David Nahmani Posted October 1, 2007 Share Posted October 1, 2007 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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
music_boy Posted October 1, 2007 Share Posted October 1, 2007 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! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atomatik13 Posted October 1, 2007 Share Posted October 1, 2007 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! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Nahmani Posted October 1, 2007 Author Share Posted October 1, 2007 I saw Muse live in a smallish theater before they were big in the US. 1,500 seat theater or so. It was one of the best shows I've ever seen! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Nahmani Posted October 1, 2007 Author Share Posted October 1, 2007 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
music_boy Posted October 1, 2007 Share Posted October 1, 2007 Mate, I saw them at Glastonbury... oh my! I was at the front and the whole crowd was moving up and down... I couldn't do a thing about it... amazing! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sayenex Posted October 2, 2007 Share Posted October 2, 2007 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
erfmufn Posted October 3, 2007 Share Posted October 3, 2007 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! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Orsanct Posted October 3, 2007 Share Posted October 3, 2007 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. . . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waterboy Posted October 3, 2007 Share Posted October 3, 2007 When people tell me: "it's not that hard! It's not like it's rocket science!" I am just gonna tell them they don't know what the hell they are talking about! After looking at that last post, anybody could get intimidated! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Orsanct Posted October 3, 2007 Share Posted October 3, 2007 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! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Nahmani Posted October 3, 2007 Author Share Posted October 3, 2007 Au contraire, I believe Orsanct did a great job at taking my analysis apart with the goal to SIMPLIFY it, so you can have a global view of the whole harmonic arrangement. Thanks Orsanct, great job. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oakmoon Posted October 4, 2007 Share Posted October 4, 2007 "Apocalyptic Please" My favorite Muse song. Catch their Youtube live performance. I love the arp solo. Also The Killers with "Read My Mind". Who says their isn't good music anymore. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BCProject Posted October 23, 2007 Share Posted October 23, 2007 Great idea. Great Band. Great song. I *love* MUSE. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Juicy Dangler Posted October 30, 2007 Share Posted October 30, 2007 This seems like a really cool idea actually to look into the structure of your favourite songs. I may well give this a go. Love love love Muse by the way, hope they put out a new album soon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AllyMusicGirl Posted November 12, 2007 Share Posted November 12, 2007 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bowromir Posted January 14, 2008 Share Posted January 14, 2008 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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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