Hey, everyone.
Welcome back to another episode of TwoSet Violin.
That's right, Shaun's back.
You might remember him from the making the lo-fi...
Well, today...
We're fully embracing the dark side.
As classical musicians, we're gonna try and make a...
As usual, Shaun's gonna teach us.
How do you make a pop song?
You just pick four chords and sing it, right?
This is a song that I made with a friend.
He wrote all the lyrics and I just did the beat.
So today,
probably just write like the verse and a catchy chorus.
What's a verse?
Uh...
Yeah, what's a verse?
- Is that exposition in sonata form? - Yeah, what is going on?
So, there are a few ways to do it.
Probably start with making an idea, like a motif.
Or like a nice chord progression.
You can do arpeggios, if you want to mix it up as well.
Can I go like I-V-vi-IV or something?
That's the OG, original.
Can't go wrong with OG, guys.
Eddy: 2, 3, 4...
Shaun: Yeah, that's alright.
Oh yeah, I got my chord progression.
What's like the synth that's like...
Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo -
Sound like you're in a trance.
All right, draft one, are you ready?
Dude, the key came off.
- My keyboard is messed up. - His keyboard came off.
Oh, s***!
Bro...
I'm out of here.
Dude, mine's so basic.
Lots of songs are built on like really basic ideas.
- Yeah. - Like basic chord structures, basic rhythms.
But it's kind of all the little things you add
to kind of make the song more interesting.
Like, I like pop, but the stuff I hear I just go,
man, it sucks like...
That was made in like a factory by like heartless robots.
And then, there's just stuff that's just like,
someone who loved it made this.
- There are two kind of types. Yeah. - Oh, you can tell.
So, okay, are we going for the
heartless factory approach or the loving...
- Approach. - I don't know, whatever you feel like, yeah.
I'm going for the loving approach, obviously.
All right, are you ready?
This is my chord progression.
That will work.
All right, sweet.
So we will build it, like the chorus first.
Probably start with the beat, it's got the rhythm going.
Usually a good place to start is,
they call it four on the floor.
It's just kick drum on every beat.
Okay.
Dude, I'm so on time,
I don't even need to quantize this s***.
Dude, this whole like lag s***,
I'm not even on time with my own beat.
I'm not fixing it today.
Dude, he's using the drummer track.
Bro, don't laugh yet till we hear it.
Yeah, true, it might be a masterpiece.
What's next?
Um...
Maybe add like a bass line?
Ooo.
Fingerstyle bass.
Ooo.
So how does the bass fit into pop music?
So you don't want it to clash with what your kick's doing.
What the hell are you doing?
Bro, I need help with the bass line.
- Okay. - Yeah, I can't think of anything. - Give me something.
Um, can I listen?
No.
- No, I'm not - Bro, I'm not touching that. - You can't hear mine.
Uh, what's - What are your chords?
I don't have perfect pitch.
Hehe.
D, F, A, B... Or D, F#, A, B.
Bro, mine's so simple though.
Mine's C, G, A minor, F major.
Yeah, it's pop.
On that note, while Shawn's making some music...
Accent the like button!
- I gave you a rhythm idea. - All right, can you write something for me?
Yeah.
Look, look, he's loving it.
I think Shaun likes my music.
I can't listen to it too much or else I'll lose focus.
I think I just did the same thing I did for you.
- Oh, really? - Yeah, kind of works.
Yeah, see, manufactured.
Manufactured.
Pop music.
If you can do it once, you can do it twice.
All right, what happens after that? I got the bass line.
You need a melody.
That's the violin, right?
Yeah.
Make it more repetitive.
Bro, it wasn't recording.
Oh...
- I pressed the wrong - - That was actually so good.
Keep it like simple, you know what I mean?
It needs to be more pop less classical.
Yeah, like that and just repeat that.
Da~ Da-da~
Ohhohoho.
I mean, whatever sounds good to you.
Dude...
I feel dirty.
I'm trying to scan my head of all the kpop I've listened to.
Uh...
That's only eight bars.
- Shuan: It's all right, copy and paste it. - Do I just loop it?
- All right, okay. Okay, that's good. - Wait, my turn. My turn.
Oh, ****, what happened?
How do I get rid of this?
All these chords just came up.
It's trying to convince you to go back to classical.
It's so...
So you got like a nice melody, you got like...
Your beat, your bass,
you kind of got all the elements there.
Now you want to add some like sprinkle on top.
- Oh, yeah. - Like some little elements like percussive...
Countermelodies...
Use them creatively...
To kind of like accent other areas of your song.
Guitar, I want a guitar.
- Cause ******* love guitar. - Girls love guitar.
I'm just gonna keep it like it is. I'm done guys.
At the moment,
it's really accentuating the dissonance in my viola.
- I feel like it's boring. - Here.
Yeah.
- Have a listen. - Nah, not yet.
Dude, I'm scared to hear your song, hey.
I need to add an embellishment.
It's fine.
I'll set the bar very low.
Aw man, this sucks, but whatever.
All right, I'm done.
Who do you guys want to hear first?
Gets better.
I stopped there.
- I ran out - I ran out of juice. - You just stopped.
Dude, that's actually good though.
Who wrote the piano?
Did you write it?
That's nice.
- Bro, this sounds like royalty free music. - That's nice.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
- We're gonna get non-copyrighted now. - Yeah. Woo!
- All right, there you go. - Bro...
My vanilla, viola, VVV pop music.
Bro, I gave up.
Mine had potential, but I just gave up.
- There's a drop. - Animal crossing.
Yeah.
I just wanna dance to it.
Ling Ling, TT.
What was it?
- The countermelody. - Mmm.
Nice, nice.
Ohhh!
It's so out of time.
It's okay, we can fix that.
Just gave up on the last one.
Yeah, I gave up.
- That's so good. - Dude, that's good.
Actually?
Yeah, dude, I could see that be more like
Animal Crossing backing music though.
I liked the drop, it was really like...
- Bang! - Yeah.
That's a proper drop.
But I do know Animal Crossing has good music.
- So I'll take that as a compliment. - It is.
You guys should make game music instead.
That would be the dream.
Like combining -
What game would that be?
It's game over.
It sounds like a prepubescent boy.
- Ahh~ - That's the theme.
Dude, that f***ing piano line was killing it.
Did you write the piano line after the viola or before?
- Before the viola. - Okay, yeah.
I was thinking...
- How would you compose and add it in after? - That note finishes it. - Nah.
You can't write anything after the viola.
I wanna hear my drop again.
Dude, I don't know, man.
Like, pop is hard in a weird way.
Cause you can't overcomplicate it.
The main thing is just catchy melody.
I think Eddy got that at least.
- Mine was... - Hey, his was pretty catchy.
It's catchy in a different way though.
It'll haunt my nightmares.
No, but I think it's genius how
the tune goes from the viola to the piano.
- Da~ Dadadadada~ Dadada~ - Dadada~
Dude, that's some Bach stuff.
Yeah, that's right.
- Counterpoint. - Bach.
So, that's Pop.
I think it was pretty fun.
It's so different from classical music.
Oh my god.
I feel like classical music, we focus so much on
the tone that we're making as well.
But this is more about the melody, chords and...
When you compose classical music,
you don't think in chord progressions.
I mean, there's still harmonic progressions.
But it's not like a 4/4 that you loop.
Yeah, classical is like, sonata form is huge...
Yeah.
All the way and it's never the same.
- Yeah. - All right.
Anyway...
Please accent the like button.
Check out Shaun's stuff on Soundcloud.
Yes. Thanks so much for watching.
If you like it, comment below
what you would like us to learn next time.
If you don't like it...
- Like it anyway. Yeah. - Just click the like button.
Accent it.
See ya.
I don't condone this mic positions.
- Dude, just like... - Don't judge my audio engineering degree.