Swiftly moving on, the second song of the ‘Reserve Lounge’ package is nearing completion. All that this track requires is mixing and mastering when all three songs reach a near finished stage. Song 2 of the collection leans more towards the downtempo genre throughout, yet still has some ambient elements within its background. With this particular song I aimed to reach the ‘High Arousal, Positive Effect’ section of the Circumplex model of emotion which you can see details of in my previous research post: Emotional response to music. This particular section houses emotions of excitement and elation.Below is the unmixed version of the track:

The difference in this song is that the ambient sections of the track take more of a backseat role and work as more of a base for the downtempo influences to work on top. The ambient parts of this song feature a sample of a vinyl recording of a glockenspiel looped every 4 bars, coupled with a dark, ambient drone created with Native instruments plugin; Absynth 5 which immediately sets the mood for the rest of the song. Both tracks feature very little processing at all, just some slight EQ adjustments to roll off the bottom end of the sample and a hall reverb to give the drone some depth to help it sit within the rest of the track. After 8 bars of this you can hear a simple 4 chord phrase panned to the right side. This is replicated using a Hammond organ patched into an old rotary speaker from the Kontakt 5 organs package. I Eq’d the organ to take off all of the higher frequencies and added a similar reverb to the one used on the drone to try and help blend the organ into the ambient background. Shortly afterwards the organ is joined by the same phrase played on an upright piano but 2 octaves up and panned to the left. This helps fill out the main chord sequence for the song as well as giving the track some additional stereo width. The upright piano was equipped with EQ to roll off the bottom end so the two chord phrases sat together without interrupting each others frequencies and a medium length church reverb to once again help build the ambient background track. As soon as the song hits the 21 second mark, the ambient qualities of the song take a backseat as a base track allowing the downtempo features to become more prominent. As before this creative decision was mainly influenced by the genre collaboration research documented earlier. Not only does it keep the songs interesting but also allows the audience of each specific genre to explore new avenues in the collaborating genre they may not have listened to before.

Next you hear a familiar upright double bass used for the bass line. This particular choice of instrument worked very well in the first track and tends to work positively within the downtempo genre as well so based on this i chose to use it again. The track features some EQ to boost around the 80Hz frequency to fatten up the bass sound and some fairly heavy compression to keep its wandering dynamic range from becoming too loud and prominent within certain parts of the song. The bass line is accompanied with an electronic synth swell coupled with a stereo delay that fades into the background, just for the purpose of defining the build up to the main section of the song. This build up also features a combination of a ride and crash cymbal, lightly playing along with the glockenspiel sample for 8 bars. In terms of processing for these i simply rolled off any bottom end frequencies using a Waves SSL plug-in to stop any frequencies clashing with any of the ambient sections of the track. After these 8 bars enters the main drum rhythm that marks the main section of the track. I once again used a similar technique to the one used in the first track in terms of processing by using a combination of acoustic drums for the main bulk of the groove and an electronic 909 kick to give the beat a little more power. Once again some gentle compression was used to ensure the more dynamic parts of the groove were kept in line and a medium plate reverb was used to ensure that the rhythm sections don’t sound too upfront in the mix. The song follows a similar pattern most of the way through with the addition of a few drops and additional piano parts to keep things interesting.

The actual drum beat shows more similarities to a modern rock or pop song in the way it develops and uses certain fills in and out of the main sections of the song as opposed to looped samples commonly used in downtempo music. This creative choice is once again due to the fact that I wanted to put my own style into the song in the hope that it helps create more of a musical identity for the reserve lounge. As well as this, It will help keep my client interested when listening to the final mixes if he hears 3 songs that all differ in subtle ways. There is nothing worse than listening to songs that sound the same consecutively, meaning I will need to ensure each of my tracks features something a little different and attention grabbing to keep both my client and his customers in the ‘High Arousal, Positive Effect’ zone.