Mash up: A Review|

Mash Up: A Review

‘Redhead redemption: Ed Sheeran (Kaplan, I. 2011) interview was the reason why I got inspired to write my own song, but after many attempts of trying to write a song I decided to look at making a mash up. All popular tunes, regardless of genre, are based on chord progressions. Even if a song consists mostly of single-note riffs or an acapella vocal line (chords and overall harmony are still implied or alluded to by the melody. Understanding chords, and the way they relate to each other, is pretty much the foundation of all pop songwriting. (Scharfglass, 2014) When choosing a song I looked at one of my favorite songs by the ‘Animals’- house of the rising sun. I looked at their chord progression and chose another 2 songs that fit the same chord progression. My final choices were:

Animals- House of the rinsing sun

Noisettes- Don’t upset the rhythm

Mackelmore- Thirftshop

 I figured out the chords on piano and guitar and started to piece the songs together, making sure the transitions between songs flowed nicely together and everything fitted well. The chords that I found worked with all 3 songs were

G#m B C# D#-4

G#m B C# D#-8

G#m B C# E G#m B D#

G#m B C# E G#m D# G#m D#

I played alongside Aston (Male vocalist) whilst he played the chords on guitar. I found it really difficult to sing whist playing so when I was editing the song I sang over it as if it was a backing track and then editing it in to fit the tempo and timing.

 I thought my song was really well thought out, I thought my process leading up to creating the song was very strong, as I had done a lot of research and made sure I could properly make up a song just from chord progressions.

When playing my song to the audience I found that the quality after editing it was really poor and it made the song sound very weak. 

In the past I have never really sang before which meant when I was singing to the track I was really nervous and didn’t project my voice. Playing it back to the audience I found myself to have gotten a little embarrassed because I don’t like the fact of listening to the sound of my voice, I found that when I was sat as an audience member listening to my song it didn’t match up to my expectations, especially the quality. My process and my research was really strong behind the song but I feel as though I could have done better when it came to editing and piecing the song together.

The reaction from the audience made me feel slightly more comfortable as everyone is aware that I’m not very confident in singing, because I got the reaction I did I feel as though I should have tried a lot more harder to make my voice sound better by researching more techniques and practicing more vocally.

If I could have done it next time round I would research more into my voice and look at techniques and training to help my voice get better, maybe even take up a few vocal lessons just to ensure that I improve. (vocalist, 2001)

Overall I feel as though I have done well to create a mash up of songs using the chord progressions but there is still a lot of room for improvement with my vocals and editing ability.

References:

The write stuff: Chord progression to get you started (no date) available at: http://www.guitarworld.com/node/19542 (accessed: 2 June 2015)

Kaplan.I. (No date) Redhead redemption Ed Sheeran. Available at http://www.interviewmagazine.com/music/ed-sheeran (Accessed: 2 June 2015)

Vocalist.org.uk (No Date) Breathing, Pitch, Fitness, Posture- Vocal Exercises for singers at vocalist. Available at http://www.vocalist.org.uk/exercises.html

(Accessed: 2 June 2015)

My Song|

Overall my song is a mash up of three songs that have the same chord progression and sang with a female vocal and also a male, whilst the backing track consist of a keyboard with the effect of an organ and a guitar.

Piecing It Together|

Myself and my friend got together one night as I needed advice on the songs I had chosen. I explained that I wanted him to play guitar as I played piano and we both could sing together, I thought it might sound quite nice having a male and females voice together. We sang the song together just with our voices and the words and the change between songs really worked, Aston played a basic beat his guitar that he thought would fit with the songs then we worked out the correct chords for guitar and piano.

I learned the chords for piano and tried different sound effects on the keyboard to see if I could make it sound unique and different and I found that an ‘organ’ effect worked pretty well, one myself and Aston piece the 2 instruments together we then sang alongside each other to create my final piece.

Because I struggled to play the keyboard and sing at the same time we recorded ourselves instruments and Aston singing and the I recoded myself over the top of Aston and mixed them together on Garage band.

Ideas/Choosing Song|

When trying to choose songs I firstly chose a song that I really enjoyed ‘House of the rising son’- Animals https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5A-4VGfx5lU

(Mathiss, 2008)

And then looked at the chord progression and then looked for 2 other songs to fit the same chord progression. When looking I found to different but effect and catchy songs to use so I ended up choosing:

Thrift Shop- Macklemore https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QK8mJJJvaes

 
(Lewis, 2012)

Don’t upset the rhythm-Noisettes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SFT8k5chO8

(NoisettesVEVO, 2009)

House of the rising sun-Animals  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5A-4VGfx5lU  

The 3 worked really well together when quickly singing just 3 random parts of each song. Once I had the 3 songs I just had to work out how I wanted the backing track to go. I played around with the lyrics and wrote out how I wanted them to be sang, and then I planned on how I wanted the backing track to sound.

Chord Progression|

A chord progression is simply a series of chords played in order. As you play more songs, you’ll see more and more chord progressions and patterns used over and over again in your favorite tunes.

For example, a “2-5-1″ is a very popular chord progression that is commonly used, among many things, to end songs. You’ll find it at the end of an overwhelming amount of songs in all genres.

In our courses, we cover several chord progressions as these are what make of everyday songs.

In closing, remember these very easy set of rules:

Notes create scales (major scales, minor scales, etc)

Scales allow us to create chords (major chords, minor chords, diminished chords, augmented chords, etc)

Chords played one after the other in various sequences create chord progressions (“2-5-1″ chord progressions, “6-2-5-1″ turnaround, etc)

Chord progressions played in various sequences create the songs we hear everyday!

(Griggs, no date)

Mash Up|

When looking at mash ups I did a lot of research on the internet to try and get inspired by people who did mash ups of songs which sounded really effective. I didn't’t just want a mash up of songs together for example DJ Earworm-  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjYWwZYLYEs

     
            

(Earworm,2014)

I wanted to focus it more around chord progression. I watched the film Pitch Perfect because they do a lot of mash ups using the same chord progression making the song fit perfectly together. Here are a few examples, these videos inspired me to create a mash up using chord progression, not necessarily using all the harmonies they do but it helped me with my initial idea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNSx1RdPl04

  

            

(Fung ,2013)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpYccBQH-Lg

(Agsaway, 2013)

Song Writing|

When first thinking of my individual work I looked into writing my own song. I looked at different books and websites to help me with how to come about writing music. I also looked at my inspiration (Sheeran, E (2011)   at his lyrics to see if the could help give me a starting point and what his lyrics were actually about. When sitting down with a pen and paper it proved more difficult than I first imagined, I really struggled to think of words to write down and when I did I always found that it never sounded right. I thought maybe if I had a tune then that might help the words come to mind.

I tried writing a melody/ backing track on my keyboard and I looked at basic chords that were easy to play but give me a strong stimulus to work around. When looking at basic chords I found them really easy to play, but it just didn't’t fit together, my voice and some of the lyrics I came up with never seemed to fit. I started looking into different ways to create my individual piece.

My inspiration for song writing|

KAPLAN: For instance, your song "Small Bump," a song about losing a child—you sing it from your perspective, but it's actually about a friend?

SHEERAN: Yeah... it was quite a difficult subject to tackle. I wrote it from their perspective. It was my perspective looking on them to begin with. It's quite a touchy subject, so I wrote it from the perspective of actually being the parent.

KAPLAN: Where do you come up with the subjects of your songs, other than life experience as your inspiration, your songwriting is very creative. As a troubadour or pseudo-rapping, your music is something that hasn't been heard yet.

SHEERAN: I think it's good to remember that everything has been done before. The public has heard the stereotypical love songs a million times and they've heard the stereotypical life-or-death songs millions of times. It's good to mix it up a little bit. That's why the different subject matters and love songs on the album are a bit odd and have some rapping things in it and popular culture references. I just wanted to kind of make it a little bit different

KAPLAN: Your first single was obviously "The A Team." It's been getting a lot of airplay in the US. Can you tell me a little bit about how that song came about and the meaning behind it?

SHEERAN: I did a gig at a homeless shelter, and it was about one of the women there. It's her story. Well, the song itself was written all about her story, so the song is about a drug-addicted homeless woman.(Kaplan, I. (2011)

Ed Sheeran is my inspiration and I looked at his music it when it came to writing a song, he uses real life situations  and writes about them in a really unique way. In his interview Kaplan, I. (2011) he states that he used his friends story as a inspiration for his ‘small bump’ song but as it was a tricky subject he wrote it in the eyes of him but was actually about his friend.

Another example is ‘A Team’- Sheeran, E (2011). when he sang in a homeless shelter he picked up on a woman's life who was addicted to drugs and made a song from that, he also relates to this these because they are life experiences. 

I tried to look at my life experiences and try to write a song from there but for some reason it proved too difficult.

I did then look into other ideas I could do such as covers, in my last individual I looked at covers and I got a friend to cover a song as I was not confident enough to sing myself but I wanted to do something a little different as some covers mostly sound the same and I find it really difficult to make a cover of a song sound good once its been tweaked from the original as I always think you cant beat the original.

  

Live Performance|

In this music assessment Chloe, Ashley and myself worked together in a group to create a 60’s and 70’s music piece. We were to create a song in the style of 60’s and 70’s and perform them live at Sunderland collage.

For our 60’s piece the genre we chose was country rock/folk this was due to the fact that we could create something really quirky, fun and energetic but also to not stray from our comfort zones by being able to play what we feel comfortable playing. Our 60’s piece was called ‘ Rock ‘n’ Roll Farm. We wanted to keep a country feel to the song so we made a backing track to fit the genre consisting of guitar and drums. Chloe sang, Ashley played bass and I played keyboard and myself and Ashley also did harmonies behind Chloe throughout. When rehearsing the song at the venue a lot of things had changed, I had to stand whilst playing keyboard, whilst also using a standing microphone, this proved quite difficult for me as I have never had any experience in music before and I was not used to all the different equipment being used. To make our performance stronger on the night we decided to make a last minute decision t add some dancers in to make the performance a lot more up beat and energetic, playing instruments and dancing proved rather difficult for me so we thought this would help. I decided to come forward with the dancers to get the crowd going and also break away from standing behind the keyboard. The actually performance went really well, their was a lot of energy on stage and the audience seemed to really enjoy it, I felt as though I could have performed better whilst behind the keyboard as I was trying to hard to remember what to play, I also needed to remember to smile as I lost a lot of stage presence when playing due to confidence I think. The dancing section was fun to do, I did slip up on some of the dance moves due to nerves as it was a last minute decision, I tried to cover it by making it part of the song. Overall I think the performance was really strong as a whole. I need to work on my confidence when on stage. ‘At the same time, there is a hidden side to this fear, which you can only discover when you stop running from it and finally face the ‘’monster in the closet’’.’  (Esposito and MSW., 2009 p.23)

Our 70’s piece was ‘Burn’ by Ellie Goulding in the genre ‘Soul’. I chose this song as I liked the meaning of why she sings it and I thought it related to why soul singers originally sang in the 70’s. ‘Life is burning too bright to allow anyone to get any sleep. Goulding is equating love to the light and the fire that burns inside us all. She’s speaking of the passion, which keeps us going’. (Goulding . no date). The original version was too fast so we needed to create a whole new backing tract. We looked into what instruments were used in soul in the 70’s and created a backing track made up of a piano, saxophone and a basic drumbeat. Neither one of us played during this song as we wanted to focus it purely around voice and relate it back to its original form and try to make it as soul as possible, we each had parts to sing solo, and whilst we each took up the solo part the other two would harmonize. We also danced whilst singing and harmonizing and during the instrumental in the song we stepped in front of the microphones and did a small section of dance as well. This song went really well, we were all in time, it sounded really strong and I think we stuck to the meaning and the style of soul throughout. I thought our harmonies worked really well together. For myself to improve I need to become a lot more confident with singing on stage, confidence was my main down fall during the song not so much on the harmonies but when I took my solo part to sing. I also though I could have projected my voice a lot more as I tended to shy away from singing loud but that also falls under confidence I think, our dance moves could have been more in sync as we did struggle to sing and dance and project our voices whilst still engaging with the audience all at the same time. Overall I think the performance was really strong and we bounced off each other for confidence and worked well in the group.

There were a lot of things we could have improved on, such as extra rehearsals put on before the show to ensure we were confident enough, to also work on our harmonies a bit more and well as our stage presence just to make sure we stage ready. My main issue is confidence. In rehearsals I should have really pushed myself to sing and perform so that I could feel more confident when on stage, I think now that I have performed in front of a crowd for the first time and saw that I got a good reaction and nothing went wrong and that I enjoyed myself I can now push myself out of my comfort zone and start to try new things and even if things do go slightly wrong like it did in our 60’s piece that as long as you make it look like nothings went wrong it can easily be turned around.

To push myself even further and start to become more confident with singing I want to look at how to train my voice properly (miller, 1996).

To conclude I think our overall performance went exceedingly well and I do think we could have improved. I’m glad a few things went wrong because I can now learn from them next time around and hopefully it has made me a lot more confident in knowing how to deal with things when they go wrong. I have pushed myself a lot in these two performances and I am very happy with how well we worked together in a group and this had made me a lot more confident for next time around.  

                            

70's Group Work|

When playing around with the backing track i researched what instruments were associated with soul and i listened to soul songs to see how they did their backing track and what instruments they used.

I really liked the fact of a simplistic backing track so we could focus on our harmonies and actually perform, i really liked the fact of a saxophone and piano being used together. We all came to the decision that we liked the fact there would only be two instruments and the fact that we didn't want to make it to complicated to take away from the meaning of the song as soul music always had a hidden message behind it.

When rehearsing the song we all worked out who was going to sing what, once that was sorted we then worked out harmonies.  When we all came to an agreement about the final decision we came up with our full song we decided to record it and then play it back just to see how well the harmonies fitted in and if the backing track worked.

Creating 70's Music|

Group: Chloe, Ashley and Myself

For our 70's performance we decided to choose 'SOUL' as our genre. When looking at soul we found that  soul music is very popular and first originated in the United States in the 1950's and early 1960's/1970's. It combines elements of African-American gospel music, rhythm and blues and jazz. i looked into the meaning behind his song and also what elements of soul where in his performance that it made it so significant such as the instruments.  

Soul history

The gospel revival and doo-wop merged into the great season of soul music. Soul music was enabled by the commercial boom of "race" music, that had led to the creation of channels and infrastructures run by black entrepreneurs for black artists. This class of black entrepreneurs hired and trained a generation of session musicians, producers and arrangers (not to mention songwriters) who were specifically meant to serve the needs of black music. 

Soul music was also enabled by an unstoppable trend towards black and white integration, as more and more white folks accepted the idea that black culture was not evil or degrading, simply different (African instead of European). The sociopolitical inroads made by jazz also helped legitimise black pop music with the white masses. 

Soul music was also, indirectly, helped by rock music, precisely because rock music made white pop music sound so obsolete. Rock music buried white pop music but did not quite offer an alternative. On the other hand, rock music legitimised black pop music (rock music was basically a white version of rhythm'n'blues), and black pop music did offer an alternative to the Italian crooners and the likes.

As the civil rights movement staged bigger and bigger demonstrations and increased African-American pride, soul music became more than party music for young blacks: it became a rallying flag for the black nationalist movement. While never truly political in nature, soul music's ascent in the pop charts came to represent one of the first (and most visible) successes of the civil-rights movement.

Soul music was born thanks to the innovations of a generation of post-war musicians who, essentially, turned gospel music into a secular form of art.

When looking into this we found it had to fit the suitable role of soul music so we decided to re create Ellie Gouldings- Burn into a soul song by changing the backing music and adding harmonies, changing the tempo and messing around with different elements all so that it would then fit into the soul genre.

Ellie Goulding -Burn Meaning 

 The song had talked about the song in the same sentence regarding civil rights struggles and how people are fighting to get through it.  

"We, we don't have to worry bout nothing" - The Future
"Strike the match, play it loud, giving love to the world" - Sharing Love/Power
"We don't wanna leave, no, we just gonna be right now" - The Fight
"And it's over now, we got the love, there's no secret now, no secret now" - The Fight is over 

We found that this song worked really well when it came to the meaning, for the fact that they are very similar in what they actually mean.  Once we had our song we could then get on with changing the song and making it our own.

60's Group Work|

Folk-Rock is mainly known for its distinctive elements such as chiming, ringing guitar hooks, coupled with clear vocal harmonies. 

For our 60’s piece the genre we chose was country rock/folk this was due to the fact that we could create something really quirky, fun and energetic but also to not stray from our comfort zones by being able to play what we feel comfortable playing. Our 60’s piece was called ‘ Rock ‘n’ Roll Farm. We wanted to keep a country feel to the song so we made a backing track to fit the genre consisting of guitar and drums. Chloe sang, Ashley played bass and I played keyboard and myself and Ashley also did harmonies behind Chloe throughout.