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Simple arrangement tracks that you could listen to again and again
Inspired by @Fruitbat1919 and a comment about letting sounds breathe.
With all the stuff we have is is all to easy to make complicated music, post here examples of simple stuff where the breath is there.
Comments
It’s a science all to itself, but I think here are two ways of achieving a track that breathes:
Great mixing and mastering - you know, those guys that just know what to trim off here and there with tools and what not to bulk up on frequency wise.
Before the above, those that know what to limit in a track, those that don’t over complicate it. I’m not saying that there is not complexity or fullness though. Take the Bauhaus track below - four guys each knowing full well what to do with their instruments. The track sounds full and you can sometimes be fooled into thinking that a lot is going on, when really it still keeps simplicity.
Simplest arrangement I’ve done.
https://choon.co/tracks/0ws24ab92yo/desert-flute/
I love Portishead, been listening to it quite a bit recently.
The singer used to go drinking with one of the girls I worked with, so she’d pop into the office occasionally.
Saw her duet with John Martyn, possibility the best gig moment I’ve ever witnessed.
Nice to see Portishead here. Been listening to Dummy regularly since it was released. A true gem!
I have always been impressed by the simplicity of Smog/Bill Callahan
Never get tired of this Sparklehorse song.
Hope Sandoval !
What about Low?
I was addicted to Portishead and the Captain Scarlet TV show in the mid 90s. It is a big influence.
Cool, I would have asked her to sign my Captain Scarlet doll.
She probably would, very down to earth from what I can remember.
Adrian Utley and Geoff Barrow from Portishead played on the first album of Baxter Dury
Superb song
+1. I rarely listen to stuff that sounds like this, but the punch they pack with such minimalism is undeniable. Cue the Strings always baffles me when I listen to it. Excellent vocals go a long way toward making a minimalist arrangement something massive.
Brilliant!...
Ill rnjoy going through these songs later. Until then here is my current fave.
I've never got tired of that whole album. Shame what happened to him. I also like all the other stuff you posted, Low, Bonnie Prince Billy etc... All great stuff.
This is one of them:
With Low, for me anyway, it's more about the feeling of a punch they're always about to pack but somehow manage not to. It's the sound of your fist, clenched under a table; left there, frustratingly, because it's your partner's uncle that your heart is screaming HIT HIT HIT. Or that moment of stupidity in your past... you wish you could go back and punch yourself in the jewels but you can't so you're left with a uselessly clenched fist. I love Low.
Maybe not the best example of their penchant for tension but The Plan is probably still my favorite Low song. So simple musically and lyrically but beautiful beyond bounds. Boom, banished but breathing.
The quieter side of the Velvets (Sunday Morning, Linger On, After Hours...) and Young Marble Giants spring to mind.
I guess the Ramones and, well, a shit ton of punk and early hardcore also come to mind. Especially Minor Threat - so much fucking power and communicated intention via simplicity.
For sparse (vs simple), dub dub dub. Also, dub. Not so much Belew type dub, thinking King Tubby.
For simple, (vs sparse) early electro hip hop like Bambatta and early house ala Derick May or a little later like a Guy Called Gerald. Watching old videos of these dudes cruuuushing it with a single x0x and a bass machine always blows my mind.
This is what got me thinking about this a bit more.....I tend to make busy arrangements for the most part, then when listening to the Portishead tracks I thought that it is possible to play those on a Circuit, 4 drum tracks and 2 synths....
Beth's Gibbons and Fraser are my 2 favourite female singers, Angelic, Haunting, Angry and tortured all at the same time !
I would love the chance to work with someone like them.
This song has one and a half chords in the verse (play a D first and then put your pinkie down to make the second "chord", and another two once the chorus kicks in.
Snowstorm by Galaxie 500:
Me too. It’s been a thing of mine for years, to do something Cocteau Twin-ish.
Funnily enough I might be doing something with a friend who’s a classically trained singer. I played her some Liz Fraser and she said ‘yeah I can do that’, so watch this space.
Man. You know when you over-listen to something or it gets over-played to you, then you hear it a couple or a few years later for the first time and it hits you just as hard as the original time? One of those moments just now for this.
(Thread aside) Other recent examples of this for me are 'Walk on the Wild Side' and the Elvis version of 'Always On My Mind'..or hell the Willie Nelson one, too. That song packs a fucking punch.