This post marks the final leg of the production stage of the 3 songs for the ‘Reserve Lounge’ as I come to the end of the third song’s production. As before, this track just requires mixing and mastering before its completely finished. Where the previous song leaned more to the downtempo genre, I felt it was only fair to balance this with a track that leant more in the direction of ambient music. With this final song I was aiming to reach the ‘Low arousal, positive effect’ section of the circumplex model of emotion, housing emotions like ‘relaxed’ and ‘calm’. More details can be seen on this model in one of my previous research posts named: Emotional responses to music. Below is the unmixed, unmastered version of Song 3:

Due to the first song adopting the ‘designer music’ theory and the second song featuring downtempo as a lead role with hints of ambience, i felt it was best to create the final track as an example of the ambient genre with hints of the downtempo genre. So lets start by looking at the ambient features of this song and how I achieved them. Most commercially released ambient tracks tend to adopt a similar structural pattern in a way that it will feature an ambient chord sequence that runs through the majority of the song and additive phrases and instrumentation are utilised, allowing the song to progress and remain interesting to its listener. This is also a technique commonly used in ‘background’ music, used in cafe’s and public spaces, making it a perfect structure for the VIP room. Based on these characteristics, I made a conscious effort to include a similar style within this song. The song begins with a two chord rotation, achieved using the ‘Massive’ plug-in from Native Instruments to create a reverberated pad synth panned towards the left side. As this repeats for 4 cycles, the rhythm section starts to kick in with a mixture of a 909 clap and finger snaps to act as a snare. Due to the style of the song i felt this needed some fairly heavy processing. I started with EQ to roll off the bottom end to stop them interfering with other frequencies during the song and then boosted the 10kHz to add some snap and at 900Hz to enhance the definition of the claps. I then chose a compressor with a fairly heavy ratio of 4:1 to give the claps some more presence within the song. I finally added a reverb bus with a long plate reverb attached to help this track sit better within the rest of the mix. This i also accompanied by some reverberated woodblocks and shakers which switch from left to right occasionally within the stereo field. The main phrase of the song then begins at 28 seconds with a big volume boost due to added instrumentation. Another pad synth is used adopting a similar sound the main synth used in Brian Eno’s ‘An Ending (Ascent)’. This follows the same chord progression but is panned to the right side to balance out the first synth and to add some body to the track. This is accompanied by a double tracked, clean Fender telecaster following the same chord sequence. Each of the tracks are panned away from each other to the left and right, EQ’d to boost the 1.5 to 2.5kHz frequencies to give more presence and ensure they sit well in the mix, and finally some light compression to once again help the guitars become more prominent. The rhythm section is joined by a 909 kick drum from the Native Instruments ‘Battery 4’ plug in. The main process that went into the kick was the use of side chain compression, used so the synth pads dropped in level when ever the kick played with a slow release time to achieve a ‘pumping’ effect, often heard in downtempo music.

These tracks follow through the majority of the song, occasionally dipping certain sections out to create some quieter breaks within the song. Each time the song breaks down and rises back up again you can hear the addition of some melodic muted guitar licks, backed up with a Marimba to fatten the sound up a little. The reason for this particular creative decision was down to the fact that downtempo music often encompasses ‘world instruments’ to help define its particular style, a style I wanted to attempt to replicate within this song. Based on the 3 songs I have produced so far I feel that this one will work best within the Reserve Lounge as it uses a collection of all 3 studied genre’s and fits closest to my clients brief. I just hope my client feels the same way when i present these unmixed versions to him next week.

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.

Finally the 1st song of 3 for the reserve lounge is nearing completion. This post will be for the purpose of documenting some practical techniques used within the song and to show how my research influenced some of the creative decisions that went into the product. Below is a demo of the first song. There are some more parts to be added and some finishing touches to made but this is just to give you an idea as to what I’m aiming for:

So lets start with the ambient qualities of the song. A natural recording of forest animals, rain and streams run the entire length of the song, achieved by a mixture of my own recordings of birds when visiting my family in North Wales using a handheld Zoom H2N and copyright free recordings of rain and streams from the internet. The purpose of this particular feature was to attempt to replicate some of the ‘designer music’ created by Jeffery Thompson. The use of ambient natural backgrounds proved to be a particularly thought invoking method in Thompson’s music as you can see in my previous research post named ‘Genre in music psychology’. Not a lot of work went into the processing of this section as i wanted to keep the most pure version of naturalistic sound to avoid it sounding fake. The only process used was an EQ plug-in, rolling off the bottom end frequencies to avoid any disturbance or clashing with other instruments sharing similar frequencies within the rest of the song. As well as this I used a pad synthesiser from the Komplete 9 plug-in collection to create a gentle drone in the foreground of the track changing from ‘C major’ to ‘F major’ every 4 bars. The prominent use of major chords should help evoke a positive mood on the customers as opposed to using minor chords. Once again, pad synthesisers and the use of drones was common in Jeffery Thompson’s designer music and took an interest to adopt this style in my own work. For some finishing touches to the ambient sections, I added some reverberated wood blocks and shimmering chimes panning across the stereo field just before the main part of the song to keep things interesting and to help build up to the main phrases of the track. Obviously once again the processing took a back seat in this as i wanted to preserve the sounds natural qualities.

At the 42 second mark the genre collaboration research gets put into practice and you start to hear the influences of the ‘downtempo’ genre. The defining characteristic of downtempo is the use of an electronically programmed beat or groove, usually less prominent in the mix than other electronic genre’s. Baring this in mind I used a mixture of the Native Instruments drum sampling plug-in; Battery 4 and Kontakt 5’s realistic drums package. I wanted to ensure that the rhythm section was not overly complicated as i didn’t want to draw attention away from the ambient sections too much. I used Kontakt 5 to program the basic rudiments and ghost notes that constructed the beat and then doubled the kick drum with a tuned 909 kick with Battery 4. This was then polished off with some EQ taking the bottom end of the realistic drums, fairly heavy compression often desirable in downtempo music and finally a medium sized reverb to give the beat some depth in the track. Keeping to the characteristics of the downtempo genre, I composed a bass track using a double bass often found in jazz arrangements, something the producers of downtempo are particularly fond of. Some simple EQ and compression was used here just to keep the bass frequencies in line as the double bass is an extremely dynamic instrument and required taming to stop it ‘muddying’ up the track.

Finally I wanted to add my own personal mark on the song by bringing something new. Neither ambient or downtempo music tend to feature the electric guitar as it tends not to bond with the electronic aspects of the song so well. Despite this I decided to experiment with this and managed to write something that really helped add a more positive emotion to the track. I started with some heavily reverberated volume swells, once again using the C and F major chords and then panned each C major to one side and then each F major to the other. I then accompanied this with some clean chord strikes with an added tremolo effect patch along with another long reverb. These were panned to opposite sides of the volume swells which in turn created a particularly atmospheric and stimulating effect on the ears. Although this technique was not an exact representation of the earlier researched ‘binaural beats’ it does share some similarities in the way that it helps stimulate the brain.

After some finishing touches, some level and panning automation and gentle mixing to ensure the instruments sat well together while still sounding natural, I felt the track was nearing the completion of production stage. Chances are I will go back to it and add further parts to the song, in which i will update the blog if this occurs. The track should now be ready for the mastering stage once the other 2 tracks are completed.