Week 9: Working on "Venus" by Becca Stevens

I have chosen to shift my theme for the rest of this creative practice blog to resilience. I think it is much more in line with the scope of practice as we have learned it so far to focus not on our hurt, but how we are capable of overcoming it. I also think this theme is a little more open in terms of songs I think fall under the theme.

I have also chosen to stop aiming to produce a whole song a week. It just is not reasonable to expect such results when I am still learning how to use these tools myself. So this week for example is just the laying the foundation and introduction for the song.

In working on this particular track, I have had to listen much more intently, as well as become more familiar with piano rolls as they appear in Soundtrap. Piano rolls are just another way of fine tuning each track, and I find it much better for fine tuning drum parts than the BeatMaker tool I used in a previous blog entry. For this particular snare drum part, I laid down the basic sixteenth note pattern with the BeatMaker and added the five-note strokes and flams with the piano roll.

I think "Venus" by Becca Stevens is a perfect example of how music can promote trance-like states. The beginning ostinato is very florid and offbeat, which grabs the listener's attention, but as it is repeated, it falls into the lower levels of our attention and opens us up to the other ideas in the song as they are presented. Inducing trances is part of many shamanistic healing practices. 

The lyrics are about rising above another person's toxic behavior, which is one way to display resilience. 

Listen to my reverse-engineered intro on soundcloud.

Pictured below: the piano roll for the opening ostinato pattern. The horizontal part of the grid represents sixteenth note divisions, and I can zoom in further to add ornamentation, like I did with the snare drum part. The vertical position of the boxes correspond to the pitch on the piano to the left. The line in the middle of each block represents the "velocity" or volume of each pitch.