Introduction
We all heard one day that music affects our body significantly: increasing our stamina, releasing stress, making us relax, etc... But how is that even possible ?The link between our body and our brain is very strong, and our mindset does affect a lot our body. This is the leverage used by music to affect our body.
Music categories
There are two different categories of music:- Melodic focused
Some classical musics, sung songs, ... Songs focused on the beauty of the melody, its complexity and its poetry, using it as a way to tell a story for exemple - Energy focused
African danse music, electronic music, some classical music of the romantic era, ... Songs focused on creating an atmosphere to create emotions and place the listenner into a state of mind. (Some rap music do have the same objective, especially as a French listening to US rap)
Of course, these two categories doesn't allow any nuances that has to be made as the reality isn't that manichaean.
But electronic musics are almost energy focused only and that's interesting to see why do people nowadays listen a lot of EDM (Electronic Danse Music, the commercial one everyone hear at the radio), and why a lot of alternative electro tends to be more and more popular.
Energy bending using Electronic music
Here is how it's made:The material
- Our mindset
- Our energy
(Dancing, headbanging, pogoing, jumping; or the will to do so when inside a library !)
The tools
- The athmosphere of the music
If it's claustrophobic, aerial, jovial, sad, violent, peacefull - Our prediction on what's going to happend
When listening to a music, we all feel when the drop comes, when the musics energy reach its peak; this is how wall of deaths are triggered in metal
The artistic will
When you have a block of granit and some tools to dig in it, you just need to decide what to do, and how.
Artists will have to decide what they want their listeners to feel and when, and to make it happend !
Some energy bending known tricks
The frustration release
This is mainly an EDM and Hardstyle trick
The principle:
- (optional) Give an energy at the beginning of the track
It never starts calm in festivals and live performances - Take it back by calming down the beat and for exemple placing an inspiring melody
- Initiate a rise by adding some drums, white noise and exciting noises, louder and louder till it reaches a peak
- Aaaaaaaaaaand
- The drop. The most energy phase of the track, releasing all the pending frustration by jumping and going wild.
Depending on the genre, the drop can take a lot of different forms, for exemple trap electro will release energy only when the beat kicks, creating "voids" between them
Exemples:
The drop comes at 1:20, before it's just some warming up. The "Oh my God" before the drop is there to create an effect of rollercoster, after the rise when you are moving slowly but you can feel you're about to come down.
The drop here is quite simple yet effective, when using this technique you must have a good kick after or it'll just be disapointing...
0:00 to 1:05 - Start (a little bit of energy)
1:06 to 2:06 - Rise
2:07 - Drop
The trance setter
Mostly used in Trance / Psytrance / Goa genres, it can take severall forms but all based on the same principle:
- Tickle our imagination
Makes us adopting a state of mind of travel, dream, in the universe similar to the sound athmosphere - A little rise
- Repetitive, stable beat with ambient sounds
- (optionnal) A break where our imagination is tickled again, introduction of a melody, etc ...
- The same beat with more melodic and ambient sounds
- Calming down, make the imagination goes back to earth (song transition for the DJ)
The overall process is to make the body dance while the brain goes to a trip in the sound (that's why drugs like mushrooms and LSD are so popular with these genres)
Exemples:
0:00 to 0:40 - Set the athmosphere (here about space and UFO)
0:41 to 0:54 - A little rise
0:55 to 4:10 - Stable beat, the rest is made with the additionnal percussions, the ambient noises, etc ...
4:11 to 4:41 - Little break
4:42 to 6:32 - Stable beat with more trance sounds
6:33 to end - Going down, transition for the DJ
This sound does have more than 1 break and rises and melodies, I'll let you discover it, that's one of my favourite ;-)
Hope that was interesting for you to read / hear as much as it was cool to write !
If you want, you can check out my humble sounds on https://soundcloud.com/westleycerebro-1/tracks
and read my other articles. I'll try to write more of them, about a lot of different subjects.
Have a good day :-)