SUMMARY

Today I listened to multiple artists talk about the process of making their songs and improved a song that I have in SoundTrap.

LEADERSHIP ACTIVITY

• Today I worked on my song and I think it sounds better.

CLASSROOM (THEORY & ANALYSIS)

Explore Jake Lizzio’s The Music Theory of POWER CHORDS

Screenshot from Jake Lizzio’s The Music Theory of POWER CHORDS video at YouTube

Explore SongExploder.net episodes

Explore Holistic Songwriting’s Artist Series

Explore Genius’ Songs Deconstructed Series

Explore Rick Beato’s What Makes This Song Great Series

Embed a YouTube video link you watched or the link of the SongExploder.net episode

Write a reflection of the key topics that got your attention – AND THEN DELETE THESE WORDS!

Episode 208: Girl In Red “Serotonin”

-After she had realized she didn’t want to talk to her therapist anymore she was in her room messing around in Logic and made something on guitar that sounded pretty cool

-They added a bus crashing sound in the percussion

-She felt like she needed a “fresh set of ears” to hear the song and add to it so she sent it to Finneas and he added a synth sound to it

Episode 209: Imagine Dragons “Follow You”

-They recorded parts of it with Rick Rubin

-It’s about his wife

-He used a sound that a producer sent and chose it because it was a nostalgic haunting organ sound.

-He recorded a demo and sent it to his bandmate to add guitar to it

-They added real drums on top of programmed drums

-He typically uses his demo vocals on almost all of his songs

-He recorded his vocals for this song in a room that a studio engineer would definitely not recommend

-He almost released an alternative version of the song but after listening to both he realized that the version that he didn’t release felt like a party but the version that he did release felt more emotional.

Episode 169: Clairo “Alewife”

-The song was made in LA

-The song is about a bad experience she had with her mental health that her friend had helped her with and had potentially saved her.

-She replayed her electric guitar and decided to use acoustic instead

-“I think the drums are everything”-Clairo

-The chords don’t change the whole song and there’s not a bridge either

-The electric guitar is actually still in the song with a fuzz distortion effect

-What she likes most about the song is that “there are moments that are so soft but there are also really harsh moments like the distortion”

-Alewife was a train station that she would drive to in her town

-She mentions alewife only once in the song and the song isn’t necessarily about it either

-The reason she started the song with the words “In Massachusetts, only thirty minutes from Alewife” was because Alewife became kind of a portal to a different world

Episode 204: Glass Animals “Heat Waves”

-Before he wrote it, he had a whole day of “catching weird fish” (music wise) and finally found the right one

-Johnny Depp was accidentally the first person to hear the song because he got lost in the studio

-He thought about giving the song to a pop artist but he didn’t because it was too personal to him

-The lyric “sometimes all I think about is you late nights in the middle of June” came from the fact that he had lost his best friend whose birthday was in June

Episode 213: Fousheé

-She had made the “I been trying to go off the deep end I don’t think you wanna give me a reason” lyric for a vocal sample back for splice

-After that people had used it so she had to make a video showing that she was the original singer

-A lot of her inspiration comes from rap

WHAT I LEARNED and PROBLEMS I SOLVED

• Today I listened to a lot of artists talk about their songwriting process. I also worked on my song in Soundtrap. A problem I had today was that I didn’t like the drums on my song but it needed something more, so I muted the drums and added synths.

TODAY’s ACTIVITY EVALUATION

Content (The WHAT)

Rating: OK  – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5  – HIGHLY ENGAGED

Rating: 3.5

What interested me was hearing people talk about their songwriting process.

Process (The HOW)

Rating: OK  – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5  – HIGHLY ENGAGED

Rating: 4

SoundTrap was engaging but sometimes you just get stuck and don’t really know what to add to a song which isn’t the most fun.