2. Most songs out of Opossoms debut album Electric Hawaii could have easily become hits, but its the song Fly that caught the listeners ear at the time due to its weird offbeat drum pattern that sounds like a never ending jazz break edited by Justice and pasted over a pop song. Beside the obvious Surf feel of the production, its interesting to notice the resemblance of singer Kody Nielsons vocals with those of another band also keen on psychedelia and sudden trips towards the far side : Unknown Mortal Orchestra. The catch here is that both singer didnt just use to share a band (Aussie legends The Mint Chicks) but they also share their family name. What is really interesting is how both of the Nielson brothers decided to drift on extreme opposites of the songwriting spectrum while retaining similarities in their music. While UMO relies on really complex songs with a lofier-than-thou production, Opossom have gone the opposite way by giving surf music a new facelift with an amazing modern production and approach, while keeping most of their songs under the 4 chords mark. Songwriting Kudos : What if you could use other instruments to keep the beat and let the drummer not give a single feck during the whole track? This is just what happens in this song. Notice how the organ and Taxman-influenced bass line keep the same pattern throughout the whole song, the main purpose of this is giving a stable basis for the drums to work on. The Bass and organ cover the 6th first eighth-notes of the measure (Organ plays the quarter notes and the bass mostly fills in the 1, 4 and 6 eighth-notes) which means when the song begins you almost have a metronome running behind the drums, helping you to keep track. There are some interesting tonal changes throughout the song, but well keep it for another time! Tip : With the help of a sequencer, create a measure in 95bpm then put a kick sample on quarter note one and two and a snare on 3 and 4. Then add a piano chord on every beat and a hat on every eighth-note. Now what if we messed with the hat and changed its closeness to the next beat in one way or another? Try every single position for far right to far left of the next beat. Then try a different position for every hat. Go berzerk! How does the whole feel change just by messing with the hat while keeping everything in its place? Youve just done a practical exercise on a little thing called swing, and thats how you get the girls! Youre Welcome On the awesome side of things, the drums in Fly where actually played live, yup thats right :)
Posted on: Mon, 18 Aug 2014 10:42:37 +0000
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