 Hi folks, I'm Mike and I hope you're well. Welcome to another episode of Featured Artists Live and in this series of Featured Artists Live we are focusing on specific aspects of songs. This week we're going to be talking about the arrangement of some of the songs from the community. This is one of my favourite topics to talk about in music. I've got to tell you I'm very excited about this. I think arrangement plays just a massive role in terms of the final production and what we're doing and we've spent a lot of time on this channel talking about mixing but I want to discover today how much the arrangement actually contributes to the final mix. I want to say a big thank you to the sponsors of the show Distro Kid. You can see the link in the description, the one that I'm pointing to here. If you are going to be releasing and distributing your music I can definitely recommend Distro Kid. I think they still cost $19.95 per year for an unlimited number of songs as long as they're your own compositions. You have to pay a little bit more of their covers, very very cheap anyway and you'll get 7% off if you follow that link and I'll get a tiny little kickback which I am most grateful for. This show wouldn't be possible if it wasn't for Distro Kid so a big thank you to them and I'll be talking about them here and there during the show. So please to see people in the chat and I noted that before the show even started you were all in there talking away about arrangement. I'm glad to see that other people are passionate about this topic as well. It's always good to see Doug Kidder in here. Thank you Doug for being so dedicated and being here every single week regardless of what the time is for you. What time is it there at the moment Doug? Keonra, lovely to see you here Keonra. Always helpful. Keonra is one of our admins, one of our mods. She will keep you in line if you do get out of line folks so none of those porn links okay? None of that. Cut it out. Okay, we don't get that. We don't get that. We have, we have Nif in here. Nice to see Nif in here. We have, now I hope I've got, let me know if I'm pronouncing this correctly. I've heard people say this as Roke but I think it's Rock isn't it? We've had Rock on the show before and I'm pretty sure it's Rock. Yeah, let me know Rock. Am I saying it right? I hope I am finally. It's embarrassing when you get people's names wrong. Danny as well. Nice to see you in here again Danny. Also Eshort Saxe who's also been following me as well. I notice over on my new Studio One channel. Thanks to all the people who have been going over there and watching my Studio One videos. We also have finally someone from Maryland in USA. I hope I can pronounce the name. Muck Rowe. Nice to see you in here as well. Listen guys, this is all about you. This is a part of the reason why it's a live show. We want to hear and see your input as I play the songs today. Let me know what you're hearing about the arrangements in these pieces and how you think it's changing the song or what's adding to the song. I've chosen three songs because I think they've got something notable about them with the arrangements. Before I get into actually introducing my guests as well, I just want to have a quick word about what I'm talking about when I say arrangement because I've noticed around the internet that people use this term in slightly different ways sometimes. So I don't want to get into the different definitions of it, but what I'm talking about with arrangement is the instruments which are used in a particular piece of music, how those instruments are interacting with each other, how they're relating with each other rhythmically, harmonically, melodically, and what roles the instruments are playing in the final piece. Sometimes we hear about a new arrangement of something. Examples of this would be, let me think of an example, a little help from my friends. Originally by The Beatles, Joe Cocker did it and did a very different arrangement and not only did he use different instrumentation, but the tempo was very, very different with the song and that kind of thing as well. Some other examples, perhaps you can let me know in the chat there about some different arrangements of songs. Let's talk about Sinead O'Connor. Nothing compares to you. I think originally written and recorded by Prince as well and very different arrangements there with instrumentation being used and really the feeling. That's mostly what I'm talking about with arrangements. Now I know a lot of people also talk about song arrangements in terms of almost like the order of things, verse, chorus, bridge, that kind of thing as well and I'm happy to expand the meaning out to that as well. I think that that can be obviously a really important thing. And talking about arrangements, the guests I have on the show today, I've invited them on there specifically for this topic because I think that a large part of what they do is arrangements. A big part of their identity is actually in terms of arrangements as well as in terms of what they do as artists. Now before I tell you who they are and you should have seen it from the title anyway, I just want to mention one last thing. When I told my partner Susie that I had these two guests on the show, her comment about it was is, oh, those guys are so much nicer than you. Think about that. That's my partner said that, okay? That's that's what my partner said. It's no surprise. She's the person who sleeps with me. We have Micah from Sons of Serendipity. We have Cordero. I'm already off the rails, guys. I promise I wouldn't be. I'm kind of off the rails already. It's good to see you, mate. Good to see you guys, folks. If you don't know who Sons of Serendip are, I have links in the description for them. They are a group who do their own material, their own compositions, and they also do a number of cover versions as well. And they definitely rearrange or do new arrangements of every cover that they do. And that's why they're here. I'm going to just introduce you properly. On this side, we have Cordero to my level. There he is. Cordero plays a piano in the group. But I know he also plays a large role generally in composition and arrangement. And then we have Micah. He's just a singer. Micah is a fantastic singer. He's got the voice of an angel, wonderful, wonderful voice. I'm sure he never gets over being complimented for it. Thank you, mate. No problem. I mean every word of it. Guys, we're not going to get into too much chit chat here. You know I can do that, by the way. You know everyone knows I can do that. But I really want to say to you that we're going to go straight on with the music. We've got three pieces from the community. Now, one of them, the last one, I'm going to devote a little bit more time to it, folks. So prepare yourself for that. Hang around. I think the last one deserves a little bit more time. And the first two, we'll kind of whizz through them a little bit. But we just want to talk about the most notable things about them in terms of arrangement. I have to apologise to my guests because they don't have the benefit of having heard these songs before the show. And I've had the benefit of doing that and making notes. So bear with them, folks. They're hearing this music for the first time. They've got to think on their feet. Now, I want to let you guys know that last week on the show, some of the people in the chat got a little bit feisty and insinuated that I had a bit of a bias towards rock music in recent shows. This is what was happening last week on the show. They were saying, Mike, are you going to ever play anything other than rock on this show? And I'm afraid I'm going to have to disappoint them with the first song. Let me just show you guys. I'm going to show you the video of the first song without the sound. Okay. I'm just going to pop this up on the screen to give you a sense of where we're going to be coming from with this music. This is, I guess, the band of the first who sent it in. So, you know, this is what we should be expecting. There's a lot of black t-shirts and also I have to say that the name of the artist is also rock. So, there's definitely going to be more rock on the show. Now, it is a bit of a tradition on the show that the guests get to read out the artist's name and the title of the song. So, I'm going to go to probably the most intelligent of the three of us, which is going to be Cordero. Oh, gosh. For this one, I'm going to let him, while I prepare the song, I'm going to let Cordero introduce it. There we go. Okay. Okay. Obertura sangimea para orquesta sinfónica by... Well, yeah. Have you figured out his name yet? Is it Roque? Avellinada? Avellinada? Or is it Roque? I can't tell if it's... There you go. Wait, do you know what? Do you know what? I reckon, even if it's pronounced in another way, it should be rock. If we go by the photos of the band, we should just call him rock. And he probably wants to be called rock anyway. Okay. Rock it is. Rock it is. But here's a surprise for you. I think this music, which Roque has put together, is going to be not quite what we're expecting it to be from the video. I'll go so far as to say I don't know how this video really relates to the music. I think Roque just wanted to put some pictures of his band up there. Anyway, here we go. Let's have a listen to the arrangement here. Now, just up front, I know I keep waffling on, but because I'm not going to be able to go back and play parts, I want you to listen out, folks, for the relationship between the harp, the flute, and the strings. Okay. And that's going to be towards the beginning of the song. You just see what role you think they're playing. Here we go. Well, I hope that was unexpected. It was... Look, I've seen Roque come in here every week and I've heard different pieces of music and he... Yeah, that took me by surprise. He didn't send it in by the way. I just happened to discover it while I was sort of musing around different people in the group and looking at their music this week. And so he didn't know it was going to be played today. I think I'm going to go over to Micah, first of all. Micah, what did you pick up from that? So it sounded like storytelling through the arrangement. And where I... So I had to close my eyes so that I could visualize a little bit better of the story. And yeah, it started off with a more enchanting feel, which is like storybook in a way. And then you go into... It takes you for a journey that seems like there's a conflict at some point and then it kind of goes... At some point, the conflict grows and then it settles out for a quick moment. You think you're... The situation settled, but then it comes back in with kind of a victorious ending. And yeah, I actually really enjoyed that. It had a cinematic feel to it. And I could imagine animation being put on top of it too, where they could actually tell a story along with it. But yeah, it was very... Let me see. Once I closed my eyes, because at first I was expecting some rock to come in. I thought that there was going to be some epic rock moment, but that didn't happen. And so once I noticed that it wasn't heading in that direction, then I had to take my eyes off of what I was seeing on the screen and just close them so I could visualize and picture everything that was happening through the music. So I really enjoyed it. But for me, here and there, I could still hear the rock in there if that makes some sense, because it's easy for people to underestimate the skill and talent of heavy metal rock musicians. They're incredibly... I mean, some of the musicians wise are virtuosos, but the way that they use rhythm and harmony is really interesting. If you don't happen to like that kind of instrumentation, then maybe the genre doesn't appeal to all people, but they're often very, very clever musicians and very good at what they do. And for me, here and there, I was thinking, I could actually hear a band playing that kind of chord progression and some of the tension that was built up. And I mean, it was really good not to talk about... I'm interested to hear what Cordero's got to say here, because I think he's going to come at it from a different perspective. No, actually, I was going to come from the exact same perspective that you are. So I played this church that I play at, the drummer is actually a metal drummer. And he's always showing me a lot of these metal arrangements, because he's also in a metal band. And I must say that metal music is the most intricate rhythmically and melodically music that... I mean, it's out of control. And so when I was listening to this composition, probably because of the images that helped prime my mind to it, I was like, oh, yes, this is... I see all the complex lines that I can hear. Like, for example, a lot of times, like electric guitars will kind of be in harmony with each other. Super synced, super locked together with these crazy kind of riffs and things, while you have some kind of crazy syncopated, low chugga-chugga guitar thing happening. So, yeah, I think that's, I think that's... I think, yeah, I don't actually know the history of metal music or where did that, where this whole intricacy came from. But I'm always impressed by it. I can definitely hear the influence of it in this piece here. It really was a journey, wasn't it? I guess the thing that I wanted to point out, and we don't have the benefit today of me sort of rewinding and going back, well, I kind of wish I could. But, yeah, the thing I picked up on is an example here, and I invite people, I haven't put the links in the description yet, I'm afraid guys yet today, but I will update them. And I invite people to, I think Keonra did put a link to Rock's YouTube channel there. So I invite people to go and have a closer listen to this, because I was talking before about this, just at the beginning, the harp, the harp, it started at the beginning, the flute and the strings. And really what I was going to talk about was the fact that the roles which were played by those instruments, nothing's wasted, everything was there for a reason, okay? And in this case, the harp style off. Now, harp naturally is a polyphonic instrument. And in this case, it kind of set, it gives the listener, it tells the listener what's going on in a melodic sense and in a harmonic sense. So it set the chords actually at the beginning, the harp, right? And then a flute came in. Now, flute is not polyphonic, so it's going to be melodic in what it does. So that took a melodic role. So then you've already with two instruments, you've got some rhythmic information for the listeners, you've got some harmonic information, and you've got a melody. Then the strings came in. Now, the strings for me played a different kind of a role, they were more of a textural role. They didn't necessarily add that much in terms of harmony, but they filled out the texture in the middle in a really deep way. And you can listen, you can always hear that in good arrangements, I think, is that the instruments are playing a role. And for me personally, also avoid waste, avoid duplication, avoid putting things in there which don't really serve the music in any way, you know. But yet, folks, go back and listen to that. I think that this was a tremendous example. And we often find, of course, in classical music of where instrumentation is really playing a massive role in affecting us emotionally. And that's what music is all about ultimately. That's why we're here. That's why we do it, okay? It's not really a technical exercise, or it's not a technical goal. We want to move people. And Rock there was using, and I think, you know, I alluded to this in the intro, that apart from the arrangement in terms of instrumentation, there's also the order of things. He took us on a real journey there in terms of changing up, getting, not quite, I wouldn't technically say it was discordant, but verging on kind of that discordant, you know, where you build up tension with certain types of melodic, sorry, harmonic structures and things. And then, as Keanu rightly pointed out in the chat there, then the release of that. So build up tension and then release. And for me, the arrangement, apart from the composition elements of melody and what have you, the arrangement was really helping there. So that's a good start to the show. I really enjoyed that and well done Rock. And I know that, of course, like many of us, he's using virtual instruments there, and he's using them very well, in my opinion. He's using them really, really well. I think he, I'm not quite sure which libraries he mentioned there. I'll have to go back through the chat, but yeah, it's amazing what you can do from your bedroom studio these days, folks. Let that be an inspiration to you. Now, of course, I do have to mention, and I'd like to mention, in fact, that if you do follow that link up above, then you'll get a discount and be able to release your music through DistroKid. I'm going to queue up the next song while we hear about what DistroKid is all about. If you do follow the link in the description down below, it's going to take you to a special page on DistroKid with this yellow banner at the top. That banner is letting you know that you're going to get a further 7% discount of your first year if you sign up here. And let's face it, it's already very cheap. If we scroll down, we can see that year's membership is $19.99 per year for an unlimited number of albums and songs. And so long as it's your own music, there are no extra charges, and you get to keep all of the royalties from the various platforms. Platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, TikTok, Pandora, Amazon, Instagram, Tidal, iHut, Radio, Deezer and more. Now, when I was thinking about what music I know is out there in the community, there was kind of one name in the community which kept coming to me when I was thinking about arrangement. Because I know this individual, he just works with arrangement all the time. I have featured him on the show before, and I think I'm going to read his name out. I'll leave the final one to Micah to read out. Well done, by the way, Quaddaro. I'd say you're challenged with the title, didn't I? Last time you made it very well. Really good. So I'm just going to say this one is from a very significant member of the community. I'm not sure if he's here in the chat today. Let's have a look. Is he here? Oh, there he is. He's here. So he can explain himself. His name, or he goes by the name of Mimo Japan. Now, this piece that I found on his YouTube channel, I don't think it's really a title for the piece of music. It's called Guitar Swirl, but I think he was just trying out a plug-in of some kind at the time. I think it may have been called Guitar Swirl. We'll see in a moment. It's in the video. But I really like this piece of music. I was just going through some of his pieces of music. He does all kinds of covers of different things normally for Quaddaro and Micah's sake. I'll just let you know that Mimo, as we call him, is a gentleman who's a German guy who lives in Japan. He has lived there for some time, I think, and he works out of a very small, tiny little space. He does these wonderful reenactments of well-known songs a lot of the time using completely virtual instruments. He just does it really, really well. If I wanted to know how to put something together with virtual instruments, then I'd probably take Mimo's advice. On this case, as I say, he was probably, I think, trying out a particular piece or a particular virtual instrument, this Guitar Swirl one. I liked what he did in terms of the arrangement. Let's have a listen and see what you guys think. So Mimo was saying that his wife and kids mock him for the last part there. I say, if you're not having fun, you're not doing it right, Mimo. They look like you're having fun to me. So let's go to Cordero first. Look, folks, I want to tell you these guys, not only sometimes use virtual instruments, they make virtual instruments. This is really interesting to get your perspective. Cordero, what are you thinking about this in terms of arrangement, I guess, primarily? Yeah. So I guess the overall, so one thing, it creates, okay, so it creates this really wonderful vibe. But what I, it seems like there's not, okay, there wasn't a discernible melody. I can't walk away from it humming it. But I do walk away continuing the feeling of what it leaves me with. Like this track could continue playing in the back of my head, even though I don't have all the melody parts. But I don't think all music has to have a discernible melody. Like if I took a psychology of music class in undergrad, and they said that music, one definition of music is that it's cognition without propositional content. So it doesn't necessarily have to have a thing that it's saying, but it is still something that you, that you're cognitively appreciating. I could go into detail, but I don't want to, because... Oh, no, please, come on, a bit more detail. Come on. You're on a roll, man. Well, yeah. So like, it's like when you, when you're listening, like if you were to like look at a MRI or something with the brain, like it's process, it's process as thinking. But the thing is you don't have a, actually, you're not saying words. Like, it's, so it kind of, it's in a sense, it bypasses all of the ways that words get in the way, and it goes directly to pure, pure cognition, pure like emotion. And so with this track, it's still in the back of my head right now. I'm still feeling it. I just couldn't hum the melody or anything. So, yeah. So that, yeah. And it had like, it had all the elements that you would need. So for example, you had like the guitar as an instrument has its transient so it can kind of operate as a rhythm, but also at the same time it has its tone. So those elements, yeah. So the rhythm and the melodic content or the harmonic content is there. I'll just look at the notes I made. Yeah. And then after a while, as your mind starts to kind of be like, okay, I got it. He comes back in with this electric guitar, which pulls you back in for a moment and you're like, okay, we're still there. And you have this new layer of feeling to it. The contrast and the surprise, you know. And you know, the surprise doesn't always have to be like that, but just enough, just at that point where a listener might be going, okay, I've got this. I know what this is all about. Then give them something where they go, oh, hang on. I didn't know that was coming. Yeah? Is that what you're talking about with that? Yeah. Yeah. So important. Yeah. Hmm. Cool. I like the cycle. My notes now seem really mundane to Cordero's psychological insight there. So I'm going to go over to Michael. Oh, no. I was like, dang, Cordero. Whoa. Whoa. Yeah. Wish you'd have him on with Dr. Phil next time. Never ever. Go on. I really enjoyed that. Yeah. What was great about it, too, was that it was bass and then guitars and then some percussion that came in at the end. But there wasn't, they didn't need extra elements to it to keep it interesting. And wasn't that nice as well? Yeah. Yeah. And it gave me all the warm fuzzies, you know, as I was listening to it. And yeah, I'm trying to think of what I would say. I just really enjoyed that track. And there is kind of a, well, I don't know, because Cordero was talking about the melody, that there wasn't a discernible melody. There were certain points, though, that stuck with me. So even though like it, like there wasn't a melody that I would sing, you know, throughout the entire thing, that there was still a certain, there were like certain lines, I was like, Oh yeah, that, so that particular line is sticking with me and playing in my head as well. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. There was one other thing. Oh, and just the fact that he created that all with virtual instruments was really impressive. You know, he does it pretty quickly as well. I think he was saying in the chat that he's just goofing around. Wow. I can't see, you know, yeah, I swear over these things, you know, I swear over them sometimes for five minutes. Anyway, but a couple of little notes there. And again, my notes are really a bit mundane, but and they're the same as the last song really, but talking about roles, I noticed right at the beginning, there was some key elements in there. There was a virtual nylon string guitar. And as Cordero said, what that had was the transient. Okay, so it had that quick attack on it. But he was mixing it with that virtual instrument he was we he was using, which is with that swell guitar. By the way, I wasn't aware of that when I looked it up yesterday. I thought, that's really cool. I might get hold of that. It's so nice. But that was almost opposite. It had a very slow attack and a long delay decay. So he was using those in combo and again, both instruments had their role. There wasn't a duplication there. For example, a duplication might be if he decided, Oh, you know, I'll have a piano in a similar range to that that nylon string guitar there. It probably wouldn't have worked because it's two things kind of doing roughly the same thing if your piano was playing arpeggios and things. So you kind of go, Oh, there's redundancy there. One of the instruments probably is not there for a good reason then. And there's something to be aware of. Because all the time, you know, I think when we're creating, it's attempting to keep adding more and more things in there as if more is going to be more and in fact, often more can be less. It actually creates problems as well with mixing later on when you've got those two elements, especially if they're taking up the same frequency range. And something I've talked about a lot on the channel is something called masking where really in the end, the listener doesn't really hear either of those instruments clearly. And it's just a bit of a mush. So I'm big on how a role for things have them there for a reason, you know, guys, just just talking about your lineup, because I want to talk about your lineup. And I'm going to stir the pot here a little bit, right? You've got a folks who are not aware of Sons of Serendip. You've got a very specific lineup, piano, cello, harp, and vocals. Okay. And I think you occasionally bring some other things in there. What happens when you think this song really doesn't need the harp? Does that happen? Is there times when you're trying to? I'm going to cause trouble here now, but he's probably not watching. And there are times where you're trying to shoehorn in when it's not required or the piano even or the vocal. Maybe sometimes you want to do an instrumental. Does that happen? Or do you just make it work? I think we we're always thinking about each instrument. So it's like, so Kodaro will lay down the structure of the song. And then in oftentimes, I mean, our arranging process will actually begin with improv. And and so through that, it's like everybody's finding their place. And they're thinking about the different elements that that they can bring to the arrangement. And and thinking about what the arrangement actually needs. And so I think it's in terms like when we when we approach arranging in that way, then everybody just finds their place and sticks to it. And then we hash out the different parts and lock those down. When Kodaro arranges the entire track on his own, Kodaro, you can say more about that, about what you're keeping in mind. I mean, it's the same thing because I know we're arranging for this quartet. We have to incorporate every instrument in some form or fashion. And so sometimes, you know, the piano and the harp can have very similar sounds. And so sometimes that part of that process is just makes so for example, I'll just play some of the lower notes while let the harp, which has a more transient kind of plucky sound, let it have it's let it shine in that regard. Whereas, but or for rhythm things that the piano would do better than the harp, since the harp is when you strike a note, when you try to strike it again, you have to dampen it in order to strike it again. So you can't get like a sort of like the I don't know. So we have to think about how to make it work. But we don't we don't we don't often have songs where we just like let this one person set the whole track out. We make it work somehow. Even an instrumental, even an instrumental like I'll jump in on the recording. Yeah. No. Oh, no, it's the cajon. Right. Sometimes cajon and sometimes vocals to just like, you know, I'll listen to what Kendall is doing. You take on the Yoko on a roll for a while. Yeah. It's okay. We'll let him think he's still contributing. Do you do you have a do you? Micah, do you have a like a, you know, a CV or, you know, it's a profile somewhere where you say singer struck percussionist? Does it does it say that? Or no, I don't mention percussionist. But but yes, I do play percussion pretty much every every show. Actually, I shouldn't mock you because I know you're actually a very talented pianist as well. I've seen some videos of you playing piano and you know what you're doing there. Yeah. And I'll do like one maybe one song, you know, like during a certain show or something where I'll play piano. But yeah, it's I don't mention a lot of things that we'll do during the shows because it was my word of you like, Hey, I need you to, you know, play on this you know, track or whatever. It's like, I'll leave that to Conero. But singing? Yeah, all day. I think we touched upon this last time a little bit though, when you guys were on the show, but it is interesting because there's a temptation for us home studio folks to think, Hey, we can do so much more than Sons of Serendip because we've got all gazillion, you know, I've just got a complete 14, for example, I've got so many instruments available to me on my computer. But we discussed this before that sometimes actually being having restrictions actually brings out the best in you as a musician and a composer as well, you know, and I think what's really good about your lineup is the fact that mostly although Cordero's mentioned across over there between harp and piano, mostly the the the the roles that you've got are pretty distinct. So they're going to be able to offer something different to to every single piece of music that you do. We'll talk about that again. But first of all, another quick word from the sponsor DistroKid, who make it really easy for you to release your music. I'm going to show you how you want to release your music via DistroKid. There's just a couple of things you need. First of all, the music itself. Here's mine in my door cakewalk, and I'm exporting it to an uncompressed WAV file for best results. Now the other thing you'll need is some artwork. I just grabbed an old photo which I'd taken on the beach, chucked on some text here, and that's what I call art. Then I went over to DistroKid and I just have to fill in this extra easy form. It's a no brainer form. You get helped all the way through with little hints and things. You can't really do anything wrong. You just go ahead and confirm a few things about your music. And then you just have to actually upload the artwork and the song itself, and DistroKid takes care of the rest. It's going to send it out to all of the best platforms so that people can hear and buy your music. I'll make it look so easy, because it is that easy. Now, if you were to Google and go on Wikipedia for the word arrangement, they'll often talk about it in a classical sense, an arrangement by so-and-so. The idea there that there was an existing piece of music and then this was an arrangement of that piece of music with different instrumentation, but still maintaining the melodic, harmonic, etc. structure of the original piece of music with just with different instrumentation. And that still happens, of course, in contemporary music. And sometimes we will take cover, we'll take songs and we'll do our cover versions of them. I actually encourage people to record cover versions, just for learning about recording at home. It's a really, and in actual fact, to do probably the least artistic thing. Sometimes it's a good idea to try and mimic something. I wouldn't suggest releasing that, but the process of actually trying to reproduce something that you really love will help you to learn about how to create those sounds. And it will give you, you'll analyze in a very different way. How did my favorite artists do that? It's a really fun thing to do. As I said, I probably wouldn't recommend releasing it. That's a bit of a pointless exercise to give the world exactly the same version of an original song. But hey, if that's what you want to do, I'm not criticizing it either. Notice how I sat on the fence there. But the best form for me of then doing cover versions is to then give a new interpretation of the song. And often that's going to come through arrangement and people's different abilities, and especially when vocals are involved, different voices and that kind of thing that would naturally come about. So the final artists that we're going to look at, and we'll pick this one apart a little bit more than we have the other ones, I'll let Micah read out their name. I'll just pull it up here. There you go. Micah is down to you this time. Oh, no. It's High Hopes. My son will surrender. I'm glad you could pronounce it properly at least. We could call all kinds of names. So yeah. So I thought this would be fun because we can get a very different insight now because this time we're going to be hearing from the artists themselves. And you covered a super, super famous song here by Panic at the Disco, wasn't it originally? I've got played on the radio a lot here in this house and it's a bit of a favorite. So it's really very, very different. So what we're going to do this time is a little bit different. I'm not going to say much after this song. I'm going to invite the audience to have a close listen to it and give me their honest opinion about the arrangement. But we get to actually speak with the arrangers themselves afterwards. Sons of Serendip. Let's have a listen to your song, guys. Streams, museum victories, every day we wanted everything, wanted everything. Mama said don't give up, it's a little complicated, all tied up, no more love and I'd hate to see you waiting. For the stars when I couldn't make a killing, always had a vision, always had high mama said to feel for oddity is stranger crusaders ain't never want to be the way to the novelties don't ever change we wanted everything wanted everything stay up on that rise stay up on that rise and never come down oh stay up on that rise all tied up Well there we go. There's a question came up right at the last minute there. You might guys might want to start off by answering that. Do you guys perform this arrangement live and if so do you do the percussion on the sequence? So I was going to ask you about that actually guys because obviously you've got some percussion in there. It's not at all the same as the original song by Panic at the Disco. There's obviously something you felt needed to be there so can we address both of those? I'll go to Micah first, do you add them in live and then we'll go to Cordero to talk about why you add them in at all. So we do perform this live and I'll add percussion on the cajon and Cordero will mix it up so it sounds a little bit more beefy and yeah and so it sounds different. It's a different sound but it still has a full sound to it. It's just not as full obviously as a studio recording. And I think Rock is rightly spotted the same as I did in there apart from you know the cello there were some other strings in that recording as well so how about that do you guys try and reproduce that or does your normal lineup pretty much cover it for the live thing? Cordero you got that Cordero you got that yeah. Yeah so this is an aspect of arranging that we hadn't discussed yet. When you're working on something you have to create things that are actually playable by the musicians like if you're going to perform a live you have to come up with parts that are actually playable so you kind of have to know a little bit about each instrument what they're actually capable of. Yeah so um so no we don't use um we've tried to click tracks in the past just like a metronome but we don't um that never really it worked for a while but for reasons that are too long to go into we don't use a like a metronome anymore but we do um layer in a bunch of um so the keyboard has like I use a arteria key lab and so I I fade in I have like an orchestra patch like symphobia some other string parts I have like a actual sub bass that I play with the left hand uh have the pianos I have little sparkly bells so these are all being layered in um live and um so and you're using also a breath controller I look goofy so I use a breath controller as well yeah yeah I have a breath controller that I use too for like um flutes and other things um so so as Mike said we we are able to fill it out but it's just that the production won't be exactly the same um as what you hear here um but oftentimes when we do this song we're doing it for performances for youth and uh and we just get them singing too and so they don't wait really yeah they're not they're not listening they're not comparing it to what they've heard on your youtube channel and going oh the strings are not quite the same yet exactly they're just excited to sing I mean I think it's one of the beauty of it I personally think that when we go to a live performance in any case we don't nest we don't want to hear a reproduction of the record it's nice to hear musicians doing their thing and as you say circumstances gonna um control that a little bit as well what's actually possible then you know do you want to play with a click track and bring that element into it which obviously you guys tried and found it wasn't quite for you let's go to um if you can remember um you know in terms of how you started off with this song so obviously it's pretty famous song at the time um and and I actually did a little comparison yesterday where I kind of went between your version and Panic of the Disco and I was like wow I mean it's obviously different but I was like no there's a whole bunch of stuff you didn't even try and replicate from the original some there was some melodic elements and what was going on there and some parts which are new in there as well so think just talk to me about I think I'll go to well Micah first sorry Micah and then Quidero but we'll you know what's the thought process there how does that come about do you just jam that as you were talking about earlier and see what happens or no so this one actually was arranged by Quidero and uh so what what we did was he and I spoke and we were like all right what's what's um well there we were going through a number of different songs we heard this one and we're like this one would be a good one to cover and and then I had to figure out which key because I actually can't do it in the original key uh and so we like I sang through it a number of times and tried to think about like all right what would I want to do to make this my own and uh and so there are certain parts in there there are different than the original um and yeah and so I yeah it was but finding the right key to be able to add my own creative um you know elements to it that was the first step and then from there Quidero started to build it out sent it over um you know and this is like feedback um back and forth but um he yeah he created a beautiful arrangement and uh and then sent it out to everyone for us to record and he also did the production on it as well and so he's a clever he's a clever fella yeah well what was this this is my memories terrible this was this during the pandemic that we yeah we were okay yeah so we right okay um yeah because it was for the album yeah okay so um uh yes so it so it is different so for one it's slower and there was the question of rhythm because the original song is more of a dance kind of track and what's interesting what kind of drew us to is that it had a ton of orchestral elements in it um so we thought it seemed like oh yeah we can definitely do this but the question of rhythm is the tricky part for our band because I mean we have the cajon but like there's all the the sort of um 16 subdivisions and like I mean and then Micah has to sing this on top of that so it we just we we had to so one we slowed it down and we thought maybe a more cinematic kind of approach or like a trailer ish I don't know um and we knew that we could kind of pull back some of those rhythmic elements with like the cello so the cello is doing a rhythm that's kind of like um so we can get those kind of subdivisions in there but um what was was the other part of the question the uh doesn't matter you just talk and say whatever you like about it just the arranging process what process did you have in mind yeah so um so first created it using just sampled instruments um so that each got each person the guys would get an idea of what it was right and then went through the process of writing out the parts um um interesting and then testing because we're all in we're all in different locations is during the pandemic so we couldn't come together to record so we um we bought the equipment that we needed um each person got like a preamp and a microphone and uh they recorded their parts individually and um it's funny listening back to it now I there's things that would change like in terms of um how things were recorded or uh but like again like this is the first time doing a whole album outside of an actual studio and so we were learning but um it was interesting because obviously the original has got more kind of like traditional drums that you would have in a band but you although you obviously then used virtual instruments to bring in those uh percussive elements you didn't use them in that way at all this was more like the way an orchestra would use sort of timpani's and things like this kind of percussion was that just a conscious effort or just felt good at the time when you tried it? It felt it seemed like it would have fit better with with what we're doing like a harp in a cello and yeah yeah right okay um yeah I don't I don't think I even attempted to try with like real drums or or even like even software like drum kits just yeah interesting okay and and how about the sort of did there was some melodic elements in there which unless I'm wrong were not in the original so is that just how are you what are you thinking with that are you making a conscious decision like I don't want this to be too close to the original therefore I'm going to write something different or again do you listen to the original a lot or do you just go I don't listen to it too much I want to let my own inspiration flow what how's that work for you? In general it can go both ways um I think I did listen to it a few times just so you know one to get like the actual ordering of parts um but there there is also a question of like um so we can improv a piece pretty quickly but the problems that sometimes it can start to sound the same and um and I end up just playing these large block chords in the left hand because I also have tons of layers I can't do too much detail stuff so I for this for the recording I thought well uh let me just play it like I would like a like a piano so um so again the way I perform it live is different than how it is on there where I have like a motif kind of going the whole time um but um yeah I I think I'll listen to it not too many times but it was enough to to make me feel like did I did we do okay did we did we uh yeah just enough to kind of question myself because the original was like a pretty epic track and ours is sort of laid yeah and ours is so kind of a little bit more laid back so it almost when we finished it I didn't know uh I just had to accept okay this is just a different interpretation of it rather than try to compare it to the original but I personally find um that when I've done this is is they get sort of point to me where I go I really don't want to listen to the original especially if it when I get stuck to the recording stage it's because especially if you love the original if you love the original song it's a tempting thing I want to keep that been I want to keep that been eventually you know you keep all the bits and it sounds the same so for me as I I get to a point where I go because me and Susie sometimes sing cover songs and I go let's cut off let's not listen to that at all and it's so weird isn't it the the when you then listen to the original afterwards you go oh wow it's now a strange piece of music to me that's the experience I often have anyway which is yeah I would I would say that we're one thing that helps us is that we often do covers of songs that I actually don't like so so it's actually fun to make it to change it because I can make it in a way that I do like so I introduce a lot of music to Susie who has a very different palette to me yeah so and I won't say what song but recently I was I was um introducing to her a song which is sung by Sting but I know she's not a massive Sting fan so I had to kind of trick her and just play the song by myself she's going what's that song you're playing that's pretty good because if I'd gone through and said hey do you want to do a cover of this Sting song she'd be like I don't like Sting I don't want to say so yeah it's funny how you can be affected by I'm glad that chord area is open mind enough to play songs that he knows he doesn't like it yeah usually I'm the one suggesting it he's like I don't like that song I'm like trust me it'll work it'll work it's good that's that's a great part of being a group with people though that you are going to push each other's boundaries and and push each other outside of you know so we'll call them comfort zones but they're really prejudices that's it's a good part of it guys thank you so much for being here today our thank you for having us I just wish we had gazillions of hours available to talk about this subject we only kind of scratched the surface of it but hopefully if you've been watching the show on the replay or you've been watching us live you've you've got a little bit of inspiration there more than anything and the next time you come to creating your own piece of music I'm hoping you'll just be thinking about the arrangement a little more um and just last year you know we talked so much about engineering and mixing on this channel but I truly believe that when you've got a good arrangement mixing feels effortless it feels like it just falls together to be honest with you it so we don't talk about enough often enough but I urge you guys to think carefully about that and the roles that your different instruments are playing the roles that they're playing as I say that said at the beginning rhythmically harmonically and melodically what what how's the the instrument serving the song at any particular point and how are you using the arrangement to take the listener on a journey of some kind an emotional journey or if not a journey to evoke some kind of sense of feeling and I'm really glad that Cordero brought that up in the case of Mimo Japan's piece of music which didn't specifically have a hook in it but still affected us all and thought we were going hey this is great enjoying this and it evoked mood and emotion in us all which is I think is why we're all here and um is a wonderful experience and wonderful that we can share it together and give each other ideas um guys thank you so much for being here yeah thank you Mike for having us we want to thank the community too for um their kind words as well um and for also sharing their music and giving us a chance to do this so thank you I'm sure you're used to hearing it but it never gets old huh Cordero any last words of wisdom that's words of wisdom um I not off the top of my head um maybe I'll I'll leave a comment I might get back tomorrow well guys I urge you to follow the link in the description to Sons of Serendip's um uh YouTube I think I've linked to your YouTube channel um of course their music's available in all the places where you normally listen to your music as well Spotify and iTunes and all this good stuff as well so you know have a listen to it uh they've got a page on Facebook you don't follow them and have a listen to what they're bringing out it's always interesting because of their their arrangements they're always just pushing you in different directions of what you're hearing I think it's fascinating music they deserve all the praise they get thank you so much for being here live if you've been here in the live chat you've all contributed wonderfully and I will see you roughly this time next week