top of page

RECREATING A TRACK BASED ON THE COURTEENERS HANGING OFF YOUR CLOUD

In this section of this website, I will be taking a further look at The Courteeners track and identifying how I recreated the track as part of my final year project.

The reference track...

The 2020 release by the alternative / indie band The Courteeners is a composition that consists of many elements including a string section, multiple vocals, synth elements, piano , bass guitars and drums . In order to gain a further understanding of all the elements of the track, I have constructed a listening exercise and in depth music analysis of the track in my final report ( DISSERTATION WRITING PAGE). Take a listen to the original Courteeners piece in the YouTube video to the right.

Coming up with the original idea on the keyboard

After gaining a better understanding of how the reference track was structured  and all the compositional techniques used. I decided to restructure the chord sequence of the track. The verse for the Courteeners track was written in the key of A major and begins on the tonic note of A major and then continues to C sharp minor, D major and E major. In order to reconstruct this I decided to start on the fourth degree of the scale or the subdominant ( D major ), then to the mediant or F sharp 5 chord, then to the dominant or E major chord and then back the D major for the verse of the track. Another interesting technique used in the the reference track is the use of right handed notes being played in the track on the off beats which are the A notes in the two higher octaves. I decided to keep this piano structure but instead of playing the multiple A notes , I played the A and E notes in the higher octaves. The video to the left shows the original idea I came up with for the piano. For the chorus section of the song I decided to stay in the same key as the original track but decided to re shape the chorus completely as in the reference track the chorus starts with descending chords  F sharp 5 to E major to D major for the start of the chorus which I decided to change to create a resolution back to the tonic of A major to notify the listener of a change, so my chord sequence for the chorus is A major to A add 9 to A major 7. This a massive change from the original but still allowed me to sing in a similar style to the original due to the key of the track being the same . More information on the piano structure will be identified in the written analysis of the project ( Dissertation writing page).

Vocal and Lyric ideas 

After coming up with the original piano idea for the track, I decided to think about lyrics for the track based on the same topic as the reference track. The video on the right shows the idea that I came up with. The second verse is also shown in the video below.

BBCF7E09-8DC0-41E7-A13A-BC93651811EC.jpeg
20230502_155502.jpg

Help from other musicians

During the process of producing "Water", I had to network with other musicians in the music department of Staffordshire University to help with recording instruments that I wasn't capable of playing. Eloise kindly helped me with recording the violins and Trym helped me by recording drums on my project.The string section was figured out by ear as the musician is grade 8 in music and the drums were recorded based on the reference track. The images show some evidence of my drum and violin set up during the session. Some research was done into drum and violin recording techniques.

Guitar Recording

The guitars for  "Water" recorded through a DI input into the Pro Tools session. The guitar idea was based around playing the chords of the piano on the guitar so they worked within the context of the track. The reference track does not contain any guitar layers so these were placed low in the mix and added an additional texture in  the mix of the track.

20230329_221949.jpg

Vocal recording

The Neumann U87 was used to record the vocals for "Water". Multiple studio sessions were booked to complete this task and over 70 takes were performed to make sure the vocal was perfect for the release. Research was done and listening exercises have been completed to figure out a similar style of vocal to Liam Fray ( The Courteeners).

Have a listen to the final product by clicking the link below

or go to the final project page...

bottom of page