Category: Introduction to Music Production

Since starting our module -introduction to music production- we have been working on our blogs for 9 weeks, writing one blog post per week. The topics discussed within these entries have been varied and oftentimes out of my ‘comfort zone’ when it comes to my knowledge of musical genres and conventions.

When we began our blogs we looked into popular artists such as Doja Cat and Kenya Grace. We looked at much broader topics such as the roles of a music producer and song structure and arrangement. These allowed me to get used to the blog writing format and the sort of things I should be doing when writing these posts such as referencing.

As the course has gone on we have delved much deeper into genres that I have never looked into before such as ambient music and breakcore. Through research on individual artists and their unique perspectives on both production and music in general, I have found a lot of inspiration and have plans to incorporate some of these techniques into my own practice.

When researching KMRU in week 5, I was captivated by his innate appreciation for the sound that surrounds us on a daily basis and his ability to channel this into his music. I would like to incorporate field recordings into my production more as I enjoy the idea of allowing the world around you to contribute to a sonic experience. It is looking into these genres and conventions that oftentimes I would be sheltered from, that has broadened my perspective and benefited me the most.

When researching Brian Eno, Listening to the way in which he talks about music for purpose and function will no doubt influence a lot of my decision-making when it comes to producing music myself in the future.

Writing these weekly blog posts has made me much more confident in my ability to reference and expand on these references and I hope that this comes across in my production analysis report that will be submitted alongside this blog.

This week in class we looked into breakcore and how artists like Venetian snares have allowed more experimental sub-genres of electronic music to find their place in mainstream music.

Venetian Snares is helped define the electronic subgenre breakcore, and became one of its most prolific, well-recognized figures. Much of his work consists of intense mutations of jungle and hardcore techno, with obtuse time signatures playing at impossibly fast tempos, and deftly edited samples from a wide array of sources. (Venetian snares songs, albums, reviews, Bio & More)

Breakcore is a genre that will always have a deep connection to the internet. In the past few years, the once-underground genre has found a revival in more popular media due to its popularity on TikTok and other short-form content-based social media platforms. With artists such as sewerslvt and machine girl continuing to produce music for the genre.

‘Modern breakcore engages with a distinctly online space, often mingling with aspects of glitchcore, vaporwave and other internet-born genres.’ (J, 2023). While modern breakcore is distinctly different from its 90’s predecessor, the core values of the genre stay the same with tracks characterized by intense, high-energy beats and intricate, complex soundscapes. (Pianity Music)

Modern breakcore possesses a distinctly “internetcore” style with influences from anime, video games and pop culture. (J, 2023)

We also looked at Sophie,

Her music combined pop instincts, uncompromisingly experimental musical ideas, formidable programming chops, and a self-presentation that was at once mischievous and movingly guileless. The result was a body of work that was essentially hopeful, like a roadmap to a better world in which to be vulnerable was, ironically, synonymous with becoming indestructible. (Sherburne, 2021)

Sophie said in an interview that she tries to make music which is fun to dance to; that she thinks that it would be extremely exciting if music could take you on the same sort of high-thrill-3-minute ride as a theme park roller coaster. She said that this is the way that she envisages the potential of music. Instead of being strapped to a seat, people would instead be dancing. (Russell, 2012)

J (2023) What is breakcore? A genre field guide, WKNC 88.1 FM. Available at: https://wknc.org/2023/08/10/what-is-breakcore-a-genre-field-guide/ (Accessed: 26 November 2023). 

Pianity Music (no date) Breakcore music: Your ultimate guide, Pianity. Available at: https://pianity.com/tag/breakcore (Accessed: 26 November 2023). 

Russell, L. (2012) Expanded benefits: Matthew Lutz-Kinoy and Sophie, BOMB Magazine. Available at: https://bombmagazine.org/articles/expanded-benefits-matthew-lutz-kinoy-and-sophie/ (Accessed: 26 November 2023). 

Sherburne, P. (2021) Remembering sophie’s radical futurism, Pitchfork. Available at: https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/remembering-sophies-radical-futurism/ (Accessed: 26 November 2023). 

Venetian snares songs, albums, reviews, Bio & More (no date) AllMusic. Available at: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/venetian-snares-mn0000317131#biography (Accessed: 26 November 2023). 

This week in class we looked at ambient music.

We watched Imaginary Landscapes – A documentary about Brian Eno. Eno is one of the pioneers of mainstream ambient music and helped to define the genre.

Eno chooses to avoid vocal elements in a lot of his music (despite enjoying singing and having sung on his more rock/pop compositions such as on his album “Taking Tiger Mountain (by strategy)”) as he believes that it allows the listener to take in their own surroundings and find their own meaning in the music. He says that he enjoys listening to film music as its unique identity is compositionally different to other types of music due to the fact that the main part is missing. This is because the music exists to support an action but the action is missing when you just listen to it on a record. He finds it very interesting to make music that is context and not action. (Brian Eno, 1989, 15 minutes) It leaves you to create your own picture that goes with the music.

Eno suggests that despite the artist having a clear vision or meaning in mind for a piece of music, it is not important that the listener understands or is knowledgeable about this as the music will allow for a unique perspective based on the listener.

I have spoken before about location being a large part of the creative progress when creating music (especially ambient). When writing about KMRU -an ambient artist studying in Berlin. He states that “I bought a field recorder to use as a soundcard but eventually started using it as a mic to record sounds on-site. I realised that there were sounds in my environment that I wasn’t aware of, and discovering that prompted me to engage more and use that discourse as a compositional tool” (Future Music, 2021, Para 4) Eno also suggests this. “For me the river was always a way of going somewhere, I spend a lot of time around the river because of all the mysterious things that live down the river that don’t live elsewhere because you can go swimming there and catching eels and all those things. water in general, there’s an idea about water that I like in that it’s constant but not solid. the river is always going somewhere. a lot of the songs I wrote were about rivers or water in some way.” (Brian Eno, 1989, 33 minutes)

‘the convenient picture of New York at that time was a city where you kept your vision down. what I did on that spring day and what I did on mistaken memories was I looked up and I saw this beautiful city against a huge sky. that is a different picture altogether, once you let the sky into the picture the city is not so overwhelming, there is space in there as well.’ (Brian Eno, 1989, 24 minutes)

When Brian Eno applied the term “ambient music” to his activities he switched the emphasis away from making music, focusing instead on the act of listening. (Toop, 1995, Page 40)

The idea of music being without narrative, music as a function comes up a lot when looking into dance and rave culture. “The aim of dancing your ass off, sacred or profane, was inspired by disco’s flow motion. The seamless mix that transpired three-minute pop songs (Phil Spector’s little symphonies for the kids) into long form epics” (Toop, 1995, Page 41). Music in this context has a different purpose than songs that you would listen to at home or on the radio. These songs are made with the purpose of enhancing an experience; supporting an action or event; to control a crowd. When we talk about ambient music it’s easy to imagine calm and peaceful soundscapes, slowly evolving over time but the genre is much more expansive than that and this is only one side of it. The term ambient music is subordinate to ‘music which taps into the disturbing, chaotic undertow of the environment’ (Toop, 1995, Page 36)

In this chapter, Toop looks into the origins of acid music and the tropes within the term. In an interview with Marshall Jefferson, It is said that “when you get an acid machine you don’t pre-program anything. You just hit some notes on a machine man. “it’s supposed to get you in a mood, you know. For one thing, the tune is 11 minutes long of the same thing. Slight changes, but not that noticeable. Like when you hear a really long solo in the old days it’s the same bass line going and everybody’s doing something different over it. That’s supposed to capture a mood.” (Toop, 1995, Page 38) This comes back to the idea of music being made for function; music made with the specific intention of capturing a mood or enhancing an experience. While musically, acid is very simplistic in arrangement and structure, it is that way for a reason. There is a purpose behind the simplicity. It is music to dance to, music for clubs.

Jefferson played a major role in acid’s start, producing and mixing two of the style’s foundational cuts, Sleezy D’s ‘I’ve Lost Control’ and Phuture’s ‘Acid Tracks’, from 1986 and ’87, respectively. (Tantum, 2020, Para 5)

Future Music. (2021) KMRU: ‘I stopped buying sample packs and spent all my time outside recording sounds and taking them back to the studio’, MusicRadar. Available at: https://www.musicradar.com/news/kmru-interview. 

Imaginary Landscapes (1989). Available at: https://vimeo.com/84186635?signup=true#. 

Tantum, B. (2020) Marshall Jefferson: Master of the House, DJMag.com. Available at: https://djmag.com/longreads/marshall-jefferson-master-house. 

Toop, D. (1995) Ocean of sound. 4 Blackstock Mews, London: Serpent’s Tail. 

In class this week we listened to several artists in the experimental and industrial scene including Throbbing Gristle, muslimgauze, Einsturzende Neubauten and Cedric Fermont. We discussed how context and their aesthetics affected the listening and engagement with us.

For example, we looked at muslimgauze and how he steps the line between displaying a political message and cultural appropriation in his production style and his heavy use of Middle Eastern soundscapes and instrumentation as an English Musician and Producer.

“Muslimgauze’s music can be described as usually monotonous “ethnic” percussion, interspersed with Middle Eastern sounds and atmospherics, with some excursions into ambient or slightly more dance-floor oriented material. “ (Fringeli, 2023)

I will be looking into the song “The Unknown Soldier” by The Doors. This song was written at the height of the Vietnam war and is a song of anti-war.

after the band played the International Ballroom at the Hilton Hotel, in Arlington, Virginia, in November 1967, Morrison visited the Tomb Of The Unknown Soldier in the nearby Arlington Cemetery. The visit inspired him to pen the lyrics for the song of the same name, which The Doors worked up on the road before recording it as the follow-up single to their Top 30 hit Love Me Two Times. (York, 2023)

The song tells the story of the death of an unknown soldier and how children were watching the war on their televisions at home while their fathers were being killed. (Whitaker, 2013)

The song was deemed controversial and many radio stations refused to play it (Alpha History, 2018) due to its violent themes.

The eerie vocals speak directly of the atrocities of war. As the song progresses, samples of gunfire, military drums, chants and church bells can be heard until Morrison begins to chant that ‘war is over’ towards the end of the song.

This can be seen as a depiction of the futility of war but it remains to be seen if all this was meant to confirm an optimistic belief in pacifism.  (Nones, 2016)

Along with the song came an equally politically charged music video which depicted Jim Morrison tied to a strut of a pier and shot down. The video then cuts to footage of the Vietnam War. This video was often played behind the band as they performed this song.

Fringeli, C. (2023) Anti-semitism from beyond the grave – muslimgauze’s jihad, Datacide. Available at: https://datacide-magazine.com/anti-semitism-from-beyond-the-grave-muslimgauzes-jihad-2/ (Accessed: 24 November 2023). 

History, A. (2018) The doors: ‘The unknown soldier’ (1968), Vietnam War. Available at: https://alphahistory.com/vietnamwar/the-doors-the-unknown-soldier-1968/#:~:text=Many%20radio%20stations%20refused%20to,with%20soldiers%20serving%20in%20Vietnam. (Accessed: 24 November 2023). 

Nones, A. (2016) Behind the doors: Perceptions of reality, Music and Politics. Available at: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/mp/9460447.0010.104/–behind-the-doors-perceptions-of-reality?rgn=main%3Bview (Accessed: 24 November 2023). 

Whitaker, S. (2013) The doors, ‘unknown soldier’ – songs about soldiers, Ultimate Classic Rock. Available at: https://ultimateclassicrock.com/the-doors-songs-about-soldiers/ (Accessed: 24 November 2023). 

York, A. (2023) ‘The unknown soldier’: The story behind the doors’ potent anti-war song, Dig! Available at: https://www.thisisdig.com/feature/the-unknown-soldier-the-doors-song-story/ (Accessed: 24 November 2023). 

Hakuna Kulala is an Uganda-based record label. The artists working under this label have been a catalyst for blending culture and genre. The label describes itself as “Club explorations from the East African and Congolese Electronic Underground and beyond.” (Hakuna Kulala’s community)

Today I will speak about Yallah Gaudencia Mbidde who goes by the stage name of MC Yallah, specifically the track “No One Seems to Bother”.

The track “No One Seems to Bother” features vocals from ‘Lord Spikeheart’ -singer for Kenyan metal band ‘Duma’- and production by German producer ‘Debmaster’.

Mc Yallah states that “This is a song whereby we were expressing ourselves about how unfair life and people can be,” (Bruce-Jones, 2023)  

This can be seen in the abrasive, industrial approach to production that Debmaster incorporates into this track.  Paired with Yallah’s politically charged lyrics and Lord Spikeheart’s harsh screaming vocals this allows the piece to portray a great deal of anger and aggression.

The track begins with these harsh, scratching synthesisers that are reminiscent of a knife scraping against metal. As the vocals enter the track, so does the bass. A recurring factor in the instruments and sounds used in this track is that they are aggressive and prevalent. This gives the track a sense of unease and bequeaths this feeling to the listener.

This feeling of unease and aggression extends to the lyrical content of the track and is very intentional in the message of the song.

Alex Rigotti from the quietus.com claims that

“Yallah Beibe is centred around a resistance to cultural tropes of ‘East meets West’, while integrating its Ugandan identity. Yallah manages to weave Ugandan politics, languages and sounds into her album without ever tokenising these aspects; rather, they’re simply part of who Yallah is. Dance music can fall into frustrating formulas of adapting older folk sound recordings and setting them to dance beats, as though Western electronic rhythms are what modernises these cultures. But genres like singeli are already part of the vanguard of the African electronic experimental scene – the way forward is to prioritise your personal vision first. What Yallah brings to the table is a strong focus in her identity, fearlessness in her expression, and utter certainty that her vision is the future.” (Rigotti, 2022)

I agree with Alex and believe Yallah brings a new perspective to a primarily Western genre of music.  Working with European Producers and performing to European audiences (groups that often would not be exposed to the culture and music portrayed by MC Yallah) her songs of rebellion and local politics create a controversial performance and will allow for her culture to be known to a wider world.

Bruce-Jones, H. (2023) Fact premiere: MC Yallah X Debmaster – no one seems to bother [feat. lord spikeheart], Fact Magazine. Available at: https://www.factmag.com/2023/05/02/fact-premiere-mc-yallah-x-debmaster-no-one-seems-to-bother-feat-lord-spikeheart/ (Accessed: 24 November 2023). 

Hakuna Kulala’s community (no date) HAKUNA KULALA. Available at: https://hakunakulala.bandcamp.com/community (Accessed: 24 November 2023). 

Rigotti, A. (2022) Features: Album of the week: GO with the Lugaflow: Yallah Beibe by MC Yallah, The Quietus. Available at: https://thequietus.com/articles/32826-yallah-beibe-mc-yallah-review (Accessed: 24 November 2023). 

There is a wide spectrum when it comes to workflow in music production. I have spoken previously about the different roles within the music producer umbrella and workflow comes into this. I will be speaking about a musician/producer who goes by “KMRU” in this blog post.

KMRU is a producer who creates experimental ambient spaces through the use of both synthesis and field recordings. KMRU has a unique workflow in the way in which he uses and incorporates these field recordings into his work. KMRU said in an interview that

“It began three years ago in Nairobi. I bought a field recorder to use as a soundcard but eventually started using it as a mic to record sounds on-site. I realised that there were sounds in my environment that I wasn’t aware of, and discovering that prompted me to engage more and use that discourse as a compositional tool. Eventually, I stopped buying sample packs and spent all my time outside recording sounds and taking them back to the studio.” (Future Music, 2021)

KMRU’s work process begins with these field recordings. He will explore the sounds of his environment using a zoom H6 field recorder and collect these on his computer. KMRU has said in an interview that oftentimes he won’t bring a recording device with him, instead, he will just sit and take in the sounds that surround him. He will often bring a sketchbook and draw what these sounds are to him. (KMRU, 2021)This level of immersion within his environment allows him to truly understand the intricacies of specific locations when it comes to what makes up their unique sound profile. KMRU began making music around his home in Kenya and eventually moved to Berlin. The extent to which his surroundings and the sounds within them influence his work is immense and when he moved to Berlin he said in an interview that the first thing he noticed about Berlin was just how different the sounds surrounding him were and that he was worried that his sound would change. (KMRU, 2021)

Once KMRU has obtained these recordings he augments them using digital equipment such as effect layers, synthesisers and time warping. He will often then run them through a Chase Bliss Mood pedal. Once he has augmented these recordings he will never go back to the original noise, only transform them further. It is clear when listening to KMRU’s music how much intent there is in terms of preserving the feeling of the location of the samples used to build the piece. When you listen to KMRU’s music, you can immerse yourself in these soundscapes. Through the spacing of these sounds within the stereo field he creates vibrant and expressive soundscapes.

Ableton (2021) KMRU: Spaces: KMRU explores environmental influences in Loop’s new documentary. see the places that have inspired him and grab a free selection of his field…: By Ableton, Facebook. Available at: https://www.facebook.com/ableton/videos/575642646860498/ (Accessed: 24 November 2023). 

Music, F. (2021) KMRU: ‘I stopped buying sample packs and spent all my time outside recording sounds and taking them back to the studio’, MusicRadar. Available at: https://www.musicradar.com/news/kmru-interview (Accessed: 24 November 2023). 

This week we looked into the advancements in music technology and techniques used in different periods.

One of the earliest forms of recording music involved wax cylinders. This involved bands or musicians performing into a large horn that etched the audio it received onto a cylinder of wax which could then be played back using a phonograph. This did have a lot of limitations.
There was no ability to modify recordings in post-production or mix. The only way to manage the levels of individual instruments on the recording was the physical placement of the musician within the room. This meant for tracks with vocals, the vocalist would be positioned directly in front of the horn while the louder instruments such as brass and woodwind would stand farther back. This style of recording involved a constant hissing noise and lack of lower frequencies as they found it harder to cut through the mix. This led to a lot of rumbling and bass instruments being a lot quieter in the mix.

https://www.nypl.org/events/tours/audio-guides/treasures-audio-guide/item/3569 – Here is an example of early wax recording.

With the introduction of tape recorders, the ability to overdub was gained in music production. This led to much clearer vocals and allowed for much more creative control in terms of production. Some characteristics of this style of recording were that there was significantly more low-end than with wax recording and much less hissing. Eventually, Dobe noise suppression inputs were created to alleviate the problem of static noise in recordings. In these early styles of recording, producers had to get much more creative when attempting to augment the sound due to much less being readily available such as audio effects within DAWs or Equipment. An example of this is how they created reverb. Studios would often have a room of reflective material in order to make it reverberate. this would be filled with speakers that would be picked up with a microphone to record this reverberated signal.

I am choosing Duke’s Last Soliloquy by Dizzy Gillespie to analyse.

In terms of instrumentation, The track contains piano, drums, saxophone, double bass and trumpet.

The piece begins with the saxophone, bass and piano playing a descending line very softly in unison with some gentle cymbal hits and a brushed snare from the drummer. The trumpet plays a slow melody with some long notes using vibrato and the fact that the trumpet has a much harsher timbre than the rest of the instruments, which are playing so softly, gives a sense of isolation or loneliness. The trumpet is also panned to the left while the majority of the backing is to the right. This enhances this feeling of loneliness. The trumpet and saxophone then stop while the backing gently picks up with the piano and bass building. As this tension rises, the trumpet comes back in with a much coarser tone and gives the impression of shouting out into the night.

This choice of instrumentation was selected as the trumpet naturally has quite a rough and raspy timbre. This allows for it to almost act almost as shouting. As if in the first half of the piece it is soft and helpless and in the second half is shouting out. This level of expression displayed is perfectly suited for a brass instrument such as this. The choice of brushes on the drums allows for a soft and sombre backing whereas a regular snare would be too jarring. The drummer primarily uses the hi-hat and snare as the use of a more standard kick and snare pattern would change the feel of the piece and remove a lot of this feeling of isolation. The parts for all the backing instruments are very simple and primarily contain long-held-out notes. This creates an almost empty and sparse atmosphere for the trumpet to cut through.

When it comes to analysing music, you can look into a lot. A multitude of factors go into producing a record and delving into specific aspects of a piece can help you to identify the conventions of the genre that you are looking into. While not all songs in a specific genre follow the same patterns and features, a lot of what makes a track a certain genre comes down to these conventions.

Through discussion in class involving a lot of back and forth of differing opinions, I realised that it is very difficult to not become biased based on your personal taste. It is important to understand that all music is subjective and it is not helpful to decide whether a song is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ when participating in critical listening. Instead, we must look into objective elements of the track, for example, structure.

We spent a while discussing song structure and we listened to some songs with a very concrete song structure such as Doja Cat’s ‘Paint the town red’ which was as simple as intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, outro. We then realised that in some cases it may be difficult to label certain sections when the shift between them is quite vague.

We looked at ‘Strangers’ by Kenya Grace and in groups were tasked to write down the structure of the song and what we found was that different groups had written different song structures, specifically when it came to the post-chorus section. While the section acts as a transitionary stage between the chorus and following verse, some groups decided that this was simply a continuation of the chorus.

We then looked into songs that break the expected song structure of the genre they are placed in. We looked at a track by Kendrick Lamar in which the structure was made up of no real repeating sections. While dynamically there were highs and lows and the song built up to certain sections and dipped in others, the song contained no real verses or choruses.

This week in our first lecture on the module “Introduction to Music Production”, We were asked the question of what is a music producer. At first, this seemed like a simple question with a straightforward answer until we started to delve into it as groups and it became increasingly clear that the term “music producer” can describe a wide variety of roles within the industry.

My personal definition of a music producer is someone who bridges the gap between creativity and engineering through the use of technology. This definition already shows how vague the term actually is. If you consider a producer to use technology, the definition also changes as technology advances. A music producer in the modern day, while still technically achieving the same purpose, will operate entirely differently to a music producer in the 60s who instead of using computers and DAWs with the freedom to cut and edit with relative ease will instead be operating on a multi-track tape recorder with a lot less freedom to craft a track in post-production. This differs even more so from producers in the late 1800s who would use wax cylinders to record. This would allow even less flexibility in sound and would again allow less freedom.

With the wider access we have in the modern day to laptops with music production software, It has become easier and more accessible for individuals to record and produce their own ideas. This has led to the rise of ‘bedroom producers’ and has also shifted the definition of music production even more so. A large number of producers now have a much larger input creatively on a track than they did in past years and as such has widened this role even further.

There are a wide range of different music producers in both the way they work and what input they have on the record. From mixing and mastering engineers who have little to no creative input on the track to individuals who record their own music and as such have complete creative control. This begs the question of where I hope to stand on this spectrum. I am hoping that as this course goes on and I learn more about all of these different categories of producers and the intricacies of each role I will decide exactly where I want to position myself but as of now, I am content in knowing that there is a lot that I do not yet know and that there is a lot that I wish to learn. Through these three years of study, I hope to hone my craft and become both more knowledgeable on the industry and production as a whole and also more technically well versed in digital recording.