Stomp and Sing

The Power of the Pentatonic

Band Musicianship 1: The four-chord trick

West African Music

The Beauty of the Baroque

Band Musicianship 2: The Blues

Fusions

Using technology musically: EDM

Using technology musically: Film Music

Band Musicianship 3: Songs for a better world

Music

Y9 Music

Key Stage 3

Year 9

UNIT

In this lesson, we will learn what EDM is and how to create our own drum patterns using a DAW. We will also explore what rhythm displacement is, and how to utilise this in our own composition work.

How can a DAW be used to create EDM rhythms?

In this lesson, we will learn how to compose a chord sequence using a DAW and explore a variety of ways of playing these chords.

How are chord sequences used in EDM?

In this lesson, we will learn how to add harmonic rhythm to our chord progressions and how to invert chords. We will then input our chord sequences into a DAW.

How can we add interest to chord sequences?

In this lesson, we will explore the role of basslines and bass riffs in EDM. We will learn how to create our own bass lines and how to add interest.

How are bass lines and riffs created in EDM?

﻿Hello, my name is Ms. Charatan, and I'm a head of music at as school in North London. Today I'm jumping in to teach you about basslines, and together we're going to create two contrasting basslines in today's lesson. Let's get started! Before we move on, we need to get the following things ready. A piece of paper and a pencil, as well as Digital Audio Workstation. You should be getting up the track that you've been working on already with your chord sequence with Ms. Ahanish. Pause the video, get those things out now, and resume when you're ready. Great! So the demonstrations in this lesson use a free programme called BandLab. BandLab is for use by over 13s only, and if you are over 13, you still need permission from your parent or carer in order to use it. So, we're going to start by recapping our prior knowledge of chords briefly, and then we're going to introduce what a bass is. We will explore how create a root note bassline and add it to your project. And then we'll create more interest by creating a bass riff. Let's get started by briefly recapping our prior knowledge about chords. So here is a grid of all the chords in D minor, that is the key that you should be composing your EDM track in. How do we label the pitches in a chord? So what do we say D is in a D minor chord? What about F? What about A? Pause the video very briefly, and decide, remember what do we label them? Okay, let's check! So, D is the root, F is the third, and A is the fifth. And that is the case with any triad. A root, a third and a fifth. And it's going to be really important today to be confident labelling the pitches in a chord in order for us to compose a really great bassline that fits well with our chord sequence. So, let's introduce this bassline, then. What is a bassline and why is it really important in Electronic Dance Music? Well, a bassline is the lowest part in a piece of music, put simply. And it's really important because it helps us to dance. We can actually feel it, and if you've gone to somewhere with really loud music, you can actually feel that bass through the floor. So it's so important for EDM. We're now going to listen to two basslines, so "Faded" by Alan Walker, and the bassline from "Bounce" by Calvin Harris. So you should be listening to that lowest melody, the lowest part in the track. How are these basslines different, and are there any similarities? Pause the video and draw out a quick table in order for you to list your ideas, and resume when you're ready. Great, so let's get ready to listen to them, then. So let's hear "Faded" first, and write down any notes about what you hear about the bassline.

So that was "Faded." If you couldn't hear the bassline very well, it might be worth going to get some headphones to help you hear it. We're now going to hear "Bounce" by Calvin Harris. How is it contrasting? Okay, if you need more time or need to listen to them again, you can just rewind the video. Let's now check our answers. So, "Faded," the bassline there was one pitch per bar, and it was sustained, in that the note was held on for a long long time like this. This obviously isn't the bassline, it's way too high on the piano. And then "Bounce," was really different. It had many pitches and many notes, it was a riff. It was really syncopated so that had that drive, and it had two two-bar phrases. Were there any similarities in the basslines? If you said they're both low in pitch, absolutely! And they both had a synthesised sound. So they used a synthesiser. The one in "Bounce," was actually even lower than "Faded," it was really at the very bottom of what we can hear. So we've introduced that bass, and now we're going to learn how to add a root note bassline. So let's now look at more in more detail at the bassline of "Faded." So "Faded," is in the key of D minor, and uses this chord progression. D, and then F, and B flat, and C. And it uses the following notes in the bassline what do we notice about the relationship between the notes of the chords and the bassline? Take a moment to look at that now. Yes, if you said they are the same, you are completely correct. They're the same as the names of the chords. They are the root notes of the chords, because the root note is the name of the chord. So root note of an F chord is F. So, that is what root note bassline is. It's one of the easiest ways to create a bassline, and can be found in many different types of music. So we can play the root notes in a sustained way, like we heard in "Faded," like this. Or we could play it more rhythmically. What effect does this have on our music? That creates a real drive and it pushes that music forward. So, you need to then open up your project, and you should have your drum machine or your drumbeat and your chords. It'd be useful to label your tracks with the respective parts to help you organise your work later. So, to record a new root note bassline, add another track. I would then need to change the instrument to something a bit more EDM. So, remember we used synths. And I'm going to choose synth bass. And a deep house one is absolutely fine for what I want, you can experiment with some other ones too. So I then need to practise my part by typing it in on a computer keyboard. So my bassline, remember that now, was D, C, F, and B flat. I find it useful to keep this keyboard up when I'm recording cause I'm a little bit unfamiliar with it. So I need to check my metronome is on, go back to the beginning, I've practised it and I'm going to record it. So that's my root note bassline. Once I've got that in, I then need to quantize it. So I double click on it, I select all by doing Control-A, and I quantize it to 1 over 16, it's already there, so I click "quantize." So, another way I can do this is by clicking my bassline in. I'm going to show you how to do that with a more rhythmic idea. So you right-click on the area you want to create a part in. Create region, and I'm going to double click into it. So here's our media editor. I then need to change the pencil tool, and then I need to find my first pitch. So, mine would be D here, so then I'm going to create an interesting rhythm. To make it syncopated, you don't pencil in on the beat, which is here, you do kind of in between. So I'm going to try this one. And then I might to make this one a bit longer, like this. And if I play it to hear what it sounds like. So that's actually the same rhythm as the chords, that's fine, for now you might want to choose something different. And then, to make my work quicker, I highlight it all, I copy and paste with my notes and drag, and then do the same for my other two parts of my bassline. So if we just hear it on its own, let's check that we're happy. So you can see that I made a mistake, and I copied it to the wrong place. So then what I'm supposed to do is select it, and drag it back. The last thing you need to do is rename your track to "bassline root note bassline." Pause the video to complete your task, and familiarise yourself with these instructions again if you are not sure. This should take you around 10 minutes. See you in 10 minutes. Brilliant, excellent work with your root note bassline! I'm sure that's sounding fantastic. So we've done our root note bassline, and we're now going to create more interest by composing a bass riff. So another kind of bassline you may wish to add is a bass riff. And we heard one earlier, in Calvin Harris' "Bounce." so let's listen to Calvin Harris again. What do you notice about his bassline compared to your own root note bassline? And I'm just going to stop it to remind you don't listen to that melodic riff up high in the texture, we really listen to that lowest part. So, what did you notice? Well, as we said before, it had many pitches, so it was a riff. We had two-bar phrases, so it actually mirrored that melodic riff, that melodic riff was , and that was the phrase , that was the second phrase. And it was really syncopated as well. So bass riffs, as we notice, are much more melodic or tuneful that root note basslines. And they're using the root note as well as additional notes from the chord or scale, and will typically have very syncopated rhythms and phrases, which are one, two, or four bars long. So I think we should be trying to aim for a two-bar phrase in our one to have it to have it nicely divided up. So just like a root note bassline, bass riffs are low in pitch, and provide this real solid foundation on which other ideas sit on top of. It really grounds the piece of music. So there are many different ways to create a bass riff, But we're going to walk through one of them that you might find helpful. So I'm going to show you with a slightly different example to earlier. This is the chord sequence from "Free From Desire" by Gala. So the first thing I need to do is find my root note bassline. You've done that already. So my root note bassline is D, A, B flat, and C. Then I'm going to add in some additional notes from the corresponding chords and scales to create this riff. So I look at my chord grid below, so my first chord is C minor, okay, so I can maybe use F and A, which I've actually done here, so I've added an F. This C here is still from that D minor scale, so I can use it, it's absolutely fine, but it's not part of that chord, that's okay. So my first bit and I've just decided to repeat that root note here. And here we go, we've got another root note repeated. And these two pitches together, not from the chord, that's fine, I used my ear to find something I liked, and I've jumped down to that C. So you can see that I've used a combination of the root note itself just repeated a few times and some additional pitches to travel between these root notes. So you can use a combination of this chord grid by looking to seeing what pitches you can choose, as well as your ear. But here it is, a little bit bigger, in case you needed to have a closer look. So, now it's a challenge for you, I'd like you to look and analyse my bassline up here. I'd like you to tell me, is it the root, or third, or fifth in the chord, or is it a passing note to another note from the scale which isn't in the chord? Pause the video, take two minutes to just look at my bassline, and see what I've done, and resume when you're ready. You might want to colour code, using the same colours up and down here. Okay, so let's look. So I've used loads of root notes, as I said, so that's the root notes of D minor, A minor, B flat and C. And then I've had this F here is from the chord, and all the other notes, the other pitches, are actually just from the scale, and that's absolutely fine. Let's now think about the phrases. So remember, a phrase is like a musical sentence. It's a way as a kind of natural break in the music, like if you were singing it. So I'm going to play it, why not sing along with me? Where would you naturally take a breath? Where would you naturally take a breath? How long is each phrase? Yes, you would do the whole thing in one go, really. So we've got two two-bar phrases, and keeping on that bass note, or sorry, the root notes creates a natural pause in that music, and that's a really good idea. Okay, so you can follow my process of creating a bassline, maybe on a real keyboard and if you don't have one, we can do all of this in BandLab. So the first thing you need to do is create a new track for your bass riff. I'm going to label it straight away. I'm going to change the instrument straight away as well to a synth. Okay, so then you're going to do this similar thing with me with your own chord progression. So you can even click to start with, and then, and then practise on the keyboard, and working out again which, what sounds good. You might want to use your musical ear to really listen in. To do this, you would then loop this section of your work, up to five, and from one. You might want to turn down some of the other parts, so you can really hear what you're doing. And then, you can experiment with some ideas. I might actually mute my root note bassline. So with your keyboard up, so knowing your root notes, and then press play. Now a loop. Once you're happy with whatever you've got, just going to turn it all down a bit. Once you're happy, you are then going record in in very much the same ways you did before. So you might want to mute some of the tracks so you don't get distracted. Press record. And so that's my bassline, I might then want to go into my media editor, and change some of the pitches. You can see I made a few mistakes, so I sort these out like this. It will take some time. I would then maybe fix a pitch. I think I actually went down to a wrong note here. So I'll change that down to an F. And lastly I'd need to quantize it. So I select all of it, Control-A, and quantize it by 1 over 16. If we listen to it, it might sound a bit better. So I'd then fix that last little bit then, but I'm going to leave that now, for now. The other way to create a bass riff is to click it in. And the easiest way to do that is to get your root bass note as a foundation. So you're going to right-click "duplicate track." And then you're going to rename it to "bass riff." I'm just going to do "bass riff 2." And delete the rhythmic one, and then use this as like, my drawing board. So I would then shorten that first note, actually all of it. Like this. Get my pencil tool, and then maybe I've decided in advance what pitches I'm going to use, I will click in. So then I would look really carefully. Maybe repeat other one here. And then up here. That sounded a bit funny. So then I've got a rough idea if we just listen to it on its own. Again, not perfect, cause I would have spent much more time deciding it on BandLab itself. So let's solo this. And I can hear that this probably is not going to fit with my chords at all, this last bit. So then I would fix those bits. I don't actually need to quantize at the moment, because you can see I've clicked it all in exactly. So now you are going to create your bass riff in one of the two ways I've suggested to you. Make sure that you can loop the top if you're going to figure it out by ear. Make sure you're adjusting the volume with the various tracks so you can hear what you're doing really carefully. And feel free to experiment, you can also delete what you've done if you don't like it. Just click on it, and delete it, and try again. We're now going to pause the video to complete this task. Read the instructions really carefully. Take about 10 to 15 minutes this time to create your bass riff. Resume the video when you've finished. Great job! Today you've created two fantastic basslines. So we had our root bassline, and our bass riff. If you'd like to, please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, tagging @OakNational and using the hashtag LearnwithOak. Even a work in progress is really, really interesting, cause it's lovely to see what you are doing. Take care, and enjoy the rest of the project. Bye!

In this lesson, we will compose a dance riff, ensuring it harmonises with a chord sequence.

How can a melodic riff be added above a chord sequence?

﻿In this lesson, you will need a pencil, a piece of paper to write notes with. This lesson makes use of music, making software. You may use the same one that I do, or a similar app or desktop digital audio workstation. This lesson is also better with headphones but they are not required. If you can find a quiet space to do this lesson in, as you will be doing lots of listening and playing. If you need to pause the video now to prepare for the lesson, please do so and click resume when you're ready. Using music software. You can create music using audio mixing software. The demonstrations in this lesson use a free programme called BandLab. BandLab is for use by over 13s only. And if you are over 13, you still need permission to use it from your parent or carer. Melodic riffs in EDM. A riff is a short, repeated phrase used in popular music. You will hear some riffs from popular EDM tracks. Whilst you listen to them, answer the questions on the right hand side of your screen. How could you describe them? How are they similar and what makes them easy to remember? Pause the video after the third extract, if you need more time to answer the questions. ♪ I want to dance by water 'neath the Mexican sky ♪ ♪ Drink some Margarittas by string of blue lights ♪ ♪ Listen to the Mariachi play at midnight ♪ ♪ Are you with me, are you with me? ♪ Practise playing melodic riffs on a keyboard, an app, or your instrument. Make sure you play it in time with a steady pulse! Pause the video to complete your task and click resume when you're finished. Copy out the table you see on screen now. This piece contains a melodic riff that is one bar long. This piece contains a melodic riff that is two bars long. This piece contains one or more riffs, that are four bars long. This piece contains two riffs that work together in a question and answer structure. The three songs are named Lola's Theme, Right Here, Right Now and Are You With Me. When you've finished the table, click resume. We will then listen to the riffs again. As you listen this time, try to determine which of the statements are true for each song. So up first is Lola's Theme. Up next is Right Here, Right Now. ♪ I want to dance by water 'neath the Mexican sky ♪ ♪ Drink some Margarittas by string of blue lights ♪ ♪ Listen to the Mariachi play at midnight ♪ ♪ Are you with me, are you with me? ♪ So let's take a look at the answers for that table. Here we go, notice how some of the songs, Lola's Theme, and Right Here, Right Now had more than one option. So example, Right Here, Right Now had a melodic riff that was one bar long. And one that was two bars long. And, And Faded was quite a long riff. It was four bars. One. Two. Three. Four. So far we've looked at some basic melodic riffs, and we've just had a go at harmonising a melodic riff. But what actually is harmony? Well, harmony is when two or more pitches are played at the same time. On the right hand side of the screen there I have a C major chord. And as you can see, the notes are stacked on top of each other, representing playing them at the same time. "Where melody is horizontal, on a score, harmony is vertical." What are the different functions of harmony? To add interest, harmonising a melody can make the melody more interesting. It can change the mood. Different chords and progressions can evoke different moods. Sense of direction. Composers use chords to take the listener on a musical journey. And home, after that journey is complete harmony can make the song sound like it is home. You can play each scale as chords, Composers use harmonious chord sequences, or progressions in their music. For example, However, you could argue that some chord sequences don't sound so harmonious. So it's up to us to decide which chords we pick and in which order we play them. But how do we know how to do that? Well, let's take a look now. So now it's time to compose our own melodic riffs. And I've got a chord sequence here on the screen. I've got D minor, A minor, B flat major and C major. And that sounds like this. I'll loop it one more time. And so you might ask, "well, how do you begin to even think about writing a melody for a chord sequence?" Well, the step I like to take is looking at the notes in each of those chords. So as you can see the notes that I have in D minor, are D, F and A. And what I've done is I've taken the root and the fifth of that chord. So I have D and A. I'm doing three notes per bar, and I've just decided to go A, D, A for that first chord. I could have picked any of those notes. I could have done D and F. Or I could have done just the D even if I wanted to make it really simple. And then I said, "well, I want to keep it nice and simple. I do, so why don't I just repeat that A and D, A pattern in my second chord." And I'm thinking, because I've got the notes A, in my A minor chord, this going to sound quite good. So let's see how that sounds, the first two chords. We'll try with the next chord as well. And again. So I think it sounds okay. Definitely it could be made more interesting and more complicated. But crucially, in all but just the last chord, at least one of the notes in the riff A or D is in that chord. So we have the A and the D in the D minor. We have just the A in the A minor, and we have just the D in the B flat major chord. Let's play it one more time. A minor. B flat major. Then to C. And that last bar, like I've just said, we don't actually have any of the notes that are in the chord in the riff. You have A, D, A in the riff, and we have C, E and G in the chord. So maybe I could actually change that A to a G. And that would sound like this. Sounds a little bit better, and I could even change that D to a C if I wanted to make it fit with the chord even more. See, so I'm just matching notes in the chord. So if I had an F chord, for example, which has F, A and C in the chord, then I would either play F, A or C in my riff. It's okay if I use notes that are outside of that chord, but it would be nice if at least one of the notes in the riff fits with at least one of the notes in the chord. So why don't we head over to BandLab and put that in over there? So here we are in BandLab, I've already clicked on mix editor and opened up an instrument track because we're going to be using the piano for this example. So, first thing I would like to do is double tap in that first bar. So I can get my middy region. I's four bars long, and we'll do one chord per bar. So the first chord we need is the D minor chord. And according to the table, the notes were D, F and A. So I'm going to double tap in those squares. So I can double tap there to get a D. Like I said, I want these to be one chord per bar. So I'm going to make my notes a little bit longer add the note F as well. Here we go, although that is F sharp, so I can just move it down to F natural. And then, Let's see what that sounds like. There we go. A nice D minor chord. So I will fill in now the next chord which is A minor, A, C and E. Now, I could copy and paste and drag it down, but just for the video, I will type it in. So you've got A, you've C. And E In bar three, we needed B flat, yes. So B flat. D. And F. You notice that it's just a semitone higher and C major. C. E. and D. So let's hear what the whole chord progression sounds like. I'm going to click on my loop bar here. So when it gets to the bar, at the end of the bar four, it's going to go back and play from bar one. So lets hear how it sounds. So there we go. I'm just going to loop, loop and loop. So we've got our chord of progression now, we just need to add in the easy riff, which was just a repetition of the notes. A and D, and turn my keyboard up. And we had A, D, A rest, A, D, A rest, A, D, A rest, et cetera. Now, I could put the riff on the same track. I'm not actually going to do that. I'm going to have a separate track for my chords and my riff just in case I wanted to change the instrument or change the notes. It's easier to do that if they're in separate tracks. So I've clicked the abstract button, clicked instruments again, and it automatically beats up a piano for me. I will change that to riff. I'll create my region again, by double tapping in that first one. We can notice it's a nice, different colour. It's just easier to differentiate the two. So we need A, D and A. Often riffs are higher in pitch than the chords, so I've just scrolled up and I'm going to be using the C four octave. So I'm going to do A, D, A. Each note is going to be one beat long. So the first note is A, just A there we go. Make sure that it is the correct sound. So yeah, that's A. I can just make it sort of two rectangles, long parts, one beat. So it needs to go to 1.2. It's got A, I could go up. I could do. But I think it sounds better if I go down. So I'm going to go down to this D right here and another A. Now I could, if I wanted to make that longer. So it goes to the end of bar two, or I could keep it as a rest And the BDI would realise that I put that in the wrong place. So wants to start at 1.3 and I can make it all the way to two like that. If I wanted to again, save time I can copy and paste, by highlighting. And if I hold down the Alt key and click hold and drag, I can copy and paste it. Or if that is a little bit too complicated, I can just draw it out again. And that's fine. So we've got, A. D. And A again. They can go right to the end. And one more. A. D. And A. Making it go all the way to the end of the bar, and let's hear how that sounds together. So repeat. Great, I'll pause that. So we've got our chord and we've got our riff sounds pretty good. If I wanted to, I could actually change the instrument and I could do that by clicking on the track, come down to the bottom here and selecting an instrument. So if I wanted it to be let's say a guitar would sound like. So again, I could experiment with lots of different ones. But that is how to put in D easy riff over the chord sequence, D minor, A minor, B flat major and C major on BandLabs. So let's go back to the slides before we come back to BandLab for the slightly harder version. Over there, that's all right. So let's take that a step further and make our riff even more musical by changing the notes in each bar to match the notes, that are in the chord. So instead of just having the A and D repeat I'll loop that too. For each chord, I'm going to change the notes. So for the, A minor chord, instead of playing A, D, A, I'm going to play E and A instead, because E and A are in the chord A minor. For the B flat major chord, I'm going to play F and B flat and for the C chord, I'm going to play C and G. So together it sounds like this. There we go. So that's a slightly more musical version, and this will work with your chord sequence, as well. So for each chord you have, you can pick one, two or three of those notes to play in your riff. So, for example, if you had a D major chord instead of a D minor chord, you could choose notes that way, either D, F sharp or A. Hear that was your riff. A, D, F sharp. Change the chord but I keep the same notes. So riff is for any chord sequence. Let's go up into BandLab and write this new, more musical sequence into BandLab and then you can have a go at doing it on your own chord sequence. So back over in BandLab to do the more musical riff. What I can do is I can just mute the track that had the easier riff in, if I don't want to delete it. And I can add a new track, add instrument, and we get our piano pop. Now, I should mention as well that you can use your actual laptop or computer keyboard to play the piano sound, but my brain does not work like that. So I'm still going to be inputting the notes with the pencil. So we're still using our chords D minor, A minor, B flat and C. We're just slightly changing the notes from A and D, to notes that match and fit in with the chord. So again, I'm going to be using a higher octave, and the first bar is the same. It's actually A, and we'll make it a chord sheet A, D, A like so, but then we have in bar two. So I'm just watch my masters as I go to bar two and just line it up, go down to E, E. A. E. Going to have a rest and then we've got the B flat chord. So that's F, B flat and an F again so, that's an F sharp, so I just need to drag it down. So I'm just click holding and dragging. Can be a bit fiddly and if you find this too fiddly, you can just delete it by clicking backspace. And just double tapping it again, I'm going to go down to my B flat on the right bar. So I'm actually put that in the wrong place. Well, to make you spotted that 3.2, I put my B flat and back to my F, Leave a rest enough for. I can do my last three notes which were C, G and C again. So I've got making sure lining it up, go to the bar four, I want my C, I'll go up for the G I missed by a long way that's the G and back to C at 4.3. There we go. And again, I've got this rest at the end. So let's hear how that sounds this time from the beginning. There we go. So there is the more musical riff, for argument's sake, let's hear what they sound like together. It's not too bad. It's a bit clashy, but it's not too bad. So there we go. There we have the more musical riff. It's more musical again, because the notes of the riff are shared with the notes of the chord. So there are no clashes. And that is how to put the riffs into BandLab. Composing a melodic riff. Compose a melodic riff above your own chord sequence. Use BandLab, or piano, or keyboard. Pause the video to complete your task and click resume when you're finished. So let's talk about making our melodic riffs a little bit more interesting. The one on the right hand side of the screen, Is boring, in my opinion. Now, let's think about ways in which we can make it a little bit more interesting and enjoyable for our listener. That could be changing the instruments, which I'll show you how to go on BandLab, very soon. It could be adding effects. It could be changing the register so the octave that I'm playing in or down here, But one of my favourite ways, in a way where we can be really creative is to use passing notes. So we're adding notes that go in between the notes that we already have. So we have A flat and F in the first two bars. And the note G is in between those two notes. So I could go, instead of, I could add a G at the end of the first bar. So the end of each bar, I've added a passing note and it makes it sound nicer already. And I could add even more notes, but still sticking in the notes of the chord so I could play. So I've got some passing notes in there and I've added extra notes. Most of those extra notes, were notes that were also found in that chord. So there are lots and lots of ways and we're going to head over to BandLab and try and change this very simple, literally four notes chord, four notes riff, into something a little bit more interesting. So let's do that now. So here we are in BandLab, and I've just written out the riff and the chords, and this is how it sounds in its original form. So the first and easiest way to make that sound more interesting is to change the instrument. So I'm going to head over to the track. I'm going to click on instrument and I don't want the piano. Let's try strings. I am a violin player but no, let's try pizzicato, let's try that. Let's just load it again and we'll see how that sounds. I like it. However, sometimes the melody's getting lost. And that's because of a few things. One, is that the chords are way too large. So we're going to turn that down. We can turn our pizzicato strings up, but also if we look at the the notes themselves, I think we could actually get away with putting them up another octet. So I'm going to highlight. I just about missed them, didn't I? Let's try that again. Highlight all of them and I'm going to drag them up, up an octave. Oh, too high. There we go. Let's see how that sounds. Sorry, that took me a long time to do. Oh, we lost some there, didn't we? Well, we can get them back easily. Sometimes BandLab is not my friend, but is okay. Why so, what else can we do next? Let's add in some passing notes, we said we would do that. So we said that we could put a G there, let's hear how that sounds. Yeah, it's good. I'm going to change the rhythm as well to make it how I did on the piano earlier. Good, so let's add in some notes here. Do, do, do, do, do. There we go, let's see how that sounds. Good, I don't like the jump down the octaves so we're going to put this up. There we go, that was easier. And we will, Let's, follow the same pattern that we've been doing add some passing notes up. So let's see how that sounds now. You know what, I like this arrangement over here, so let's repeat the same thing and we'll go, do, do Nope. So, new riff, new and improved riff I think, sorry, Alan Walker, if that's you. Here the riff? Yeah, I think that is way, way, way better. Now, what we can also do is add some effects. So if I click on the effects panel here and I click add effect, there are lots of things I can do. I can add reverb, I can add dynamics, distortion, delay. Let's try a delay actually. And the good thing about BandLab is if you don't like something you can just undo or delete it and it's fine. No one will know. Oh yeah, I like this delay and I'm also going to put on some reverb as well. Let's do Space Maker and let's put it into a large hole. Turn the room size down a little bit. I think that is much more interesting than the original so I invite you too. Change the register, change the instrument, add an effect if you would like to. And if you're adding any notes, make sure that they are mainly the notes that are in the chord or a passing notes. So one that comes in between the two notes. So if you have the opportunity to do that now and spend probably about 10 minutes improving and making your melodic riff a little bit more interesting. Share your work with Oak National. If you'd like to please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter tagging @OakNational and #learnwithOak.

In this lesson, we will learn about how samples are used in EDM music, and how to include them in our own EDM tracks.

How can samples be used in EDM music?

﻿In this lesson, you'll need a pencil, a piece of paper to write notes with. This lesson makes use of music-making software. You may use the same one that I do, or a similar app, or desktop, digital audio work station. This lesson is also better with headphones, but they are not required. If you can, find a quiet space to do this lesson in as you will be doing lots of listening and playing. If you need pause the video now to prepare for the lesson, please do so and click resume when you're ready. Using music software, you can create music using audio mixing software. The demonstrations in this lesson use a free programme called BandLab. BandLab is for use by over 13s only, and if you are over 13, you still need permission to use it from your parent or carer. Where did sampling start? DJ Kool Herc or Kool DJ Herc is known as the father of hip hop. Sampling is one of the foundations of hip hop. DJs would mix portions of songs together and loop them and this technique developed into sampling and is now a defining feature of hip hop. We will now watch a video of DJ Kool Herc explaining this phenomenon now.

I said, I wonder if I put these, so I said to myself, oh they're waiting for this particular break, and I have a couple more records, got the same break up in it. I wonder how would it be if I put 'em all together. And I told them, I said I want to try something new tonight, I'm going to call it the Merry-Go-Round.

Herc's Merry-Go-Round meant that instead of playing whole records, he would play just the instrumental breaks, mixing between them to create a continuous dance rhythm.

I started out with James Brown, James Brown, clap your hands, stomp your feet, That part right there, with the break, boom! I come in with Bongo Rock. Bongo Rock was still going, no vocals in it, and I would go into Baby Huey, you know, the Mexican.

And it was like, whoa. I think we got somethin' here! You know, 'cause people was like, oh, whoa! Everybody was like, yeah, yeah, yeah! I'm feelin' this! Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know?

Sampling in popular music, before the invention of digital audio workstations, artists recorded on tape. They then had to splice these up, and glue them back together. Sampling has been used in many musical genres. What might be the issue with using samples? We're going to hear from popular EDM artist, Diplo, in talking about some of the issues with samples and copyright.

One of my biggest records I've done was "Paper Planes" by M.I.A., you know, when I sampled The Clash record, it was more than just a good loop. I felt like what the Clash represented was similar to what M.I.A represented, sort of like an alternative, you know, somewhere between reggae and rock music. We had a really good negotiation with the Clash's publisher. Nowadays, it's not that easy, like, when it comes to samples, the old school guys, they just kill you. They make it impossible for you to sample them. Big shout to M.I.A.! I actually got sued for Santigold, I lost like $60,000 on a clearance on that. A song I did with Black Star, called "Stuntastic," which I sampled an Underworld record, that we just couldn't clear. We couldn't clear the master, the publishing side, nothing. Because, I don't know why, but a lot of the times these guys that are 5 years or 10 years behind me. Or you know, 10 years older when the records come out. They don't even know where the publishing is anymore. These guys are just like, I don't understand it, I'm just going to freeze it. 'Cause if they don't understand, you know, they're scared of it. They're scared of what we're doing. If they come to something where it's legitimate again, it'd be great, I wouldn't have to pay my lawyers so much money, I'd be able to release things I really believe in. It'd be amazing to be able to have control of that again.

Although sampling is a big, big part of genres like hip-hop, it could be said that it's also a big part of genres including electronic dance music. Famous EDM artist Avicii created a song not too long ago called "Levels." We're going to hear about 20, 30 seconds of that song, before hearing the original sample.

Oh, oh, sometimes I get a good feeling, yeah. Get a feeling that I never, never, never, never had before, no, no. I get a good feeling, yeah.

Now, Avicii actually sampled that from a song by someone called Etta James, called "Something's Got a Hold on Me." So let's play that original song, and listen out for anything we recognise. Now, I think it's going to be quite obvious what has been sampled. But my question is to you, what did Avicii do to manipulate or change the sample? Or did he just simply copy and paste it? Let's have a listen.

Oh, oh, sometimes I get a good feeling, yeah.

Yeah.

I get a feeling that I never, never, never never had before, no, no.

Yeah.

However, like I said before, it's not just vocals that are sampled heavily in EDM. You can create an entire EDM track using samples and nothing else. Drums are often sampled, just a separate kick, snare, high hat samples. Synths are often sampled, white noise filters, string sounds, and also, loops. Now loops, is an interesting one. Oftentimes, loops themselves are comprised of lots and lots of different samples put together. But people sometimes sample loops as well. There's also something else called midi. Midi stands for musical instrument digital interface. And it's not quite sampling, but it is a way of recording synthesised sounds using potentially a keyboard that's plugged into your laptop. Now, you can create string sounds or a sound of a trumpet, or even the sound of somebody singing using this keyboard. But, there isn't a piano or singer in your laptop. It's using different information to produce those sounds. Okay, so here we are over in BandLab. And we're going to have a look at how we can use samples and loops to create our own EDM tracks. Now, first we need to do is open our mix editor of course. And when we get to our mix editor, you are probably going to be given this screen here. And you may notice that in the top of the, the top left hand corner of the first two, instruments and drum machines, we have that word that I just said, midi. And that's literally just the computer has information of different sounds. So if we play something on our keyboard, and want to change it from a piano to a trumpet, then the computer can do that for us. Now of course, they're not real piano sounds or real trumpet sounds, but they're synthesised sounds made by the computer. We are going to have a look at the loops in BandLab first, and when you first open up the loop packs, you should be greeted with this. So it might say guitar loop, African Afropella loop, and they have lots and lots and lots of different ones. But the easiest thing to do is use the search feature, type in EDM, and you have Megapack Volume One, and Megapack Volume Two. I'll just click on Megapack Volume Two for now. And we have lots and lots and lots of different samples, it goes on and on and on. And on the left-hand side of this panel, it will tell you the name of that loop. And on the right-hand side, there's a number that represents the beats per minute. So our project at the moment is 128 BPM. And that is perfectly acceptable for an EDM track. You might notice that most of the tracks or the loops here are at 128 BPM. And that means if we were to play them at the same time, they'd all be in time. If I played one that was 128 and one that was 140 BPM, it wouldn't sound good. So just be careful that you are selecting loops that are at the same BPM. And if it doesn't sound right, then just double check the BPM and you should be okay. So first thing I would like us to do is literally just go through and see if any of the loops sound good to us. So you just tap once and it should start playing. Great, so that's a nice little melody. And you'll find that if they say Orca Melody 01, and Orca Kick, and Orca whatever, those are sort of designed to be put together. But you can mix them. So I could play the Orca Melody with say, a Tomahawk Crash, as long as they were at the same BPM. So let's hear a Tomahawk kick loop and see what that sounds like. I'm just tapping once to hear it. Okay, seems very simple. It's just a four to the floor, it's just a kick drum on every beat of the bar. Let's maybe hear some, maybe, I'll have a look. The Ibiza Perc Loop. Okay, let's say I really, really like this. It's quite cool. I can click, hold and drag that loop into my project. And it will process the information and put it in like that. So I want to make sure, okay, yes. This is 128 BPM. Which is perfect. Now you can see I didn't put that in very well here. And I didn't put it in right at the beginning. So I just need to double check that and make sure that it goes from the beginning of bar one. So I've got a drum beat now, kind of. We definitely want some kind of four to the floor. So I would also drag in the kick loop as well. You can see, again, it didn't snap it straight to bar one. So we'll do that ourselves. And we can hear what they sound like together, by clicking return to bar one, and play. Okay, it's missing some hats. Now I don't want to just do IB for the hats. I don't want it all to be from the same pack. So I'm going to have a look and see if there are any other packs that have hats. So I can see here Tomahawk Hats Loop. And it is in the correct BPM, so I can drag that in as well. Now, I didn't do that very well because I've gone over my kick drum. So I'm just going to click Command-Z to undo that. Or I could do edit undo up there. I've scrolled down now so there's an empty track available, and then I'll drag that in again. And recognise that I have to put it back to bar one. So let's hear what that sounds like all together. Cool, perfect. So you can see that because it's all 128 BPM, it's sounding pretty good. Now, I need a melody, so I'm going to find one. Let's hear the Orca Melody 7. I don't like that. Okay, that's slightly better, slightly better. I'll put that in. So we've got a melody now, let's see what that sounds like. Okay, now the good thing about samples and loops is that we can edit them. So we know that Avicii edited Etta James' sample. And how did he do that? Well one of the things he did was slow it down, sorry, speed it up a little bit. I think that, and if I just isolate my Orca Melody by pressing S for solo, and have a listen closely. Okay, I don't like the end at all. So what I'm going to do is manipulate the sample by just chopping it in half like that. And then what I'd like to do is I'm going to hold the Alt key, and click, hold, and drag, which just is a quick way of copy and pasting. Let's hear how that sounds. I've just chopped it in half and I've repeated the first half of that original loop. Okay, so that's one way I could edit that. Another thing is I could get this percussion loop, and I could have maybe just one bar of it. And then maybe I want a different percussion loop. So I can get the Nightcall percussion loop, and add it onto the track. Maybe have that for one bar, like so. And then again using Alt, click, hold and drag, I can copy these two over there. So now I'm alternating between the Ibiza percussion loop and the Nightcall one. See how that sounds. Now, I've done something silly there. I've still got my melody solo, so I can just quickly un-solo that. It's easily done, it's okay. So let's hear that from the beginning with everything. Okay, cool, and I quite like that alternating pattern. It's kind of like what DJ Kool Herc was doing in his video where he was playing the instrumental break from one record, and then switching over to the other record, and back and forth, and back and forth. So using that method of just experimenting with the loops and seeing what you like and dislike. Try and do, how many did I do, four? Let's see if you can do four or five loops yourself. Remember, you don't have to use the loops from one pack. I might be able to add, I think you can, the EDM Megapack. See, it was just there. So if I go here, okay, well I've listened to all the EDM Megapack Twos, and I want to have a look at the ones. I can open them up as well. And there we go, there, a lot of them are 128. So I'm free to use them as well. So you can pause the video here, and click resume when you're ready. And good luck! Let's see what you come up with. So I hope you managed to create something really, really cool. One of the other things we can do is use samples to make a drum beat. So if I add a new track, and click on the drum machine. Let it load up. Then we are presented with the drum machine which we have seen before. Now I can change the kits to lots of different ones, maybe I want the lo-fi kit for example. And that little bar there loading, is just loading in the different samples to the left-hand side here. So if I know, for example, that I don't want to use a tom, and I want to use a cowbell instead, then I can just select cowbell there. And the drum machine corresponds with my keyboard as well. So S is the kick drum. And as we did before, we can just add in different patterns. Like that. And we can press play to see what it sounds like. Now, that isn't very good, or very EDM. So what I like to do is just click and hold, and drag my mouse all over the screen just to get rid of the whole thing. You can just click clear. And add in a very simple EDM beat. Now if you are watching this and don't have access to BandLab, but have a phone, you can find similar apps, Garage Band is one, that have drum machines on there as well. And also some keyboards have a drum pad as well. So very, very simply, I'm going to have the hi-hat just every other note. Like so, here we go. And I'm going to have four to the floor loops. Let's get my kick drum back, there we go. Four to the floor means I've got a kick drum every single beat. And actually, I think it'd be nicer to have the hi-hat on the off-beat. So I'm going to change that. Like so, and then I'll have a clap on the two and the four. And maybe I'll have my snare on the two and the four as well. So let's hear what that sounds like. Okay, it's okay, it's okay. Let's see what it does sound like with the hi-hats on the beat this time instead. That's the good thing about these things, you can, if you don't like it, you can change it really easily. Okay, I think if the kick is playing, I don't want the hi-hat to play. So I'm going to get rid of those. Okay, that's getting better. I'm going to add in a rim shot just before the shots come in. Okay, now add an open. Okay, wow, I'm kind of happy with that. So I'm going to leave that one there. I encourage you now to experiment with using the drum machine again. And you can import those, your then, your pattern, back into your track into your EDM piece. So pause the video, and have a go yourself. Click resume when you're done.

Using samples in your EDM track, use the loops library on BandLab to add samples to your EDM track. Select the appropriate EDM loops in the right key and tempo. So make sure that we're using EDM loops and not Afrobeat loops, or drill loops, or rock loops. You can watch the video to make sure you know exactly how to check that it's in the right key and the right tempo. Pause the video now to complete your task, and click resume when you're ready. Share your work with Oak National. If you'd like to, please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak.

In this lesson, we will learn what the purpose of a mix-in is in EDM music and include one, musically, in the structure of our dance tracks.

What makes you get up and dance?

﻿Active listening. Write down the following questions on your piece of paper. What instruments can you hear? What happens after the piano introduction? And how does the listener know when the introduction has finished? We would have identified that this song gradually increases in texture. It starts with just the piano, a simple melody, some chords and a bass. As the piece goes on, more layers are added. So in bar nine, we have a melodic riff, which is octaves and a plucking sound, and a four to the floor kick drum pattern. This is all building up to Section A, coming in at bar 17, where we add another melodic riff, and a more full drum beat. So a mix-in is adding layers prior to a fuller section. And EDM uses texture to give the music direction. So as the texture gets thicker, and more layers are added, and more instruments are added, we're sort of aiming towards that Section A. And at Section A, all of the layers are there. So let's listen to the track again, and we can follow along the table to see where we are in the structure. This is bar nine now. And bar 17 is now. So some questions to think about then. How do producers make a new section clear through the use of musical elements? How do producers build up to a new section? Why might a track build up at the start? And how does a track get people onto the dance floor? Answer these questions either in four sentences, or you can copy out the questions onto your piece of paper. Using music software: you can create music using audio mixing software. The demonstrations in this lesson use a free programme called BandLab. BandLab is for use by over 13s only, and if you are over 13, you still need permission to use it from your parent or carer. Creating an A section on BandLab: Use BandLab loops to create an A section for your EDM track. Pause the video to complete your task, and resume once you have finished. Okay, so here we are, back in BandLab. We are about to make an A section. So there are a few things that we said we absolutely needed, and one of those things was a four to the floor beat. So I'm going to open up my loops, and I can either do that by going to add track and clicking on browse loops, or I can just click on loops in the bottom right-hand corner. I search for EDM Megapack, or just EDM is fine, I'll go for the Megapack one, why not, doesn't really matter, and first thing I see here is a basic beat kick loop. Okay. So, that would work just fine, so I'm going to drag that in, and remember to always make sure that you're dragging it back to start on bar one. So it wants to be at least eight bars long as well. So I can click on the track, go to the bottom right-hand corner, and drag it-- Oh no, that's actually not how you do it. To loop the track, you do the top right-hand corner. So we'll do--there we go, up to bar nine. So we've got eight beats there. Now. I would also like some hats. So let's see, EDM top loop hi-hat. Mm. Nope. Okay, I like that one, number three. Add that in, doing the same thing, I'm going to loop that over to be at bar nine. So I click and go to the top right-hand corner, drag that over. Now, what else could I have? What's this clap loop? No, I don't like it. This clap loop? No, I'm not a fan. What else do I need, I need-- Oh, let's see what this piano sounds like! Okay, I like it. Remember, this is going to be after our mix-in. So we're going to need quite a few layers. So I've got the stand up drop piano, and I'm going to also play the stand up bass. Okay. Add that in. Making sure to--let's loop both of these as well, so they're eight bars long. Like so. Let's just hear what we've got so far. It's not necessarily finished, but let's hear what we've got. Okay, yeah, I like that. I like that. But there are more things that I would like. So I've got four tracks at the moment, which is my minimum. But as you can see, I've got so many things to choose from here. Let's see what the high bass sounds like. Yeah, okay, I can hear that going quite well. And notice how I'm using stand up piano, stand up distorted bass, and stand up high bass. The reason I'm doing that is because they have the same names, so I know for a fact that they are going to sound quite good together. I don't have to pick all of them, and I could pick something else. Let's see, string spiccato? Okay, as a violin player, I'm going to put that in. For sure. I'll pick one more, they have a lead synth here. Okay, or? No, I prefer that. It was the lead, yeah. Okay, so I've got piano, bass, high bass, string spiccato, and my Supersaw lead. Supersaw is referencing the type of wave it is. Let's make sure that they're all loops, and let's hear what the final thing sounds like. Let's go all the way back to bar one. Okay. Right, now you might not be able to hear that very well, but the mix, the levels are kind of off. So the things I want to stand out the most are the kick loops, I'm going to turn that up. I want the piano to be up as well. So I think that's going to-- we're going to start with that in the mix-in. And what else could do with being turned up? I think I can hear more piano as well. Okay. I am happy with that being my finished product. Just turned up my sound a little bit, so we can hear that a bit better. I'm going to play that one more time. Let's just double check that we've got everything. I've got my four to the floor kick pattern. Two, three, four, yes. I've got at least four tracks, yes? I have six, I think. Something like that. Do I have some kind of melody? Yes I do, in the stand up Supersaw. Cool. So I think that we're good to go. I'm going to play it through a couple of times, let me just loop it. That's what this top bar does, if you have it off, it's not going to loop when you get to the end of bar eight, it will carry on into nothing. If you tap it, and play it from-- it'll go to the end, it'll loop back. So let's hear it, the final thing, for the last time. And, here it goes! Not bad, not bad. Mm-hmm. Okay, so already in my head, I'm thinking how do I build up to that? However, we're going to do that in a second. Let's head over to the slides really quickly, and then we'll be back in BandLab before you know it. So, see you soon. Okay, so we're back in BandLab. We've already done our Section A, and now it's time to create a mix-in section. So we need to think about the best way to build up to this Section A section. So I think what I'm going to do is just have the stand up drop piano by itself to start with. And one of the ways I can do this-- there are many ways-- but I can actually keep everything where it is, and just decide to slowly introduce things. One way I like to work is by zooming out, so I can see the project a little bit better. So I just want to start with the piano, so what I'm doing is just moving everything four bars over. Just for now. And the great thing about BandLab is that you can change things if you don't like it very, very easily, and very, very quickly. So we're going to have the piano, let's hear how it sounds like. Okay, now that is a perfect opportunity to have something else join in. So maybe I do have my kick loop joining in at bar five, I don't want my hi-hats to join in yet, so they'll come in a little bit later. And well, let's hear what this bass sounds like. No, that's--you know, that's too much. So that's going to come in when it's the main section. And I'm just pressing this "S" which means solo if I just want to hear one thing by itself. I could, if I had that a little bit quieter, maybe I can automate that to gradually get louder and louder as we go up. I think I do want this string spiccato in there. So I'm going to keep that. And the melody, I think-- again I'm going to use that automation, which I'll show you in a second-- to gradually bring that up in volume. So let's hear what that sounds like at the moment. Okay. Not too bad, we've got some work to do. So we want the piano to be looped the whole time, same with the kick drum. I think that actually, I know I said that I didn't want the bass to come in earlier, but I think I do now. Again, we'll just experiment and see if I like it or not. Actually, I think I just want the piano and the kick to have a little duet by themselves. Okay, that's good. I feel like if we build up a little bit more. One thing I want to look for in the loop section is-- let me see if I can find it quickly-- it's called a riser. Now, I know for a fact--there it is. Okay, I'm not a fan of that one. I think this is something I was looking for. Hmm. Okay, so I like two and three. I'm going to put three in first, and what it's going to do, it's going to help to have that feeling of building up to something. Okay. You can see in the waveform-- if I zoom in a little bit for you-- that it starts off quite loud, and then it gets gradually quieter, almost to nothing. And then it gets louder and louder again. So we need to place this perfectly, if we know that our Section A starts-- in I believe that's bar 13-- Bar 13. We want it to be quite before then, and rise up and get there. So it might be that we start-- let's see how that sounds. Let's go from bar five. Let's see. So the noise is going to come in now. And it's going to get louder. Okay, that's building up now very, very nicely. Let's-- before I wrap this up let's see if there's anything else I might want to add in-- What's this crash thing? Oh, okay. I actually really like that. So I'm going to add that in, the pop and snap. And I'll add that in at bar 13, loop it. So let's hear the final mix-in and Section A from the beginning. There's no need to loop it now, so I can make sure that's turned off. Go right back to bar one. Press play, and yeah, let's enjoy this. How we doing, so we've got-- Okay, now I messed that up and I didn't put that final loop in time, which is my bad. It kind of sounded okay, but as you can see, it wasn't very accurate. When you're zoomed out this much, it's hard to be accurate, so just make sure that we're doing it again. I'll start from-- you don't have to listen to the beginning bit-- let's just go from bar five. Okay, wonderful, wonderful. One more thing I would like to do. And it's called automation, I mentioned it earlier. Automation is when we can automatically change the parameters, for example, volume. And we don't have to do anything with the mouse, we just tell it, tell the computer what we want to happen, and it will either gradually get louder or gradually get quieter, depending on what we've put in. So to get the automation panel up, we just click this bar here. And I want the string thing to come in gradually. So I'm going to set a point to be down here, and it's going to drop at bar 13, so we want that to be its loudest point. So we can go back to-- zero is actually just the normal volume-- so if we're around zero then that's fine. So if I solo that, you can hear what I mean. Now it's going to start really quiet. It's getting louder. And louder. Here we go. Think it can even start quieter than that. So let's have a listen. Good. I'm actually--I think it can stay quieter for longer, so I'm going to add in another point. Good, so hopefully that was more noticeable that second time. Let me just remember to click the automation button again, so all that goes away. And let's hear how that sounds within the whole thing. Listen up for the string bit. There it is. And if you just see above my head, the green button, you can see that moving completely by itself. So, my hands are here. You can see it's moving up. There we go. So that's the last thing I wanted to show you. Of course you can use this for as many tracks as you want, you can even have the whole thing getting louder and louder and louder. But that is how automation works. So now it's over to you to manipulate your A section so that you have a mix-in and A section. Yeah. Good luck! Creating a mix-in on BandLab: use BandLab mix editor and loops to create a mix-in for your EDM track. Pause the video to complete your task, feel free to rewind and watch the video tutorial, and click resume when you're finished. Share your work with Oak National. If you'd like to, please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak.

In this lesson, we will explore how feelings of excitement and momentum are created in an EDM track, to keep people dancing!

What musical ideas create feelings of excitement?

﻿Hello, and welcome to lesson eight in the EDM unit. My name is Mr. Chapman. And in today's lesson, we're going to be exploring the breakdown, build up and drop sections of EDM music to try and help us answer the question, what musical ideas can create excitement in EDM music? I'm going to be doing some listing. I'm also going to be doing some composing on BandLab, and that's where you'll see the most of me. Without further ado, let's take a look at what we need in this lesson to be as successful as possible. For our do now, let's try and put the following sections in the correct order. We have the build, A Section, drop, another A Section, breakdown and mix-in. Spend a minute or two trying to arrange these into the order that you think would be most appropriate for an EDM track. Hopefully you got something that looks a little bit like this. We have the mix-in, followed by the A Section which we looked at in lesson seven. Then we have a breakdown, build and drop section with the A Section that repeats. What's the difference between a mix-in, and this breakdown, build and drop section. Again, take some time to write down what you think the difference would be, and hopefully we can answer that in a little bit more detail in the next couple of slides. Finalising the structure of your dance track. Below each section, I've written a little bit about what happens in that section. We know that the mix-in is a gradual layering of different ideas. The A Section is the main musical idea and a full texture with a complete drum beat. The breakdown is a sudden thinning of the texture. So it's a removal of some layers, which may include all or most of the drum beats. The build section is gradually introducing some of those ideas or fragments back into the mix. We can maybe be using effects and adding a kick or a snare again gradually. The drop then is sort of the climax of the song just before the return of the A Section, and they may or may not be a one bar gap for added impact. Active listening. You will hear the buildup and drop sections from two different tracks. First, you will have "Faded" by Alan Walker, and then you will have "Bounce", by Calvin Harris featuring Kelis. What I would like you to do is write down the three techniques used in the build up and drop sections for each track. Focus on the musical elements. You may talk about texture, instrumentation. You may talk about the dynamics, or the way in which the artists and producers have manipulated some posts perhaps. Breakdown, build up. These sections play with the texture to build momentum towards the climax of the song, the drop. Extra ingredients include: automation to gradually increase the volume, a snare build, and a white noise filter. So now we have the ingredients, let's pop over to BandLab, and put all of this into action and make our own breakdown and build up section. Using music software. You can create music using audio mixing software. The demonstrations in this lesson use a free programme called BandLab. BandLab is for use by over 13s only, and if you are over 13, you still need permission to use it from your parent or carer. So here we are over BandLab. We are currently in "My Library" because I want to open up the project that I had in lesson seven, which was my mix-in in section A so I'm just going to edit that, which I encourage you to do, but you can start over, that's okay. Once you get to your library, if you click the three dots on the project that you want to open, mine is called "Mr Chapman's Sick EDM beat with a flame emoji", of course you can open that in the mix editor and it will load up your track from last time. I will zoom out so we can see what we did last time. We don't need that. Here was the track that we had last time. We will give it a listen in a second. Just a quick recap. We had this piano idea at the beginning and we were doing a mix-in in section A. So my section A lasts for eight bars, and my mix-in is 12 bars currently. After about four bars, we had the kick pattern come in, and then we slowly introduced other layers until we have the full section as section A. So we'll just quickly listen to that, and then we'll talk about how we're going to turn what we've got now into a breakdown, a build up section, and the repeats of the A Section. We'll try and do it in as few steps as possible so it's nice and easy to follow, and so that can get your track into that larger structure as quickly as possible. Let's hear it from the beginning. I'll turn it up so you can hear it nice and clearly, and here we go. We had a little bit of overspill which was that pop and snap down here. So I'll just quickly edit that so it's all nice and neat. So that was our mix-in and A Section. So what's our first step in making this into a breakdown section. So what do we need to do? Well, the first thing we need to do is thin out our texture. Currently we have everything playing. For a beat breakdown section, we want one, maybe two instruments. So our first decision to make our first step is to decide what we want to continue. Now, it makes sense for it to be the piano, of course we could continue the piano, but then my thoughts are in this piece specifically is that it's going to sound too similar to the mix-in, it's going to sound too similar to the interest, I'm not going to repeat the piano. What I'm going to repeat instead is drum roll is going to be I think the stand up high bass. So let's just remind ourselves of what that sounds like. I solo the track by clicking S. I'm going to just leave that a little bit more. I'm not going to be too specific right now 'cause we're just going to build up. What else would I like to do? I would like to continue the hi hats as well. Let me get rid of that so you can see more of the screen. So I'm going to continue that on as well, and maybe for good measure, I'm going to repeat that, this sort of sweeping white noise filter sound as well, which sounded like this. And it builds back up as we saw last time, but what I'm going to do is not that clever, but I'm just going to copy and paste that over and I'll zoom in a little bit so you can see more easily. I don't want it to build up just yet because this is the breakdown not the build up section. So what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to chop it in half like that, and that's going to give us the effect of it decaying and not building back up. So let's hear what we have so far in this breakdown section. So let's go from just before the breakdown and then the breakdown so far, with all of the instruments. Okay, great. Do I like that? I'm not sure if I do. Yeah, I do. Something wants to come in there. I think it's got to be the kick drum, but before I loop that, why don't you then pause the video and try and get to the same stage. Decide what you want to carry on. Pick one or two things maximum and have them loop over. So for me, it was the hi hats and the bass, and just for a little bit of extra spice, I put on that sort of the filter sweep thing. You don't have to do that. If you did pick that last time or you want to find it in the loop section you can. There's a quick way to find it as we search "edm", and it was in pack 1 I believe, and if you scroll down, they are called risers. So if it says "Riser", like here "Pong Riser 03" I think that is, might be 02, but you can press, just click on the loop once to hear it and put whichever one you like. Pause video, resume when you're back into the position that I'm, and then we'll go on to step two. Okay, step two. I'm assuming you've paused it, and you've got to the same point that I am. Now, I was just saying that I wanted to reintroduce my kick drum. So we had a little bit of a break from the kick drum, but I want it to come back in bar 25. Let me move my head out the way. So I'm going to hold out, click, hold, and drag, and repeat it right there. We can zoom in just to double check that we are in exactly the right position and we're not so. Good job we did that. So let's see what we've got. So this is our breakdown. And then the kick should come back in. Good, but it's too, it's not breakdown enough for me. It's too energetic and it's too loud. So what I'm going to do is add in some automations. This is going to be our second step here. I'm going to add automation to make the kick drum gradually get louder. I don't want to hear it straight away. So to do that, I come over to my tracks on the left, I click on the "Show", "Hide" automation button, and I get all these lines and you might think, "Oh gosh, it's going to be scary." It's not, follow what I do and practise, and you'll be okay. Remember, you can always undo things. BandLab is quite forgiving. Basically all I need to do is going to start line. I could put that on the bottom on an end line or dot, and I can drag that up. So I want it to end at about zero dB, which means zero decibels. That's just the standard that all at zero decibels at the moment. It's a little bit louder, that's fine. I want it to stay kind of quiet for a while. So I think that that's pretty good. And the reason I did three dots there is because I don't want to affect the kick drum that was before. If I didn't have that, then all of the kick drum would be really, really low and I don't need that. So I've just put one dot just before the track, and then I've put it down, we've put our end dots at the very end around zero dB, but it doesn't matter too much if not. Again, we always need to remember to press the automation button again, so we don't make any mistakes, and it's always good practise to just go back and play what you've just edited straight away so you can make any edits there and then. We can't hear the kick drum yet. There it is, slowly coming in. There you go. Obviously we need to continue the loops of the other tracks which we can do now. Let's just here keep it looping. There we go. So that was the second step, adding automation into our kick drum pattern. So pause the video, add some automation to your kick drum, and then join me back here. Pause it now. Okay, wonderful. Hopefully you paused it and you're in the same position as me. We've looped three tracks and we've got automation in our kick drum so what's next? Well, we can start to introduce instruments and loops that we had previously. And again, it's always nice to make them come in gradually so we can practise using that automation. Let's have a think about what we'd want to come in next. I have a sneaking suspicion. It's going to be something more melodic, but let's have a play around, see what we can come up with. You know what? That actually might be quite good to come in. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to do the old trick again, so I'm holding out, I'm click... Oh, that's a space bar. That's not good. Click, hold, and I'm going to put it bar 29, and I'm not going to mess up with the automation right now. I'm more interested in this, I believe, which is our main melody. So let's have a recap of what that sounds like. Okay, very nice. Out, which are we going to aim for bar 29 yet. Out, click hold and drag, it's 29. I don't think I put that in the exact right place. Oh, I did. Ah, ah. That's not the right place though, that's not good. So let's just subtract 29. Everything is in time? Yes. Right. So let's add in some automation. So what do I do first? Yes, I go and open up the automation panel, then what do I do? Well, I don't want to affect this track here so I put in a dot just before the track, then I put my start dot. We'll put it down to about -27 and I put my end dots and it wants to be around zero, 0.5 is fine, 0.6, whatever. I'm going to close the tab and solo the track and see what that sounds like. So I'm going to go just before 29. Something else must be soloed. Yep, there we go. Let's try that again. Wonderful. Okay. So let's get to this space then. So let's find our melody. It could have easily been our spiccato strings as well. But I just started to make it the synth lead and that's fine. So pick your melody loop, put it into four bars after the kick drums come in or whatever you did last time yet after the kick drum and automate it so it comes in nice and gradually. Click "Pause" now and do that and then join me back once you've finished. Okay, good speeding through here. If you need to pause and go back, you absolutely can do. That is the nature of these videos. It's very, very handy. Let's think about what we want now. So I'm going to have a look at some more of those risers that we talked about, those white noise risers. I think there are a few towards the bottom of pack number one. Yeah, so here they are. Let's have a listen to all three of these. Not a fan. Okay, I like it. I like it a lot. Big, big sense of it really building up to the drop, which is what we're aiming for right now. I wonder are we at that drop point? Are we at that drop point yet? No, I don't think we are. I think we need to add in a few more instruments. In what bar is that? Is that 20, 30, something? Let's get rid of that. What bar are we at now? We're at bar 33. I think it's about time we introduced more layers in fact, nearly all of them. I want the piano back. That was a very important part and we don't want to overlook it. So let's get this piano back in 33 and let's get this Spiccato back in 33 as well, but what are we going to do, you already know. We're going to move automation. Yes. What that was is because I've copied and pasted and it had automation information from before, it's just copied and pasted that as well. So I don't actually need to do the automation for that, but I will do the automation for the piano. So again, I go before the tracks, I don't interfere with the first part. I set my start dots and I bring it down and I put my end dot towards the end, bring it towards zero. I close automation and I see what it sounds like every time, just in case I've made a mistake. I'm going to just continue these loops. This is going to be a really nice build. So let's get it. Let's get it continued. Loop de loop. Yeah, we want all of this. Don't move this time. We're going to loop. Is that everything? Of course we want the hi hats. Of course we want the kick drum too. So you can hear they're kind of slowly being introduced now. This is where I'm going to introduce my final white noise sweep. And the last thing I'm going to do before I hand over to you to finish your breakdown section is I'm actually going to cut my bars short by one bar. It's going to leave a sort of gap. Hopefully it's going to surprise the audience or the listeners a little bit, and then when it does drop and everything comes back in, it'll be more impactful. So bear with me while I just edit this so it's nice and short. There we go. All of it? Yep. Let's go back a bit and hear how that sounds in action. Building, building. What I'm going to do is I'm going to highlight all of them and just cut it short to that. So let's get to that point now. So we've introduced pretty much everything back. We've added the automation so that's building, building, building, building, building, building up, and at around bar 50 if you've been following my structure and of course you don't have to do that, but it's recommended, we should be at a point where we're at the climax, we're at the drop and we're ready to do that. So pause the video there and click "Resume" when you're ready to do the drop and the return to the A Section. I did a little bit of changing while you guys were catching up, and I've shortened my breakdown section and my build up section, tiny mini beat, and as you can see about bar 44, I've chopped out a bit of all of the tracks apart from a little bit of the white noise. So like I said, I wanted to surprise the listener a little bit, to have it build up, build up, build up, buildup, and then it goes to complete nothing, and then we have the drop. I also added to make the drop even more impactful to actually stand up sub base and also a synth pad. So although it's a repeat of the A Section that we did before, it's like an A plus 'cause we've got a few extra things. So let's hear what that sounds like from the beginning of the breakdown section all the way through to the start of the repeated A, and then I will hand it over to you to do the final finishing touches for your breakdown, build up and drop sections. It's a bit of a tongue twister that one. So here is the breakdown from beginning. So there it is. I think it's pretty good. You probably don't but that's okay. Yeah, I think as far as the breakdown goes, we reduce our texture, we build it up gradually, we've added automation there, we've added a little surprise for our listener and our section A repeats, and we've got a little bit of extra on there. So to me that is a success. So I'm going to give you some time now to try and finish that as best you can. What you may not have done yet is add a little surprise. You don't have to do that. You may not have finished your automation. You may not have added anything extra for your A Section. Now, when I literally copied and pasted everything that came in for the A Section around bar 45, and like I said, I added these extra things, but that's how to do it. Now, if you think you can do better and I'm sure you can, please, please do spend some time, more time than I did, really go through those loops. You'll find some amazing things in there, and I just know that you'll be able to produce some fantastic beats. If Calvin Harris or whoever doesn't want to buy my beat then, you know, that's okay, maybe they'll buy yours and you can be rich and famous. Let's quickly go over to the slides. Don't forget to save your work and download it if you want to ready to share. I've saved my project there. I don't need to rename it so that's all good. Let's head back to the slides and finish the lesson over there. Well done and good luck if you still have a bit more work to do. Create a breakdown, build up and drop section in your EDM track. Use the video to help you create your own breakdown, build up and drop sections. Change the texture, use automation and effects to gradually increase momentum. For a stretch, maybe at a snare build and use white noise filters. Pause the video to complete your task. You're free to rewind and watch the video tutorial and click "Resume" when you're finished. Share your work with Oak National. If you'd like to, please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak.

In this lesson, we will learn how to add effects and mix our final EDM tracks.

Unit Overview: Using technology musically: EDM

Lessons: