David and I reviewed my composition “I am Lorde Lalala” and although still demo quality, this is a lot more workable than my previous track. David suggested tightening up the chord structure of the chorus and dubbing in real drum sounds over the top of the VSTs to give it more of a punch. This is a new style of production for me and writing/producing at the same time is new territory which I am finding difficult but interesting.

All of my tracks have working titles and for this track I tried to emulate pop singer Lorde’s style, hence the title. After several hours of working on the beat I used several synths and pads within Logic to create this demo. It originally stemmed from the bass drum and snare which were eventually tweaked. I have used panning and syncopation to emulate the Lorde drum sound which has been used on tracks such as “Royals” & “Tennis Court” which were both very popular in their own right. The track will be layered with another bass drum and snare with the EQ tightened up to make it sound sharper and more ear catching.

David and I discussed the track ‘Cool Relax’ and David believed that the track was not contemporary enough with the rhythm too jerky. I eventually agreed, although still believe that VSTs could be added in. However this project is about contemporary pop music and this mainly revolves around the beat and has a slower tempo. We agreed that the first track ‘Jungle Fever’ is far better suited and I should aim for something in a more similar style  to that. We also discussed recording vocals and I am going to demo all the tracks first and write and record all the vocals together. David suggested that I record lots and lots of vocals and use Melodyne on them all to pull them all perfectly in tune.

Over the last I have tried composing more material in a pop music style using different instruments. My typical go to instrument is a guitar, but for this project I’ve tried to move away from this and move towards VSTs and alternate instruments. For this song I wrote it on ukelele, using a fairly simple structure of: Chorus/Verse/Chorus/Verse/Chorus/Bridge/Chorus. The following link is a demo of the first take. I typically use demos to remind me of stylistic things I will add later on. Such as: the slightly distorted vocal effect throughout, the palm muting no chords at 2:40 will be bass drum claps and larger vocal section. The slight changes in vocal melodies to mix it up etc.

For this song I have tried very hard to follow Ryan Tedder & Max Martin’s approaches. For instance, making the verse and chorus similar enough melodically but having changes underneath. I will separate the sections out more with added instrumentation. I will focus heavily on the vocal tracks, add claps (“because, Church” – Ryan Tedder, 2014), bass drum, a bass line and potentially some keyboards.

The song’s tempo is roughly 95 bpm, sticking to the boundaries of the most popular danceable pop music (78-140bpm) This is a characteristic I have aimed to achieve as pop music is more successful if it is danceable. The song also features a cut off ending as Ryan Tedder suggests.

Using pop vocal tricks will help me achieve my learning objective of producing a Pop style. Learning tricks like this video will allow me to use the reverse reverb effect to bring the vocal in at the beginning on a section. The tutorial is using Logic Pro X the same as me, which makes it easy to follow and a useful tool.