Producing A Modern Sounding Pop Song

[wagtunes]

Background: Up to now, my songs, for the most part, are either piano or guitar based. If you listen to many modern sounding pop songs, pianos and guitars are nowhere to be found or play minor roles.

Here are a few examples







As you can hear, arrangements are mostly minimal with various little things sprinkled in. Lots of bass backed tracks.

But that's not really important. Listening to a track and making note of what instrument comes in where is easy. A monkey can do that. The key is how we get from point A to point Z and make it sound like a coherent package even with bunch of stuff doing on here and there.

In short, arrangement is everything. Because let's face it, as songs go, composition wise, we're not talking Mozart here.

Unfortunately, being stuck in the 60s and 70s, arrangement is where I am lacking. I listen to some of this stuff and I scratch my head in amazement how they come up with these arrangements.

So now we get to mt question.

How DO you come up with a modern pop song arrangement? Is it really simply a matter of listening to this stuff until it comes out of your ears? It took me decades of listening to vintage rock and pop to arrange songs like that. At age 68, I don't have decades to get this right.

So any tips, suggestions or anything you can give me will be greatly appreciated.

Having said all that, here are a couple of attempts of mine to do a "modern" sounding pop song. Feedback is welcome. Am I close?

https://soundcloud.com/steven-wagenheim/im-a-girl

https://soundcloud.com/steven-wagenheim/into-the-nexus

Thanks

[Ciderwell]

Yeah, I think they are close! Though still need more streamlining. Like the vocals should be sharper with maybe some fx, like long reverb tails, echoes, harmonies, etc.

That's mainly why I think your songs lean more towards Indie than Pop, that is when compared to the three other songs you chose for examples. Your songs have terrific beats and grooves but lack that sparkle and variation the others have. It's like why lots of Pop songs have cars in their vids, because Pop songs skip and bounce from verse to chorus like changing gears - making the listener want to jump up and dance.
Paul McCartney is a good example of how his Pop songs have verse, chorus, middle-eight, bridge, intro and outro, almost like three or four or five different songs spliced together. Great value for money, but a right bloody headache figuring out how he does it.

But then if I knew the answer really, I'd be posting my own Pop song instead of prattling on and on. Will be interested to see what others have to say.

[wagtunes]

Yeah, I think they are close! Though still need more streamlining. Like the vocals should be sharper with maybe some fx, like long reverb tails, echoes, harmonies, etc.

That's mainly why I think your songs lean more towards Indie than Pop, that is when compared to the three other songs you chose for examples. Your songs have terrific beats and grooves but lack that sparkle and variation the others have. It's like why lots of Pop songs have cars in their vids, because Pop songs skip and bounce from verse to chorus like changing gears - making the listener want to jump up and dance.
Paul McCartney is a good example of how his Pop songs have verse, chorus, middle-eight, bridge, intro and outro, almost like three or four or five different songs spliced together. Great value for money, but a right bloody headache figuring out how he does it.

But then if I knew the answer really, I'd be posting my own Pop song instead of prattling on and on. Will be interested to see what others have to say.

I agree 100%. Todays songs have so much going on from one section to another. Around every musical corner is another surprise. I'm not sure I even know how to think like that.

Which is why I'm not writing modern pop songs.

[Munin]

Is it really simply a matter of listening to this stuff until it comes out of your ears?

I think so. But it should be active listening, not just listening for the sake of it. If you actively try to figure out what's going on it should not take decades.

Something that used to really help me when I really was chasing specific sounds around a decade ago was dragging songs into a DAW and analyzing them, i.e. dividing them up in sections, then trying to figure out what's going on in each section and perhaps even trying to approximate it, section by section, what instruments or instrument groups are used, where does the bass come in, and so on and so forth.

At some point you won't need the intermediate DAW step anymore and it just happens in your head and that is when you start getting the actual intuition.

[LoopMastering]

I'd make it a smaller exercise than “learn modern pop.” Pick one reference and turn it into a simple energy map: intro, verse, pre, chorus, and so on. Under each section, write only three jobs: what carries the hook, what carries the pulse, and what changes the energy.

Then rebuild that shape with your own sounds. The useful bit isn't copying the synth or drum. It's noticing that every 4 or 8 bars one job changes. A bass drops out, the vocal doubles, the drums lose the top loop, or one short bit of ear candy appears.

For your next attempt, limit yourself to one obvious change at each section boundary and one small surprise halfway through the section. That's enough to feel current without filling every gap. Once that works, mixing becomes much easier because the arrangement already tells the listener where to look.

[wagtunes]

I'd make it a smaller exercise than “learn modern pop.” Pick one reference and turn it into a simple energy map: intro, verse, pre, chorus, and so on. Under each section, write only three jobs: what carries the hook, what carries the pulse, and what changes the energy.

Then rebuild that shape with your own sounds. The useful bit isn't copying the synth or drum. It's noticing that every 4 or 8 bars one job changes. A bass drops out, the vocal doubles, the drums lose the top loop, or one short bit of ear candy appears.

For your next attempt, limit yourself to one obvious change at each section boundary and one small surprise halfway through the section. That's enough to feel current without filling every gap. Once that works, mixing becomes much easier because the arrangement already tells the listener where to look.

THIS is great stuff. In fact, this is how these songs sound to me. Pieced together just like that.

I'm going to try this and see how it goes.