Title Fight - Leaf

This track hits hard right on the first note. There's an 8 bar intro, that's made as full as possible which allows space to be made for the verse that follows. I can hear, drums, bass, rhythm guitar and lead guitar. The lead guitar is the element that's removed for the verse. It resides though, with a feedback signal and then acts as a call/response at the end of each line. Floral Green (the album) came out this year, so we expect a loud record and that expectation is met.

Vocals:
The vocals are your standard front and centre position. However, I haven't noticed much use of backing vocals except at 1:38 where a second voice seems to come in behind, and the same thing at 2:13. Thinking about the song as a whole, as one man's battle - perhaps the idea of backing vocals would detract from that.

Guitar: 
The use of the lead guitar as a 'noise machine' sounds good in many sections of this song except at 1:23 where it pierces through a bit too much. A little bit of volume automation there would have done the trick. The chugging of the guitar through the verses sounds quite good though. The higher pitch noise of the second guitar doesn't mask the rhythm guitar.

Rhythm: 
This track is your standard rock time signature in 4/4 and hits the tempo of 160 beats per minute. There's a lot of interchange with double time sections and half time sections that are generally very popular in this kind of music. The snare drum cuts through well enough, the main issue though is the ride cymbal that gets switched to quite often. There's some stick definition but overall doesn't hold enough weight in the mix to make the transitions between hi hat and ride smooth.

Reso - War Machine

I haven't done anything in the extreme realm of electronic music for a while. Once again, drum programming is a huge attraction in this track. Along with that is some of the most perfectly aggressive bass I've ever heard. The modulation is so organic, it doesn't sound too perfectly locked to the beat; for example, the triplets speed up through the bar. There's got to be some use of arpegiator to make some of the effects in here.

The bass: 
There's probably a few different bass instruments that come in different parts. The type of filtering that occurs most is low pass filtering. The trick with a lot of it seems to be bringing out the harshness of square-ish waveforms when the filter alternates between being dry and wet. The other factor I touched on was the variation of the LFO. There's no shortage of sub-divisions chosen create constant interchange of speeds and sounds. The use of the 16th note triplets on both ascending pitch and descending pitch makes quite a nice hook for this track.

Hectic drums: 
These are hands down, the most hectic drums I've ever heard in an electronic track. This kind of thing normally characterises drum & bass and dubstep tracks which makes it the perfect way for this track to set itself apart. The drum patters matches the bass in the triplet feel. The ghosting from the snare is fairly constant throughout - as if it were a second hi hat. The kick is used sparing in the first half of each 8 bars to make the second half (where it's more active) more impacting. The rhythmic paring between the snare and the other elements is well managed here. Each snare accent is pitted against what sounds like an additional stab of pink noise.

Citizen Cope - Let The Drummer Kick

This one is from 2002 and reminds me of something very Moby sounding that I would have been listening to at the time. Unsurprisingly, as a drummer the most appealing part of this production that groove. Also the piano and backing strings are quite nice (giving that Moby vibe).

Drums: 
The most important thing about this drum production to me is the imperfection. Without these little quirks the programmed drums sound dead to me. Number one, is the slightly late hat on beat one, or if you like a slightly early kick. Other than it working as a 'humanising' element that difference in timing stops the hi hat from masking the kick on beat one (where it's most important). In fact, I believe that keeping your hats off time as much as sounds acceptably fitting in your production is a good idea. That's my 2 cents on drums anyway.

Scratch samples: 
The track opens with a lot of 'squeaks' that actually loosely follow the melody of the piano when it comes in. The samples sound like short chopped samples from someone's scratch set. They certainly suit the style of this music and the time it came out. I miss scratch in modern music, it's always the thing that sets a lot of DJs apart but I think it sounds interesting as an instrument in music too.

Vocals: 
This production plays a lot with vocal looping and layering of looped vocal lines. The "let the drummer kick" loop that introduced the track remains fairly constant. While this continues, a number of variations of enter the mix alongside it. They're phrasing is different, which is my favourite thing about it. Some thought would have gone into finding two rhythmic variations of that line that go well together. These loops are effected with some lo-fi filter as to keep them separate from the lead vocal that takes over in each verse. There's a call and response between voices in the second verse. It follows the convention of a close voice interacting with a distant voice.

Last thoughts: 
That piano lick sounds so great in this track. It's a perfect sample in the context of the other sounds. It's short and sharp to stand out from the pad synths behind it and in parts feels like it's in tune with the scratch. This is an extremely cool track that I hadn't listened to until today and I regret that.

San Cisco - Wild Things

I'm just going through whatever music is new at the moment and there's quite a few things I don't like here. Most of my entries are praising but for a change we need some more criticism.

• Vocals are overly breathy in verses, not much energy behind them (sounding lazy). 
• 1:08: A real mess here, some very cloudy voices (maybe just conversation) in the background creating a sonic mess. The whistle in the second half sounds right off tune, the 'arpy' synth on top steals a lot focus by being much more clean cut sounding than everything in the background (maybe too much). 
• After that section: What's going on with the drums? One tom sounds like it's filled with water or something. 
• Chorus: Laser sound is pretty cheesy, double tracked vocals sound a bit too out of time from each other. If they're not backing vocals they should sound like one voice. This whole section has some other underwater wash going on that for whatever aesthetic it adds is just mud in terms of sound. 
• 1:51, some pretty nasty drum sampling, very disjointed drum fill. This is even worse at 2:11 when the whole thing is just right off time. 
• This final chorus is just more frustrating than the last with plenty of loose sounding off-tune mud. 

There's a lot here that just clashed with my ears and interpretations of good production. I think we needed one of those in this diary. I found this track browsing the "what's new" on Spotify. 

Ellie Goulding - My Blood

The first thing I found interesting about this track is nice mix of organic and synthetic sounds. The backing for the vocals is quite dynamic. Beginning with acoustic instruments such as guitar and piano and layering pads and other synths in larger sections like choruses is really effective. This is a really good way to work on modern music I think. The return to the acoustic guitar at the end of the chorus reminds me of how thick of a sound is achieved with all those layers working together.

The impact of the piano taking its active role in this track is structured around other sounds dropping out momentarily to make its presence more obvious. There are a number of transitions that operate this way in this track. The removal of drums for these sections works quite well to help me appreciate the intricacy of the piano.

For the outro, the solo vocals are quite nice. It highlights the many layers that were used to make the vocal track special. Listening to the final chorus, backing vocals and chanting are a nice companion to the falsetto highs of the lead vocal.