[originally posted to cohost]
Hey! Remember when I talked about the common form of “loop thing, keep adding stuff” in the last post and how it’s usually boring? Well actually, I have a good and captivating song for ya that does just that: Reconte-Moi Un Histoire by M83. It’s a very cute song that I bet will make you smile :]
But what makes it work? Well, the things I talked about in [part 1](https://cohost.org/paperaviator/post/5339089-how-to-use-music-loo)! Analysis time baby B)
Here’s the song! << It’s a link because youtube won’t let me embed it 🙁
Spackle!
– Some elements fade in, like the soft arpeggio around 0:30, or the synth motif at around 2:35.
– The bass at 1:06 has a simple one-note pick up to lead the ear, and the higher guitars are strumming a little bit before the downbeat as well!
– There’s a lot of layers, but notice that even when they don’t fade in, they don’t really punch you in the face! They have a soft attack/aren’t too drastic. Most of the song feels like a warm crescendo. Or in the case of the beginning, the sounds are all short, plucky, mid-high range instruments, so it’s not too dramatic. The drums also do not use the full kit immediately.
– At the end, there is a big cut off, but notice how we can hear the reverb and the guitars tailing off, and of course the 2-note motif and the kick drum from the start
Paint!
– 2:06, there’s a short little cymbal roll to lead us into the climatic section.
– Bass line fills! Aw yeah.
– Lots of reverb helps soften the entries of different elements, like the vocals at the end.
– The reverb also builds up at the end (and maybe there’s a low sweeping sound?) to lead us to the end.
Not really much other than that! While sweeps and other similar sound effects are nice, they can be tiring and predictable when overused. Imagine if they happened constantly in this song. Wouldn’t be very fun!
Break!
Not everything is a 4-bar loop! We grow in scale as the song progresses:
– We start with just a one-beat loop (or 2 beats, depending on how you feel the tempo… I’m sorta feeling in at like, 90 bpm)
– The guitar comes in and somewhat establishes a 4-bar structure, with a two chords playing for two bars each. It’s not super prominent though; it’s not really until the bass comes in that we really feel it.
– The vocal melody has a length of eight bars, consisting of two four-bar phrases.
…
– While the little motif that appears around 2:35 does loop after 4 measures, it’s built on a three-beat idea, so it doesn’t neatly fall in the 4/4 grid most of the time, leading to interesting syncopations. This element also seems to fade in and out freely!
…
– The bass and the vocals are probably the only things that aren’t a strict loop. The bass feels very improvisatory, changing grooves ever now and then and using fills at the end of loop points. The spoken word is, well, spoken word, and its inherently uneven structure helps guide the song and make it feel more organic.
– Major changes (additional instruments and parts) are made every 8 measures, which is actually pretty long (about 10 seconds)! With the addition of the spoken word, you can lose track of when changes will happen, unless you’re counting along. A perfect balance of predictability/unpredictability!
I love how longer and more intricate elements are slowly introduced, organically leading us from something cute and little to something huge and majestic. Longer elements tend to engage us more; the shorter loops become ostinatos (fancy word for short, unchanging, repeating stuff) and feel more like background elements. Notice that we don’t get the long melodies or the more active bassline until the spoken word stops.
Conclusion
So that’s a real-world example of how you can build up your loops more effectively! M83 was able to take very very small structures—less than a second at the smallest scale, 10-20 seconds at most—and stretch it out into a 4-minute song! And it does so in a way that is captivating and doesn’t get too irritating.
Remember: something that was is “bad” music theory-wise in one piece of music is probably perfectly fine, if not praise-worthy, in another piece of music
See ya next time when I talk more about creating form with loop-based music!