Happy FRIDAY! Music Appreciation!
This week is another instance of music appreciation “classic version.” I’ve been working a lot on a grant application for the short film I’m working on and my brain hasn’t really had any specifically film-music related thoughts recently.
That said, last week Saturday I jam seshed with a friend of mine and we started figuring out how to play the song of the week, “Die With a Smile.”
This song is a BANGER. It’s so good. It’s so much fun. It’s one of those surprising and delightful mega mash-ups that just comes out of the blue. Lady Gaga? Great. Bruno Mars? Great. Together? WHAT EVEN. So good.
Anyways, back to the jam sesh. When we were playing the song, we were having a hard time figuring out the vibe. With my electric guitar, I was able to slightly model after the song - using a cleaner tone and a healthy dose of reverb to bathe everything in *ambiance.* My singer on the other hand, had a really clean and dry tone from singing straight into the mic and although she could get into the spirit of the song, there was something about it that didn’t quite feel right. Eventually, I guessed it was the fact that the sound of her voice was too clean and it was throwing her off. In a similar effect to hearing your own voice on camera, there’s just that *ewww* feeling at first.
But after sitting with it for a while, I think it’s more so that the effects on the vocals for this song in particular are very important. Like the guitar, the vocals have this wash of reverb all over it that gives it this sloshy sense of depth. Like singing in a huge empty room.
Please listen to the song first and then below it I found an isolated vocals version. With the isolated one, you can REALLY hear the intensity of the effects on it. As well as some other ear candy like the subtle harmonies on some lines.
Enjoy :)
The Song
The Isolated Vocal Version
Last Thoughts
The first time I saw Bruno Mars perform live was the first time I learned how to do the body roll.
In college, I NOTORIOUSLY could not figure out how to do that motion. My friends would tease me about it. However, after watching Bruno Mars get into it and do his shoulder sway, I just figured it out. His sense of that sort of wavy groove is THAT good. And the only reason I’m mentioning any of this is because the groove in this song embodies that exact feeling. It’s this wavy rolling motion that gets started with the guitar, accentuated by the swung drums, and then just carried away by the swaying vocals.
I’m not going to go as far as to say this song has perfect iambic meter - I really don’t think it does and I don’t really want to get out a paper and pencil right now to check - BUT there’s something in me that feels like the stressed/unstressed words are placed in very specific places because the song just has that ship sailing on the ocean feeling to it with peaks and falls.
That’s all I got for this week.
Next Week
Nothing lined up just yet! But if anyone wants to submit a song to share with everyone, we can go back to the “classic” mode.
Until then,
MYKAAAAA
Bonus - Porter Robinson on AI
Alright, for the bonus today, I’m sharing this tiktok that I saw earlier.
Porter Robinson. PIONEER of electronic music. Someone who is truly on the razor’s edge of innovation in that scene. He had this take on AI in music that I find fascinating.
The line he uses is along the lines of - with AI splitters, it is now possible to separate elements in songs (easily), in such a way that it is kind of like buying a premade cake and somehow getting the eggs out. Produced Music being like a baked cake.
It’s an excellent metaphor because it truly captures how wild this new technology is. And then the step on top of that is what does this mean for music?
Hip-hop as a genre was fundamentally influenced by the art of sampling or sound collaging. Hip-hop has always held a sort of rebellious / counter culture nature to it because sounds were not quite “stolen” but they were used whether the owner wanted them used or not. It’s this philosophical belief/debate of who owns the art that you put out? Many artists will say once their stuff is released, it’s the world’s. Definitively being RELEASED and out of their own possession. That’s an passionate art response. However, in the shadow of that there’s things like plagiarism. If someone else is making money of your work - more or less simply reselling it for profit - that’s inherently wrong.
Where my brain is going is we’re at this crossroads where depending on what side utilizes AI, the world will look vastly different.
There was a period of time when bootleg remixes on platforms like Soundcloud ushered in a GOLDEN era of electronic dance music. Because there were a bunch of people just making cool stuff. Then, as the platform algorithms got better at recognizing bits and pieces of material- bootleg remixes ceased to exist.
We’re at a point now where acquiring musical “ingredients” will be as easy as mentally referencing something. You like how something sounds in a released song? It’s yours. But on the same hand . . . if the regulating companies get the technology first - then there will be NO referencing at all. Because they will be able to detect those ingredients, even in a baked cake.