus and start to play whatever I feel like or when I get tired in the evening and just pick up the guitar or sit at the piano to impovise a little, either with or without background music.
My ideas are usually single riffs, rhythms or melody lines though sometimes I just sing along randomly as I improvise (which for me works especially well on the piano where I mainly play chord sequences and small arpeggios) and it ends up sounding good. Once i have the feeling that I might be on to something, I play the same fragment over and over, try different variations to see if it can be improved or play the first half and then let my hands play randomly to see if I can automatically (and very naturally) connect it to something else.
Once I have a short fragment that I like, I usually write it down just so I won’t forget it. To me, this is a crucial part of my process! With everything else going on in my life, it’s easy for me to forget a great piece of music I invented just a few days ago and thus I tend to transcribe everything – this in my opinion is an essential skill everyone should have!
Once transcribed, I do a quick recording of the fragment, adding a few additional instruments just to get an idea how the piece would work within the context of a song.
The first example started out with a single guitar riff and I added bass and drums to it, trying to see how much power the riff could generate. Be careful – this fragment is pretty loud, so turn down your volume first!
In this second example, I was actually trying to get a more Guns’n'Roses style sound out of my guitar by playing more melodic intervals higher up the neck rather low power chords. I liked the staccato nature of the riff and tried adding drums and bass to contrast the guitar.
When i play guitar, drums or bass, my mind seems to be more in ‘rock mode’ and thus any music fragments I invent tend to have a heavier feeling to them. However, I do love the piano and all the pieces I invent while letting my fingers play over the keys tend to be alot more melodic and chord based. I am not a big fan of ‘standard chords’, I prefer to add a little suspension and mystery to my music by using suspended, extended or added tone chords (Em add9 is one of my favourites ).
Here is a simple piano idea I came up with. It has a very ‘open space’ feeling to it that I really like with piano music and it naturally flowed from the verse into a chorus without me having to really think about what chords I should be playing. I added some simple percussion to give the song a bit more pull and energy.
Now i am not a very good singer. I’m probably not even a ‘good’ singer, but I do love to sing and one of the best ways for me to come up with a nice vocal line is just to sing random words over whatever I am playing. And I mean really random – I just sing whatever words (or sounds) come to me just to play around with melody lines that might sound good.
Here is an unedited example I recorded simply by placing a microphone on my piano. The verse I have played a few times before just because i wanted to get the chords just right, however this is my first or second time letting my hands play around and improvise a chorus. I don’t really like the chorus that came out of it and you will hear me sing total gibberish, but hey, random experimentation is how i go about inventing music – and in my opinion, all experimentation is good
Keep improvising and don’t be afraid to experiment – even if it sounds silly at the time, you will get better and better the more you do it! Let your mind drift and all sorts of great ideas will come to you!
How to elegantly transition between different keys in your song
October 31st, 2010
Changing key within your song is a great way to change the mood of certain sections, create interest or add and resolve tension. Plenty of great rock songs never change key – Smells Like Teen Spirit uses the exact same 4 chords throughout the entire song – and you shouldn’t use it just because you can. Use it when it makes sense and you want to make part of your song stand out by making it darker, happier or more mysterious than other parts.
Here are two small examples transitioning from a verse to a chorus and back with a key change. Have a listen
Sounds like the same to you? Well, they are almost the same, but not quite. The chord just before the chorus is different in the two examples and I think that Transition 2 sounds more natural. But why? Let’s have a look at what exactly is going on.
The verse is in E-minor and the chorus is in G-minor.
Verse (Transition 1): Em | D | Am | G | Em | C | Am | Am
Verse (Transition 2): Em | D | Am | G | Em | C | D | D
Chorus: Eb | F | Gm | Gm | Eb | Cm | D | D
Notice that even though I’m jumping from one minor scale to another minor scale, the chorus has a more positive feeling to it? That is because I’m entering it on a major chord – Eb major.
The reson the key change in Transition 2 works better (in my opinion) is because the last chord in the verse, the D major chord, is
a part of the E minor scale, therefore sounds natural in the verse section and
the D major chord is the major dominant to the tonic of the G minor scale, or in other words, the D major chord is a part of the G harmonic minor scale (which is G, A, Bb, C, D, Eb, F#)
Harmonic minor?
The harmonic minor scale is a minor scale in which the seventh degree is pushed up by a semitone, which makes it a ‘leading note’ towards the tonic of the scale. This alteration to the natural minor scale causes the dominant chord to become a major chord, e.g. in G naturalminor, the dominant chord is D minor but in G harmonic minor, the dominant is D major!
Now because we end the verse on a D major chord, it leads up to the G (due to the F# note) and thus, we can easily transition into the G minor scale without it sounding unnatural. And since we are ending the chorus on D major, we can simply fall back into the verse because D major is a chord in that key
In Transition 1, we end the verse on an A minor chord, which is part of the E minor scale but is not part of the G minor scale (and not closely related either) and thus the key change sounds a bit more abrupt and sudden. Now a sudden change might be what you are after and is certainly appropriate in certain situations. Personally though, I prefer the harmonies to flow together a bit better, which is why I prefer the D major chord for the transition.
To smooth out the transition when changing keys, you should generally go through intermediate chords – chords which are either common or related to both your current and your new key.
For example, if you want to transition between A minor and D major, you can look at the chords in those scales
A minor: Am, Bdim, C, Dm, Em, F, G
D major: D, Em, F#m, G, Am, Bm, C#dim
Additionally, the major dominant for the A minor scale is D major (how convenient ) and for the D major scale it is A major.
Your best intermediate chords for a key shift would therefore be either common chords (Am, Em, G) or a dominant chord, e.g. using D major to transition to A minor.
To conclude this post, I have turned the Transition 2 example into a song fragment to demonstrate how the key change could sound in the context of a song.
Note that during the transition, the bass and the drums change and a new instrument (distorted guitar) is introduced – these are additional tools that can be used to ‘glue’ transitions together and I think even Transition 1 would have worked alright in this instance because the sudden key change isn’t harsh enough to break the glue provided by all the other elements.
Here’s the song fragment with Transition 1 – enjoy!
[audio:examples/31_10_2010_KeyChanges/SongExample.mp3|titles=Song Example - Key Change]
Changing key can introduce a lot of excitement into your songs, make use of them!
The theory behind why we perceive louder as better
October 20th, 2010
When I first started mixing, I had a strong tendency to continuously increase the volume I was mixing at, either by increasing the level of my master fader (which should always, always remain at 0 dB!) or by raising my monitor volume. There are two fundamental principles that cause this tendency:
The first is ear fatigue. Ear fatigue occurs when you listen to music for too long and your ear, trying to protect itself from continuous bombardment, starts to shut down and block out the sound. The best way to prevent this from happening and from interfering with your mixing is to take regular breaks during a session (probably at least 15 mins every 2 hours).
The second principle has to do with the way we perceive different frequencies at different loudness levels and, together with ear fatigue and increased volume, is often the reason we end up with an unsatisfying mix that is lacking lows and highs.
In 1933, Fletcher and Munson performed an audio experiment where listeners were asked to (subjectively) compare the perceived loudness of two different tones – one reference tone at 1 kHz and a second tone of a random test frequency. Fletcher and Munson then graphed their findings into a number of curves known as the Fletcher-Munson Curves. This experiment was re-examined later with similar findings which became the basis for the ISO 226 standard.
The way to read this graph is as follows: look at the blue curve at the 1 kHz / 40 dB point. Now follow the curve towards the left until you reach 50 Hz on the horizontal axis. You should now read about 70 dB on the vertical axis. In essence, this states that in order for a 50 Hz tone to be perceived as loud as a 1 kHz tone is at 40 dB, it needs to be played at 70 dB. That’s 30 dB difference! A similar thing happens when you move into the high frequencies. A 10 kHz tone needs to be played at about 55 dB to be perceived at the same loudness level. Notice that this difference in loudness evens out as the volume increases (the curves higher up in the figure), for example at 100 dB, the curves have flatten out considerably, meaning the perceived loudness difference between tones at different frequencies decreases.
There are two important things to take away from these curves:
We are less sensitive to low and high frequencies, we hear mid frequencies more prominently (especially between 1-5 kHz)
As the volume increases, this perceived loudness difference between the frequencies diminishes
In terms of mixing, this principle is the main reason why we have a tendency to increase the volume; as we raise the levels, the low and high frequencies become more prominent in the overall mix, leading to increasing power (lows) and clarity (highs). This makes the music appear more appealing to our ears and thus we often feel that ‘louder is better’. However, if we mix at very loud levels and then play the mix back at a lower volume, we will often find that we end up with a weak and muddy mix containing mainly mid frequencies.
There is no ‘simple fix’ for this problem. Your approach will also depends on your target audience and on how loud they are likely to play your music. Personally, I like to listen to my mix at different volume levels, from very soft to pretty loud, just to get a feeling for how well my overall frequency distribution will hold up in different situations and to make the mix as loudness proof as possible.
It is very useful to be aware of ear fatigue and our perception of frequencies at different levels and I hope it will be beneficial to your mixing!
