[MUSIC] I think it's important as we produce and compose to always be thinking in complete musical statements. Even if it's a short piece of music, if it has a beginning, some kind of development and a clear ending, you're creating a complete piece of music and I think it's really important to think in those terms all the time. And we're going to focus on making short pieces. We're all going to conform to 40 measure songs. It's going to be divided up into five eight-measure segments. I'm going to outline the form here and we'll be using this throughout much of the course, though we will loosen up on it toward the end. So, we're always going to start with an introduction. And the thing I want you thinking about your intro, is how are you transitioning your listener from their natural sonic environment into yours? And so we're going to be drawing this kind of line in blue here that is, consider it an emotional spark line, right? So its going to kind of represent the listener's emotion throughout the entire piece. And so our introduction is going to start kind of small and build up. It'd be good to bring in high frequency percussion there. It might be nice to use maybe a texture, synthesizer or sequenced element, or subtle synthesizers. We want to start kind of small and we don't want to have a lot of big base in there yet. And then we're going to move into a more of our groove section of our piece of music. So, it'll be bigger than the introduction. We'll have gotten somewhere, but it's not going to be the top yet. Right? We want to leave some place to go. And that's going to be pretty static for the course of that section, right? Will be pretty static. It's not going to change much. This is when you're going to want to introduce your kick drum, your base line maybe even your chords a little bit. But stay subtle and don't be too dramatic at that point. Next we want to really break down the energy. [MUSIC] Want big, big contrast, so as much as possible, you're going to immediately just bring down the energy, probably to just as low as you had in the very introduction. And then just stay at that level for the extent of the section. Now, one thing that we really want to have, and I think is important and a lot of contemporary electronic music, is a big emotional dynamic range. So points we go from really quiet to really loud all at once, you're going to have that big drama. And so I think it's nice to have our climactic section, kind of the biggest section of our whole music, right after the breakdown. And again this does get played with and is different in different songs, but this is a nice format to start with. And we'll just keep that nice and high, and I'm going to call that kind of my climax section. Now this should have pretty much everything in. Should have pretty much everything in your songs. You'll have your groove that you brought back, probably get faster high hats, more energy. You're going to want to have your baseline in there, your chords, your leads. So, as many layer that you're going to have in the entire song, they should be all in there right now. It should be the brightest section and be the loudest. And then, for our outro, we want to kind of step down our energy and remove elements one by one. So we might bring, get rid of, the bass might drop out there. Maybe my hats will drop out, and then maybe my kick drum drops out. We just keep removing elements until we end up with nothing. And so this is the general structure that I'd like to focus on for this course. There's a lot of reasons why, right? It's going to give us a chance to explore all these great synthesizer categories over the course of building this up. And it also gives us a chance to really think about the audience, and that they want to hear all these different sections and this big dynamic range as they're listening to their songs. Now the next thing I want you to consider after you have the basic sections in, and we'll kind of get this later in the course in depth, is how are we transitioning? Are there any big moments that we can do some really important things? And so I like to kind of have you focus really carefully on those kinds of measures right before section changes. Right, those are moments to do something really special and I love for you to take that moment to do something really special and this one, also. And, so there's like big dramatic moments often you can just drop the whole groove out for that moment. Or you can do with some kind of crazy vocal tweak, just something interesting like grabs the attention and makes the audience like ready, okay something important is about to happen and those are a big moments. Now, we also want to integrate this kind of linear cues, right? These kind of sounds that are moving in a single direction, often in a straight line, that can identify that something's about to happen. There's a couple things we can do that. The first one I'd like to think of is coming out of our breakdown I'd like to have something that's just building up to identify that the climax is coming. And I would suggest doing that again coming right up to your outro. We'll talk how to make those kind of sounds but it could be kind of a rising synthesizer or it could be some kind of noise sweep. Now, I find it's actually really hard to break down energy. Often it's easy to make things more and more exciting but to kind of bring energy down but also then connect the sections can be really tough. But I'll give you a hint. And this is what I really like in here all the time. And that is at the end of the one of the bigger sections, to bring in reverbs and delays. So I might think of kind of adding in reverbs and delays right here so that when the section changes, they naturally kind of fade away, and it kind of connects the section automatically. And we can do the same thing leading up to our outro. We kind of brought in those reverbs and delays, and they fade away naturally there. And so this is how I would like us to think about our production as we continue on. And I just want to kind of recap a little bit on the things that might be in each section and the bar numbers we would look at. Right. So this would be measure number one. This is going to be measure number nine. And between those in our intro I think stay really sparse, really in the mid range of the frequency spectrum, and often mostly percussive. You can build up toward the end of that, and then you come to your groove. In the groove section, I think your drums are going to come in, more percussion but not really full. Maybe halfway there with the groove. And then we're going to be at measure 17 when things are going to break way down. Now, in this section, you really want to think about vibe and space. So, those texturals that synthesizes were great also just playing reverts and delays to create a really good sense of space and then, we have some linear motion to kind of build this out of that and you could be introducing a bit of percussion as it rises up to. At measure 25, you're looking at your climax. This is going to be your big, bold statement. This is a chance to really show off as a producer. Put it all in there and just see what you can come up with, right? Be dramatic, be bold, be intense, and that should be the biggest, biggest emotional portion of the song. Again, we have this build up. And this is kind of a funny one, you know, to build up out of the climax. But it does provide kind of a false build. You know, you kind of expect maybe something bigger there and you start breaking down, start playing with expectations a little bit. This will be measure 33 and then we're going to end on measure 41 after you've removed your elements one by one towards the end. So, we're going to be sticking to this form throughout most of the class. I think it's a great way to kind of structure yourself. And I think it would be a good idea to take this diagram and start writing in ideas and, add it to your process folio so it's a document of what you've created here in the class. [MUSIC]
