The Invisible Canvas: How Thoughtful Placement Creates Musical Magic

Dive into the art of orchestration for modern music production with this eye-opening exploration of what makes songs truly come alive. Beyond simply choosing instruments, effective orchestration is about strategic placement, thoughtful contrast, and dynamic movement that creates emotional journeys for listeners.

This episode unpacks the essential components of professional music production - from establishing main melodies and counter melodies to creating powerful contrast between song sections. You'll discover practical approaches to building excitement, like stripping back instrumentation in verses after full intros, strategically introducing percussive elements, and creating brief pauses before choruses to maximize impact when the beat drops. 

The secret to compelling arrangements often lies in contrast - pairing steady percussion with complex melodic elements, or vice versa. Whether you're producing in a home studio or professional environment, these orchestration principles apply across genres and production styles. I share insights from my perspective as both a vocalist and audio engineer, revealing how multiple layers of listening inform professional productions.

Stay tuned for the next episode where I'll provide a curated list of songs demonstrating these techniques, complete with timestamps for studying specific orchestration elements. Your production skills are about to level up! Subscribe now, share with fellow producers, and let's continue exploring the art of sonic architecture together.

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The Toni King Experience

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Orchestration
• 1:40 Basic Song Structure Elements
• 3:25 Building Through Instrumentation
• 5:15 Creating Contrast for Impact
• 9:25 Closing Thoughts and Next Steps

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello and welcome back everyone. I'm so happy that you're here. We're going to get into a great subject, man, pertaining to music production and orchestration. It's going to be a great episode. I think all the episodes are great. But it is going to be a great episode. I think all the episodes are great, but it's going to be an even greater episode. Let's get into it.

Speaker 1: 0:48

I am talking about today, orchestration as it pertains to the music production space. I'm not talking about orchestration as it pertains to the symphony orchestra or jazz orchestra, but I'm talking about in your home studio or with your producer, or in an actual or in a bigger studio, a more professional studio, wherever you are. I want to talk about orchestration because it is very important that we understand that this is what really makes one of the main things that makes your song pop or go to the next level. Makes your song pop or go to the next level. Of course you know, after all, the creativity and laying down and laying tracks down and vocals and all this stuff. It really you know. You put it in the hands of your engineer, mixing engineer and mastering engineer to take it to the next level. But before then, it's really how you place these instruments, what instruments you use and where you are placing things. And I've kind of touched on this in different episodes. I might even done an episode about this before, but I want to go into more depth about this because I think that it's extremely important that you understand that this is what makes music come alive, and I'll just give some preliminary information up front.

Speaker 1: 2:04

Of course, you have your main melody. Most of the time that's going to be the melody that the person or the artist is singing. You're going to have some counter melodies, maybe by a lead sound or by lead guitar, or it can also be vocals, um, you're going to have that there. Of course you're going to have your harmonic uh support, either either by some type of keys piano or some type of electric piano, some type of sound Um, it was even brass you can. It's so much uh that we have today so many sounds, so many amazing things. So you'll have your harmonic support. Of course you'll have your baseline Uh, again, you'll have some'll have some lead guitar things going on. Either you'll have some rhythmic things going on, either by acoustic or electric guitar. So that's your basic. You know the basic structure of what we're going to have in a song. But I want to also, you know, stress to you how important it is to be creative in this process and how to have many different things going on in different parts.

Speaker 1: 3:08

I think what I'm going to start doing is or have a couple of episodes where I'm going to actually take a song. I won't play it on here for copyright reasons, but I'm going to take a song and I'll go through it myself and what I'll do is that I'll point out different things that are happening at different points in the song, just to give you an idea of how you should be thinking as it pertains to what's happening in your song and and where you should be putting things. Now, of course, you know, these days, you, you know you have very short intros. Back in the day, they had longer intros. It was really about the music. Today, they wanted to get you to the song as quickly as possible. What the reason is, I have no idea, but that's what they're doing today.

Speaker 1: 3:51

So think about how you want this thing, how you want your intro to go, whether you want it to be short or long, but even in that, think about your instrumentation. As far as the intro, do you want a lot of instrumentation in the intro or do you want something very small and not much going on and then build from there A song that I, my single, that just came out, greater Love? I had a lot of instruments in the intro and then I took instruments out, you know, for the verse, just to give the ear a break and to have something to look forward to. So you can think about. You know, think about it that way, what direction you want to go in. But either way, you're still going to be building and bringing in sounds and bringing in different things at different points in the song. So from there, of course I have, you know, percussion, or you can have percussion. Of course I have percussion in your verse and you may have, you may have something like you'll have percussion, you have your baseline, some people just have that. Some people just have percussion and baseline happening and that's all that's happening in the verse, right, because they want to build. Uh, some people as far as percussion is concerned, some people may just have a bass and a snare, um, in the beginning, and then they'll bring in the hi-hat at a certain point in the verse, or they bring the hi-hat in during the pre-chorus, and, and so this is really how you want to be thinking.

Speaker 1: 5:24

I've heard songs where it's pretty much the same the entire song, and here's what I'll say if you're going to do that, if you're going to have, if the music is going to be basically the same it's not really much going on throughout the song then make sure that you take advantage of your vocal arrangements. All right, make sure that you have different things going on during the verse, so you have your main melody, which is sung by the artist, and then you'll have these different harmonies and different melodic melodies around that, all right. The same thing can happen for the chorus. Sometimes the chorus is a unison line, but it's been layered vocally so, again, you can have some harmony things around that. Uh, some surprises in there. So make sure that if you have one part, a certain part of your song that's static, not much going on, make sure you take advantage of some other element to continue to have excitement as the song goes on. All right, and so this is extremely important. I urge you to listen, listen, listen to different arrangements, different arrangements, and what I'm going to do I'm going to actually have a list of songs that I'll give you guys that you can go listen to, and then I'll take one and I'll give you the times, the minutes, seconds, to go listen to different elements of what's happening at different points, and so going on.

Speaker 1: 6:55

After the pre-chorus, the chorus is where things really get exciting. There are a lot of times where you'll have producers create a moment of I don't want to say a moment of silence, but they'll have a break right before the chorus comes in to give your ear just a second of pause so that when that beat drops it has more of an effect. All right, and so what can happen in the chorus, as well as when that beat drops? You'll have more instrumentation. That's in there. You'll have, you know, maybe certain melodies that are in unison with another instrument. Of course, you'll have your backgrounds. You'll have harmonies going on. You'll have the lead vocalist maybe doing some ad-libs You'll have. You can have some layers.

Speaker 1: 7:43

As far as keys is concerned, maybe the bass line is more active. It's literally no, there's no limitations where I'm searching for, no limitation to what you can do and and and how you can cause this thing to come alive. Also, rhythm is a very, very big part of that. You can, rhythmically, you can have. As far as the verse is concerned, it's not as active rhythmically, all right, but when you get to rhythm, as I say, from the verse into the pre-chorus, you can start to have more rhythm, either through percussion or through some type of melodic instrument or sound.

Speaker 1: 8:25

And then, when the chorus comes in, you'll have different rhythmic things going on to create excitement. And it is the contrast, all these things in the contrast, that makes things exciting. So for that makes things makes the song exciting. That makes things exciting, so for it, that makes things makes the song exciting. So, for instance, contrast you can have the keys it's really just laying down a pad, not doing really much of anything, just laying down the sound and then you can have your percussion with all these different types of rhythms and all these different types of things going on. Or you can switch that. You can have the percussion just laying down a pocket, not really, not too busy, not too much rhythmic things going on, percussion wise, not just the drum set but just other percussive instruments, and so you can have this, a straight pocket, and then you can have the keys and other things more active. So those contrasts, those two things contrasting, is what makes the the song even more exciting, and so you know what I'm going to stop here, because I know I can keep going.

Speaker 1: 9:24

I'm gonna do another episode on orchestration, but I wanted to just give you some tools up front, and, uh, what I'm going to do is I'm going to get a list of songs I'm going to give you guys to go and listen to once again so you can start to get some ideas as far as, uh, the main melody, counter melodies, uh, as far as, uh, percussion, as far as rhythmic uh things, as far as, uh, yeah, rhythmic things going on in the song, uh, arrangement, uh, the dropouts. There's different things that I have mentioned in here. I'm going to give you a list on the next episode so you can go and check out these things and so you can continue to learn, along with me, the things that I'm telling you. I'm doing as well.

Speaker 1: 10:06

I'm always having my ears open for different things songwriting things, arrangement and now, as as an audio engineer, I'm listening in so many different ways. I'm a vocalist, I'm listening vocally, I'm listening to the backgrounds. There's so many things that I'm listening for, and so I want to share those things with you and open your ears so that you can start to hear even more how musicians hear, how producers hear, how engineers hear. I want you to take advantage of that. All right, I want to thank you so much for checking us out. I hope you're having a wonderful day. If you're not having a wonderful day, you can change that by your mindset. Thanks so much, tony King out you.