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Sonic Wallpaper
Joined: 05/22/01
Location: San Diego, CA
Posts: 1266
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where's that confounded bridge
Friday, October 15, 2010 at 9:46 AM
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just some thoughts on composing music and... the bridge
The portions of music that non-musicians seem to relate most to, is the chorus - it is usually catchy, easy to learn, often follows a melody that can be hummed, sung or whistled. This is more true for pop music, and most musical styles in general, although, not so much for electronic music.
While we as composers may be thinking a section serves as a chorus, since most of us don't have vocal tracks, these sections of music are usually grooves. Certainly, you can call it a chorus, especially if you structure your song in a traditional manner: intro- verse - verse - chorus - verse - verse - chorus - outro.
Regardless of the genre of music you are working with, there often is a need for transitions, or bridges to connect between the grooves. Sometimes we get lucky, and you can simply slam from one section/groove to the next progression without the need for a bridge, but for me, more often than not, I MUST have a bridge to get from section A to section B. Usually the bridge takes up the last 4 bars of the ending section, other times, this comes as it's own section, taking up a few measures.
For my music, these bridges and transitions are practically the most important part of the music. I see them as the true soul of the song, the challenge of the music, and the most interesting part.
At this point in my music making 'hobby,' creating a few related grooves isn't the difficult part of composing music. I can sit down and generate a few well defined grooves that can work well together in a fairly short amount of time. The difficult part comes when it is time to create a bridge or transition to connect those two or more parts.
Because of this, I've developed a feeling that the bridge is nearly everything to a musical recording - at least in my music. BTW - you could also call a 'break' a bridge too - which we must be thankful for... as it gave birth to 1,000's of great drum breaks which have gone on to be the foundation of many electronic genres we have today.
Sorry if you were looking for a conclusion here, I was just looking to share some thoughts on the 'bridge' and what it means to me, and hopefully make some people aware of the beauty that lies within transitions.
Of course, I'd also love to hear your thoughts on the topic.
Oh - and if you want to make it big with music... don't listen to me  you should instead focus on a simple chorus so the general public can sing along
btw - if you don't know where the title of this post came from... read on
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Subtronik
Joined: 01/14/03
Posts: 1193
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RE: where's that confounded bridge
Saturday, October 16, 2010 at 12:15 PM
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Good read.
I just throw everything together spastically and hope it comes out good.
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Brillman
Joined: 10/08/02
Location: Norway
Posts: 136
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RE: where's that confounded bridge
Sunday, October 24, 2010 at 9:12 AM
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Subtronik wrote:Good read.
I just throw everything together spastically and hope it comes out good.
 I´ve tried both approaches and love the randomeness of just adding parts and getting a good groove going but have also use the structured approach (before the hardware seq. road) and have come to the conclusion that the tracks i made a few years ago on the computer (software sequencer) seem to have been " better" = more popular!?
Just a thought
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