EXP - Progress Reports - Week 6

Week 6

Targets - My targets for this week are to listen to both alternative and contemporary R&B songs and compare the two genres, this would help me with musical ideas on the creation of my own version of the genres and give me a clear understanding of the differences. I also want to work on a background synth for my second track, so hopefully comparing the genres will give me some inspiration.

Summary - This week I managed to listen to a variety of different alternative and contemporary R&B songs and compare them, one of the two songs I will be using as my example I listened to is PARTYNEXTDOOR - Persian Rugs and the other being R. Kelly Ignition. I compared the two songs to find out the difference between alternative and contemporary, I also did this with a range of the different songs. In PARTYNEXTDOOR's Persian Rugs I found the chords being played had a two bar loop and were slightly out of time, they were the same throughout without variation. Musically the contemporary track Persian Rugs had a lot of space musically, the drums were fairly simple, they were electronic drums and the hi-hats were in semi quavers with effects that actively changes the rhythm. With R. Kelly Ignition, musically there wasn't much space for anymore elements to be added, the drums tended to be acoustic drums but were similar as they were quite simple drums, just a kick drum, clap and soft hi-hats in the background. Also R. Kelly's Ignition's chord sound like a piano rather than a synth that is playing in Persian Rugs, this is also the same for the bass line, which in Persian rugs seems to follow a similar pattern to the keys. This week I didn't manage to do as much on my second track as I planned however I was able to make a background synth.

Next Week - I plan to finish the second track by adding more drums to the arrangement, both electronic and acoustic, a bit more percussion and develop the melody further. I also plan to listen to another set of songs to compare and use as research which will help in finishing my next two tracks.