Boldly Go! Beatnik Broadcasting

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.