One Motif - Three Arrangements [How to write music]

hello everybody how many ways are there to cook the humble egg you could boil it you can fry it you can scramble it and that gave me an idea i thought i'd take a musical egg a four note motif and prepare it three completely different ways three different styles three different melodic developments all that kind of stuff so we'll do a boiled version a fried version and a scrambled version okay let's get this show on the road hands up all those who can notice it that i've not only got my ear things in but i've got a cup of tea in between walking through the door and sitting down here oh the wonders of video editing right the little motif in question is going to go like this i haven't got a rhythm for it because i'm going to mess about with that each time so it just goes g c d c now the reason i've chosen that is i mean it's doesn't commit to either major or minor because you could be in c major you could be in g minor uh you could be in all kinds of things you could be in c minor you see what i mean so there's quite a lot of potential here and potential is what we like isn't it yes of course it is so what we're going to do is we're going to do boiled fried and scrambled so boiled is pretty straightforward [Music] i could do soldiers because boiled egg comes with soldiers doesn't it does is that a thing where you live um soldiers are bits of toast butter toast which you dip in your boiled egg and then you eat okay we're not gonna throw it i say eat as though that's a big surprising denumer to this whole story now so boiled egg and soldiers uh is what you give small kids so we're going to do the soldier's bit we're going to arrange this in a slightly sort of militaristic sort of way then we're going to go on to fried hmm so that's going to be completely different and then scrambled and i have no idea where scramble's going to end up but anyway we're going to try and go through quite quickly come up with three different ideas so um right let's get cracking okay so we're gonna need a bit of a uh is that a bit quick for whatever matchy thing we're coming up with it is a bit how fast does soldiers much i have no idea lift right left right left right left right okay should i record that in would that be a bit okay it might be stupid but i don't care i actually did a theme for a film once where i did the demo entirely with mouth percussion left right left right left right left right what do you know i never got up this morning imagine this was gonna happen never mind let's see if this works okay i'm going to double that i'm going to have another audio track and i'm going to do some bumps right okay let's go for some brass let's go for some tuba hello mr tuba hello guy oh nice to see you mate yeah that's gonna work he says [Music] right okay uh now let's go for the tune i was playing around before with the piccolo sound i wonder if that will work [Music] did i just rewrite uh the rockford files i think i did it's similar [Music] and now i can't get away from the rockford files why why me oh that also dates me oh my god who the what are these rockford files of which you speak mr mitchum uh it was a show back in its 70s 80s bloke lived in a caravan and solved murders okay let me just come back to my piano because i need to work out this tune i can't just sort of press on as though nothing's happening oh it's got all western when you go back to down to that b flat that's that'll work you see what i'm doing here is i'm starting with the same motif then i'm using the rhythm but i'm changing the notes but keeping the same [Music] shape it's not gonna work with the chewbacca [Music] ah after that it goes horribly off the wrong rails but now i've got to redo the tuba this is as i've said many times it's a conversation between the harmony and the melody you come up with a melody you like then you have to change your harmony because the underlying bass tuba part is implying a certain harmony which is currently stuck in first gear i it's stuck in c major [Music] i don't know [Music] that works okay it was the second time around it went horribly wrong wasn't it and when i say horribly wrong i mean worse than you can possibly imagine now come on guy people weren't saying you give yourself a hard time yeah well i'm now and this is also not as you may have noticed on a piccolo it's a piano which is about as unmilitaristic and militaristic guy you're talking about soldiers in the context of boiled eggs for goodness sake gets a sense of proportion i'm sorry people okay so look what's going on here is we're just coming up with a basic idea so now we've got to go no point having a whacking great keyboard there if it's not doing anything there we go that'll do right [Music] now let me just walk you through the tune so it's got this kind of little rhythm going then it goes up to [Music] same rhythm different notes so we go up and down then it does the same thing again [Music] then it resolves onto chord five which is g [Music] then it goes up just to the edge of shot there up to an f out to an a and that ladies and gentlemen is what it's going to be right i'm now very very quickly going to finish this because we have two more styles to do fried and scrambled i think we're going to use tension pad i'll go for a tenor trombone um we're going to need a shorty though then i'm going to do an um okay that'll do for the first time through um then we're going to switch it up [Music] now i'm going to use some inversions [Music] is that gonna work or is that gonna be a horrible horrible horrible idea i'll regret three seconds after i start playing it that is often what happens isn't it wasn't great but it's there right now with no sense of proportion whatsoever i'm going to play in the piccolo part here we go ready everybody [Music] now does that sound really terrible if i take the piano out [Music] right okay okay i just don't quite know how to respond to that um let's uh that's the kind of thing you play to people and go well that's interesting and you know you've really got trouble okay let's uh add a little bit of why am i going to left right right [Music] how is it that a piccolo is always too loud right that was boiled egg and now coming up fried and so we're into fried egg but i'm gonna go over easy so i'm gonna do something a bit more kind of laid back and i've decided to slow it down to 75 bpm and i'm just dropped in a kind of loop here which i quite like it's a little bit crunchy i'm going to just take a little bit off the top like just going to the hairdresser the hairdresser the barber what can i do for you i just have a little bit off the top please okay let's see what i can do about that um doing anything interesting at the weekend sir no we're in lockdown so obviously i'm not doing anything interesting let's go for a simple built-in [Music] um for whom every weekend so this starts to blur into the week and [Music] right okay let's go with that i don't know if this is a good idea or not um and then we're gonna have a bit of a i don't know what should we go for um oh hang on there's a keys thing which is built in which here we go how about scarborough elicit keys what do we think is this going to be like come on you can what you got what you got what you got okay it's another piece now i wanted to i want a that one i want a whirl it sir i want okay let's try that [Music] do we like the old i used to have one of these oh dear it's a bit fazey that's nice and straight [Music] okay something like that might work um so what we're doing here what yeah why god what are you doing [Music] we're in um g minor g minor seven there's a g minor add the seven on the top then we go down so we keep that figure there so we're going down to an e flat but we're keeping the d which is the major seven so we're going from a minor seven sus two drop that a in to a e flat major seven down to a d minor seven let's do that [Music] how about a bit of bass um i've got a zebra here you know i'm fond of beds empress actually i tell you i need two bass i what i actually quite like would be where can i find an upright bass um that's a good question guy i'm not sure oh how about her what happens with one of these okay that's quite sort of friendly okay let's just put [Music] okay now i'm going to put the sort of fretless e one on the top [Music] [Music] okay something okay now hang on [Music] wasn't the tune supposed to be in here [Music] [Music] it's getting more jazzy than i intended it to to be absolutely honest [Music] [Music] so okay i you know if i'm talking eggs over easy i'm not that dissatisfied with that it's a little bit loungy i'll tell you what shall i just try redoing the the electric piano now i've got an idea where the rest of it is maybe i can play it in better well i don't think there's any doubt in the world you could play it in better guy are you being rude about my my piano yes i am a bit of reverb i quite like that hype thing to start with now to the sea [Music] okay [Music] right uh just gonna do one thing to this and then i'm gonna move on to scrambled um we're going to chop this up we're gonna bounce it out and then see what we can do with it okay so you can take that one out i'm just messing about at the moment just messing about and see if there's anything which is [Music] um i could do a faster one just giving it a little bit of a kind of something um let's let's stutter it a little bit more while we're doing quantized 16 go to 30 seconds and uh use quantize yes good quality is good yes okay let's let's make it a lot shorter this might sound rubbish but it might not i don't know okay i can live [Music] i just that's it's not much but it sort of helps uh this one we're going to flip copy oops behind my head again sorry reverse there we go overlap the two and cross fade to see how this make well does it make a difference is it sounding better or worse i don't know okay look what happens if i turn the piano back on [Music] [Music] ah yeah does that sound like over easy fried eggs to you [Music] drums are too loud that's better you see how it now that's too loud oh for goodness sake what is going on but i like those little bits and pieces actually then i'm just gonna [Music] it's possible i've just raked this look okay um those that's fried eggs okay what are we left with scrambled what could scramble possibly be uh join me in a minute we'll find out scrambled okay scramble's gonna be a little bit sort of out weird i don't know what i've done all i've done so far is loaded up six copies of spitfire labs the free libraries which contain all kinds of bonkers stuff and maybe bonkers stuff is where we need to be with this so let us look at what we got uh there's lots of strange things experimental experimental percussion kit i think we will start with that okay i'm now going to randomly choose that and we're going to go up to something crazy like 150 beats a minute gonna make this really fast here we go 150. that worked out right right that'll loop now we're going to go back to 60s now let's get a some kind of instrument up that's not going to do it uh trumpet field strings experiment was doing all right before locusts had appeals music box okay [Music] okay now we now have to work out [Music] what keyword we've done that we've we've done the g minor we've done c major right looking at this [Music] i can put i'll build it into an ostinato [Music] it's a little bit far away from my original idea but right now i'm not sure i care 2 3 4. yep moving it into the major the end [Applause] worked [Applause] [Music] yep like that what's this next one so i've at least ticks the box of using my tune uh battle cello there is an awful lot of strange things in here bitten bumblebee cautious mute okay let's see what this is [Music] okay this will work but i need to use it more sparingly it's really easy to try and fill everything up on every layer all the time hello cautious mute [Music] leave that [Music] okay who am i to say that's rubbish actually you're the composer so you can say it's as rubbish as you like it's not rubbish actually do you know what of all of the ones i've done today i'm sort of warming to this one a bit more than the others oh where's the base when you need one okay i'm gonna make a base and i'm just gonna do it like this add an audio track uh bass and i'm gonna go dum dum [Music] right now i'm going to chop the front off and i'm going to do that i'm going to turn it into a little thing and then i'm going to add a sample track where's the sampler track create a track sampler track yes please base and then i'm going to drop myself in you know there i go like that trim the [Music] front oh unfortunately there's also the sound of the click in there isn't there okay turn the click off oh i see what's happening turn that off as well for a second so you're just going to hear me from the moment there you go that's better that will now let's normalize that there we go so it's nice and loud do you really want yourself that loud guy okay drop it in and now trim the front okay [Music] boom is that'll work okay there's something which is slightly off in here and i can't quite work it out what it is sometimes you spend weeks doing something i'm sure there's something in there that um pits ensemble okay is this suddenly going to come out something like bake off [Music] yes [Music] there's too much going on in the middle [Applause] okay now this is in this kind of arrangement you just got to fill in the [Music] gaps [Applause] there you go and that instantaneously is um a new kids theme called wobble and pobble go on a picnic hello wobble and popple hello how are you i thought we'd go to the beach today to make sandcastles oh that would be great can i come too of course you can oh what fun it is i love the sunshine don't you bubble absolutely wobble i love being out in the sunshine it's such fun [Music] do i look like a serial killer okay look i've given you boiled i've given you fried and now i've scrambled my own brain what can i say oh my lord look so we started with one simple little idea and we've ended up with three very different pieces of music in three different very different styles i hope somewhere i missed all this chaos you found something useful uh if you've enjoyed this bear in mind that uh it is completely free to subscribe to this channel and you can click the little things and underneath this you will find a free link to our um all kinds of exciting stuff about how to write music which is of course we do yeah really honestly it's good it's a really good little course and thousands of people have been through it really it's uh it's quite something it's quite exciting when you do things like that and you suddenly think all these people have been through it and started to you know get into your kind of way of thinking but that's my way of thinking is not necessarily an advert for the course anyway i hope you've enjoyed this little session and i look forward to meeting you again very soon see you soon bye

Channel: Guy Michelmore

Views: 36,504

Keywords: thinkspace, education, music, film, scoring, games, television, composition, composer, guy michelmore, guy, michelmore, thinkspace education, music education, how to write music, arranging music, music arrangement techniques, cubase, steinberg, cuabse 10.5, how to arrange music

Id: TIfcc5IZu-g

Length: 34min 16sec (2056 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 04 2021