Assignment 4 - Logic Arrangement
In this assignment we were told to create an arrangement of
an existing piece of popular music using Logic. At the time we were given the
brief I was introduced to a lot of Cyril Hahn’s remixes. I really liked his
style and the way he would rework vocals, for example in his remix of Say My
Name by Destiny’s Child he pitches the vocal down to sound almost like a man.
Manipulating vocals was something I wanted to explore in this project.
So choosing
the vocal was important. I chose to use Luther Vandros’s song Never Too Much as
I am a big fan of his voice and the song has great soulful melodies that really
stick in your head.
Never Too Much- Luther Vandross
I found an
acapella for the song however I was disappointed as it was merely a loop of one
chorus. What I really wanted was to sample some of Luther’s riffing near the
end of the song. However I used this to my advantage as it gave me the chance
to create my own variations on the vocals through the sampling and pitching of
just the vocals I had.
In terms of
the style of the arrangement I wanted to modernise the song with a more hip hop
style rather than the original disco funk. I also had Jamie Woon’s modern
R&B sound and Cyril Hahn’s mellow hip hop/dance music in mind when creating
the parts. In the end I feel like the sound I produced is something unique with
the use of all these elements.
I found
sampling the vocals into a sampler instrument gave me a whole new range of
colour to work with. Most interesting to me was how you can create new
narrative to the song through this. In the original Luther sings to his love.
However in my arrangement I pitched the phrase “Oh my love” up and the result
was that this sounded like a woman singing, bringing a new female character to
the song. In the middle of my arrangement I had this phrase “Oh my love” become
like a call and response between man and woman creating a sense of longing for
one another.
I also
enjoyed making use of sampling the word “stop”; adding this word rhythmically
and melodically to the arrangement and creating chords with the original audio.
I also used
automation at certain points creating fades and also automating EQ to create a
sense of moving distance.
A problem I
encountered in the process was a hi-hat sound that is used like a metronome in
the original audio. I don’t find it too distracting or out of place, however in
the higher pitched sample it speeds up, this wasn’t ideal.
Overall I
am very pleased with my arrangement of Never Too Much, I think I’ve
successfully shown a range of skills in Logic and look forward to honing them
further.
