Eurobeat Prime :: Forum

Hopefully some professionals or fun musicians can help me out here

I'm geniunely curious how arranging music and making eurobeat works.
From Odyssey's streams on youtube I noticed that he composes the music, sings and writes the vocals all by himself.
He only takes the arrangements of the Touhou Soundtracks to make fitting music.

But how does that work for other artists?

There are some tracks on the TEB series (and also on the SEB) series which have different persons for vocals, lyrics, and arrangenents!
Do these people interact with each other or does the lyrics writer just write down some lyrics and passes it to the vocalist who sings them and the arranger makes an eurobeat track in the end?
That doesn't sound right to me because how should the vocalist know that he should sing this part more aggressively or softly?
Or do they sit all in a music recording booth and come up with the whole song together?

In programming for example we never design the graphical user interface first. Instead we try to implement the programs core features and then we make our way around it.
But on Odysseys stream it seems like he starts from the beginning of a song to an ending with having the lyrics already provided.

I don't think that the arranger has the exact notes and tone sets already in his mind or written down, instead he makes them during the song.

There are also vocalless tracks (using just vocal sfx of other tracks) which basically have the arranger in the credits which I can imagine as just one person to sit in front of his desk and making music all by himself.


Am I completely on the wrong track? I'd be really grateful if someone could enlighten me here on how an idea of an eurobeat song makes it way to the final file.

Thanks in advance!

Sorry if the text is badly formatted, I wrote it during a bus ride on my phone.

　　

xiao wrote: 04 Aug 2017, 13:48The Beatles go into a studio and an engineer would use all sorts of equipment to record their songs

Here you're talking about 60's, 70's, however enough huge difference in case of Eurobeat production was between 80's - early 90's and later period, the more present day.

Anyway the production of even electronic music has lost the magic, click on computer screen, minimalistic real devices, instruments or their lack, take much from the image of song and effort. This is not important for a simple listener, but a big loss if you're passionate freak in the details and whole genre.

xiao wrote: 04 Aug 2017, 13:48Sometimes they're all done by the same person, sometimes two or three or more different people collaborate on creating a song.

Well, that's also loss. How many artists today are credited ? You rather say about the past. Too less of music is made, so they don't meet. The target of small labels was "I wanna be alone and compose only my music". When it's been a lot of people in credits, the booklet was like encyclopedia, now it's boring as hell and empty. The nice atmosphere around many persons, spending regularly hours or days working on Eurobeat just disappeared.

xiao wrote: 04 Aug 2017, 13:48Conversely you can also write the lyrics first, compose the melody around the lyrics, and adjust the words to fit the song.

How you want to create lyrics if you already have done the melody ? This is obvious that you need to control the tune and lyrics simultaneously that they fit later each other or exactly write down lyrics at first.

xiao wrote: 04 Aug 2017, 13:48Introduction > 1st verse > bridge > chorus > transition > 2nd verse > bridge > chorus > transition > breakdown > bridge > chorus > outro.

Seriously, that's a standard construction of any dance track, not neither specific Eurobeat.

　　

xiao wrote: 04 Aug 2017, 13:48Sometimes they're all done by the same person, sometimes two or three or more different people collaborate on creating a song. If they're distant from each other like living in different countries or even continents, they send each other parts of the song thru the internet.

[...]

Lyrics aren't computer code, they're not set in stone. So commonly you create the music first, then you write the lyrics around it. Conversely you can also write the lyrics first, compose the melody around the lyrics, and adjust the words to fit the song. Lyrics are volatile, just like music, it can all be changed at any time before release. Remixes are modified songs after they've been released.

So you start with a basic template of the song and fiddle and edit around the lyrics until you're happy with it? That doesn't sound right to me.
Making music for me seems like you have to build the melody and the lyrics in a good match to each other and not one on top of the other.

Maybe I am wrong, I simply have no clue. For me it looks like magic and if I listen to a few songs I can't undestand how a single person or three different persons can come up with such an amazing melody, beat, lyrics and the whole track alltogether.

Crockett wrote: 04 Aug 2017, 15:18Anyway the production of even electronic music has lost the magic, click on computer screen, minimalistic real devices, instruments or their lack, take much from the image of song and effort. This is not important for a simple listener, but a big loss if you're passionate freak in the details and whole genre.

Well you could say that but how should people, who can't effort the musical equipment, produce music?
Having all this available on a simple computer screen does not force the previous creators to reduce all their effort to a minimum just because it is possible.

　　

Crockett wrote: 04 Aug 2017, 15:18 Anyway the production of even electronic music has lost the magic, click on computer screen, minimalistic real devices, instruments or their lack, take much from the image of song and effort. This is not important for a simple listener, but a big loss if you're passionate freak in the details and whole genre.

I swear i heard this before...

"The use of electronic instruments, instead of acoustic instruments. It's not important for a simple listener, but a big loss if you're a passionate freak... "

Mark my words, in 22xx, there will be people saying "I despise these producers using AI to make songs. This is not important for a simple...."

I understand what you meant BUT it still sounds pretentious.

　　

sethreed wrote: 04 Aug 2017, 18:07

Crockett wrote: 04 Aug 2017, 15:18 Anyway the production of even electronic music has lost the magic, click on computer screen, minimalistic real devices, instruments or their lack, take much from the image of song and effort. This is not important for a simple listener, but a big loss if you're passionate freak in the details and whole genre.

I understand what you meant BUT it still sounds pretentious.

If you like observing much more behind the stage and "under" official promotion, more than publisher wants to show the audience, you might be disappointed nowadays, not only in Eurobeat. The simplicity hides that "magic".

This is absolutely not required and to discuss, as we talked how does look like a typical vision of enjoying music on any market.

It's not important for all people actually at the moment of listening to a song. Such extra stuff, the most rare.

　　

xiao wrote: 04 Aug 2017, 19:17I just remembered Bratt made a pretty cool video of 1 2 3 4 Fire！

Seeing two fully grown up man having fun while singing moving around like kids made me happy too
I was singing along the whole video and they did a really good job on the song!

xiao wrote: 04 Aug 2017, 19:17 Speaking of behind the scenes ～ ☆

I just remembered Bratt made a pretty cool video of 1 2 3 4 Fire！


youtu.be/HrtZMTjqpUA

Sta buenisima！Bravo Maurizio

OH is that Ceres on the vídeo? ;----;

　　

xiao already explained a lot in a – for me as an artist – very satisfying way.

There is really no strict formula for creating a song. Sometimes I just have a complete melody and/or chord progression so I write them first and then add all the details for the arrangement, other times I fully arrange one part of the song like the chorus or verse or instrumental part and add the other parts later and there is even the case when I got the lyrics first (mostly when I compose music to the lyrics written by others) and then compose music for those lyrics which is also nice because the lyrics already can give you a mood for the song and you can try to catch that mood musically.
I also know of other ways like building a song around a sample/loop, but I'm rarely using loops generally, I try to create everything by myself, so I can't tell much about how this works exactly.

There is one thing i feel horrible doing.

Mastering. I use Acid Pro for mixing, it's a pain in the ass to control volume, or change pitch and increase speed dynamically. Equalizing then. argh...
But it's almost perfect to chop samples and giving them a punch and precisely cut them to isolate synths/drums.

I would love a mastering/post-production guide, even for mixes.