Assemble A Song Challenge

Today, for our first specialist techniques challenge of second year, we were provided with a set of lyrics and four chords and were given an hour to create a song from the chords and lyrics. We first looked at the lyrics of the song which seemed to be quite mellow and calm, so from that we chose the genre of the song, which was shoegaze, as we wanted to test our versatility as a band for playing other genres as opposed to funk and soul.

Once we had decided the genre that we were going to play our song in, we listened to some songs in the style of shoegaze so that we knew exactly what type of sound and vibe we wanted to create. Some of the songs we listened to included “Chamber Of Reflection” by Mac Demarco, and “Heaven or Las Vegas” by The Cocteau Twins. Here are the videos of both of these tracks:

Both of these songs have moderately slow tempos, and contain quite a lot of reverb on both the instrumentation and vocals. Therefore, we decided for the song to have a slow tempo, and we turned the reverb on for the guitar, synth and vocals. From this, Jack figured out his part on the drums, Will then slowly arpeggiated the chords provided and played them in legato, from the chords, Leila also wrote a smooth bassline. I got Will to play his chords on guitar slowly in a loop, so that I could figure them out by ear, and then play them on synth on the keyboard. I played the main chords using the sustain pedal on the keys to enhance the shoegaze sound that we were aiming to achieve. Once we had the instrumentation sorted, Ellie then figured out a melody from the lyrics, almost immediately. We then rehearsed it a few times before performing it to the rest of the class.

Over the melody that Ellie sung, Will played a dreamy top line melody. Our song was arranged in this order:

Verse

Chorus

Verse

Outro

We would have added a second chorus and a bridge, provided we were given more rehearsal time. I don’t believe that this challenge was much of a struggle for our band, as we had a productive session and a positive attitude towards the workshop, however, Leila did say she was struggling to write a bass line for the song, but she managed to write one in the end and it sounded fantastic. As bass is Leila’s secondary instrument, and she is mainly a guitarist, I think this was a great debut for her on her new instrument. Due to the lack of time we were given to complete the challenge, our finished product did sound a bit basic, and I wasn’t very satisfied with how it turned out, overall.

On the other hand, the instrumentation that we did write, was of a high standard. Especially the dreamy top line guitar melody. I think we are going to use this song as either an interlude between our original songs at our gigs, or we are going to take the melody from this song and write another song with it.

Here is the video of our performance. I am looking forward to the next workshop: