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Muse: Starlight - A songwriting arrangement analysis


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I find the best way to learn about songwriting arrangement (how long for the verse? how many choruses? ...etc) is to analyze the songs you love. And I love MUSE, so here we go.

 

 

You'll notice a successful arrangement is always a careful balance of repetition and bringing new elements.

 

00.00 to 00.08 [A 4 bars] Intro Drum groove, bass playing root note.

00.08 to 00.24 [b 8 bars] Piano riff Chord progression, piano melody

00.24 to 00.40 [C 8 bars] Verse Piano stops, voice enters.

00.40 to 00.56 [C 8 bars] Verse

00.56 to 01.12 [b 8 bars] Piano riff + voice melody

01.12 to 01.27 [C 8 bars] Verse + guitar melody

01.27 to 01.43 [D 8 bars] Pre-Chorus synth arpeggios, heavy guitar

01.43 to 01.59 [E 8 bars] Chorus clean guitar, no drums, lower and softer synth arp

01.59 to 02.15 [E 8 bars] Chorus + heavy guitar and drums build up + oooh backup vocals

02.15 to 02.22 [A 4 bars] Intro

02.22 to 02.38 [b 8 bars] Piano riff + voice melody

02.38 to 02.54 [C 8 bars] Verse + different guitar melody

02.54 to 03.10 [D 8 bars] Pre-Chorus

03.10 to 03.26 [E 8 bars] Chorus + heavy guitar + synth arp

03.26 to 03.42 [E 8 bars] Chorus + heavy guitar + synth arp + oooh backup vocals

03.42 to END [b 8 bars] Piano riff + slightly different voice melody

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Yeah Muse are pretty awesome. I love how compressed the album sounds.

 

With rock/pop songs a lot of people are critical of them being boring because they all follow the same routes, but what I think people forget, is that it takes a lot of creativity to make something special within a formula. Starlight is so uplifting, an amazing tune.

 

It's a craft to write a great song. Look at U2 (a lot of people I know don't like them because they are so big!), they have great tunes and a massive sound. But their formula is the same as other bands. Edge is amazing!

 

Hey did you see Muse on the Abbey Road series? Don't know if you got it over in the US.

 

Muse were awesome!

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David,

thanks for starting this forum, what a great idea!

I'm not a huge fan of Muse, but I really dig this tune.

great arrangement and build up. thanks for the breakdown!

 

Thanks and yes, I would love to steer us all a little more toward making and discussing music, not just recording techniques and technology. Hopefully this forum will help.

 

I'll try to post more analyses of songs that have a great arrangement.

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Dave! nice post.

 

I love this song, in fact, I bought a synth 2 months ago, just so the cover band I'm in could play this song out, and it floors people every-time we play it. it's just a killer song.

 

that soft synth arp. part is the business!

 

anyway, it's nice that you point out the importance of arrangement. you can have 10 parts going all at the same time, that sound awesome, but after 8 bars, anything gets old.

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Great stuff! What a welcome surprise this forum was to find when I logged in today. Structure and songwriting are things you won't find in the logic reference manual or the course ... but without it you are just a "sound guy". (No offense intended to the sound guys n gals.. but Logic is geared towards full music composition as well as general audio engineering).

 

I like this song breakdown, it would be interesting to look at several "pop" artists and see just how close the formula becomes eg

 

intro

verse

chorus

verse

chorus

bridge

chorus

chorus

end

 

and I'm guilty of the generic structure myself (hey whatever works), and that said sometimes overly complex or ambitious structure, while intellectually compelling simply doesn't sound good. But I think composition can be overly simple, and overly complex.. it depends what you are going for.

 

Some of my favorite "pop" tracks have definition sections or parts, but might have the same riff / rhythm going from start to finish but if the hook sounds good.. why not?

 

On the other hand.. sometimes the hook aint so good.. and there's only so many repeated bars you can stand!

 

Look forward to reading more here.. thanks Dave!

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I love that you're doing this, David. Whenever a song catches my ear, I try to diagram it to help me figure out its "secrets." Just for the fun of it, I took your detailed analysis and tried to reduce it to (only) a harmonic sequence. (I'm doing this rather quickly so let me know if I've made any mistakes.) By combining the two analyses, I think we can see both the detail of the surface of the music, and, the wonderful economy of the harmony. . .

 

(Below, I've placed a letter representing the harmonic sequence (changes) in front of David's detailed analysis):

 

A [A 4 bars] Intro Drum groove, bass playing root note.

B [b 8 bars] Piano riff Chord progression, piano melody

B [C 8 bars] Verse Piano stops, voice enters.

B [C 8 bars] Verse

B [b 8 bars] Piano riff + voice melody

B [C 8 bars] Verse + guitar melody

C [D 8 bars] Pre-Chorus synth arpeggios, heavy guitar

C [E 8 bars] Chorus clean guitar, no drums, lower and softer synth arp

C [E 8 bars] Chorus + heavy guitar and drums build up + oooh backup vocals

A [A 4 bars] Intro

B [b 8 bars] Piano riff + voice melody

B [C 8 bars] Verse + different guitar melody

C [D 8 bars] Pre-Chorus

C [E 8 bars] Chorus + heavy guitar + synth arp

C [E 8 bars] Chorus + heavy guitar + synth arp + oooh backup vocals

B [b 8 bars] Piano riff + slightly different voice melody

 

A few more looks. . .

 

 

Next, let's look at the above in a more compressed way:

 

A

B B B B B

C C C (last chord of last "C' altered to a V7 of "A")

A

B B

C C C (last chord of last "C" altered to a V7 of "B")

B

 

I like how (harmonically speaking) we get a nice healthy dose of "B" at the beginning (5 times), but in subsequent repetitions, we get 2 times, then 1 time. Great way to keep "coming home" without fatiguing the ear. (Plus the various instrumental/vocal colors on different repetitions.)

 

 

Now, if this was a classical piece, we'd probably disregard the introduction as a formal structural letter. If we applied that here, the form might look something like:

 

(intro)

A A A A A

B B B

(intro)

A A

B B B

A

 

While this is a ridiculous reduction of the song, I do think it reveals how the song operates psychologically: it's a big ABABA -- essentially, a stretched-out 5-part rondo, cleverly "disguised" by a variety of techniques!

 

Just looking through different lenses. . .

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After looking at that last post, anybody could get intimidated!

 

Oh gosh, please don't be. I think the problem is more my ability to take a simple concept and make it sound harder than it is! If ski was here, he'd probably have some pithy way of expressing this far more effectively -- maybe as a haiku! :wink:

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Muse - eh, pick a style.

 

I had the misfortune of being a captive audience while riding with a friend.

 

Sorry but seems like they took parts and pieces ranging from classical, to Prince, to metallica. Sounds a little contrived and almost formulaic.

 

The lead singer - come on, Radiohead anyone?

 

I mean come on, it's music for angry teens with ADHD.

 

I'll pass.

 

:lol:

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  • 2 months later...
That hurts you know :( It's really easy to disregard MUSE as a typical rock band which copies stuff from other artists and try's to sound just like them, I thought the same way about them.. But actually this song "Starlight" totally did it for me, it's just amazing in it relative simplicity.. And once you pick up the sound of MUSE you will soon start to hear that there is nothing like them, just as Radiohead is unlike any other band out there. So your comparison with Radiohead is quite spot on I must say, If you leave out the vocal comment thingy :P
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