As a bass player on the popular music course, I picked the performance with electronics module to help learn how my favourite artists get their unique sounds using electronics. Not only did I learn how to use electronics in order to replicate those said sounds, I have also learnt a vast amount about various other pieces of electronic instrumentation that I would have never thought to have used and how they work. Through experimental sessions using different instruments such as the Korg Prologue Synthesiser, I gained valuable skills in how various different sounds are made using different parts of each instrument. Coming into the year I had no prior knowledge of how various sounds were created. Getting the tone I wanted through the use of effects such as distortion and reverb was simply trial and error but having spent the last year learning how those sounds themselves are created, I now feel like I can confidently create whatever tone I want whenever I want to. Learning how to understand aspects such as levels of attack and decay along with how to effectively utilise effects like reverb and delay has meant that I no longer have to guess at how to get certain tones. Furthermore, the collaborative aspect of the sessions throughout the year have been incredibly valuable for me in terms of the development of my composition skills. Working with others using multiple different instruments at the same time has helped me learn how to build anticipation in a composition and create a narrative throughout a song.

My inspiration

Before I explain what I did to create my composition, I think it’s important to understand where I got my inspiration from. When I started to think about what kind of song I wanted to write for this assignment I sought inspiration from a number of different songs and artists I was listening to at the time. For example, for a long period of time I was adamant I was going to create a composition similar to the song ‘Music to Walk Home to’ by the band ‘Hard Life’. I really loved the spoken word aspect of the song along with the various different instrumentation the band used (saxophones and trumpets). The synth sound found throughout the song is fantastic and the improvisational nature of the song makes it a lot of fun to listen to. The band have said before in an interview with Fender that there have been times when they simply did not know how or when to finish the song when playing it live. I think that shows just how fun and infectious the song is and ultimately it felt like something I wanted to capture in my own music. Similarly, the song ‘Seven Days in Sunny June’ by ‘Jamiroquai’ also inspired a lot of my early ideas. The combination of standard acoustic sounds coupled with interesting synths and effects really captured my imagination and I really wanted to write something that matched the tone of both songs. Ultimately, however, I hit a number of stumbling blocks when trying to replicate the sound of both pieces, leading me to stray away from that kind of song. Firstly, I really struggled using the TR8-S drum machine and ultimately couldn’t get the percussion sound I wanted. I kept finding specific drums I liked in isolation but once I paired them with any accompanying music I just could not get them to fit together. Furthermore, creating those musical ideas in the first place was more of a challenge than I was expecting. I kept finding myself effectively copying parts of both songs when trying to take inspiration which made trying to build on initial ideas very difficult. Ultimately, I made the decision that I wasn’t going to be able to build on my initial idea quickly enough to have time to develop it fully into a 6 minute composition. This led me to move my inspiration more towards music I’m more familiar with and have written similar to before. The first artist I looked to draw inspiration from was Declan McKenna. I’ve been a massive fan of his tone for years and found a great YouTube video of him explaining his entire rig and how he creates his unique sound. While my use of both effects are far more subtle and subdued, his use of delay and reverb create the exact feeling I wanted to replicate and I feel like I’ve taken his approach of those two effects and moulded it into what was appropriate. The wobble effect of the two put together was exactly what I was looking for to open the song and it was McKenna’s music that gave me that inspiration. Furthermore, in the second part of my song, I really looked to try and replicate his distortion. McKenna gets a really great warm tone from the use of the ‘Super Cool 800’ pedal and with my ‘Boss ME 90B’ I did what I could to try and replicate it for my more upbeat section. In addition to listening to Decland McKenna, I also took a lot of inspiration from the band ‘Wunderhorse’ and the solo work of their lead singer Jacob Slater. I’ve been a fan of Wunderhorse for a long time and think they do a very good job at creating incredibly harsh and heavy tones for some songs while also creating a very a powerful yet intermate tone for others. In particular, songs such as ‘Aeroplane’ and ‘Superman’ really resonated with me sonically and I felt a real desire to try and capture the essence of them both. Wanting to understand Slater’s writing better in order to best capture the tone of those two tracks, I listened to his solo album ‘Pinky, I Love You’. The opening track ‘One For The Pigeons’ and the track labelled ‘Untitled’ both gave me further inspiration as I felt that their powerful instrumentals really heightened the emotions of the lyrics. In order to delve even further into Jacob Slater’s writing I looked into his musical inspirations. In an interview he did with 2 Meter Sessions he speaks very fondly of both Elliott Smith and the band ‘Morphine’. With this new found information I listened to both taking parts from a number of songs. I really loved the space and emptiness in both ‘Between Bars’ and ‘Say Yes’ by Elliott Smith and incorporated it into the first section of my song. I also enjoyed the power of the bass in the Morphine song ‘Buena’ and looked to include it in the second section.

My composition

Once I established the type of song I wanted to write I knew straight away where to go with it. The opening idea is one that I’ve had ready to use for quite some time. The descending broken chord pattern with the sustained A underneath from the first section is an idea that came to me towards the end of my first year at Leeds Conservatoire and is something I’ve continued to work on for quite some time. It’s taken a number of different shapes during the process of writing this song and it was very hard to decide which direction I wanted to take it. However, after relistening to the Wunderhorse album ‘Midas’ I really connected to the closing track ‘Aeroplane’ and decided I wanted to take my idea in a similar route. The song has a very soft yet emotional and powerful instrumental and I wanted to use that essence in my song. I’ve always felt this melodic idea has carried a lot of emotion and without vocals to heighten these feelings I knew I needed an effect to help me do so. This is why I used the delay effect I did for the broken chords and sustained A. I used quite a high level of attack to stop as much bleeding between notes as possible while also keeping the wobble effect I wanted. The slight wobble caused by the type of delay I used I feel gives a sense of tension and emotion that would ordinarily be brought through vocals and lyrics. ‘Aeroplane’ also features a harsh electric guitar part towards the end which I feel is incredibly impactful. It adds a lot of aggression and tension to the song without taking away from the soft acoustic guitar and previously heard vocals. To attempt to capture a similar feeling I used fuzz drive on my ME 90B and turned the drive and tone settings to max. In addition to these settings, I used the expression pedal to control the drive tone and add an extra dynamic element. I feel this helped me add extra emotion and depth to the section similar to Aeroplane without overpowering the main idea.

Moving on to the second section, I wanted to pick the tone of the song up in order to reflect how I’d been feeling when writing it. While writing this song I was having a lot of mood swings and strong emotional shifts and the second section is a response to the slow, emotional first section. This is the part of the song where you can hear the influence of Declan McKenna really shine through. I used the same tone for this section that I used for the embellishment of the first section except in this part of the song I did not use the expression pedal. As mentioned previously when talking about McKenna’s distortion, I wanted a warm tone for this section that was reminiscent of British indie rock music. A perfect song to highlight what I mean by this is ‘The Phantom Buzz (Kick In)’ by Declan McKenna. While this section features a more major tone and a quicker tempo, I didn’t think this was enough to highlight the difference in emotion. I wanted the instrumentation to also reflect this shift and that’s why the ‘bass part’ sounds the way it does. I changed the preamp settings to give it an extra boost compared to the first section while also turning up the gain and mids on the EQ. I felt this gave the part a real sense of momentum and drive that pushes the section forward. The previously mentioned song ‘Buena’ by Morphine was a big inspiration for this change. Late on in the process of writing and recording the song I realised the second section really needed some sort of percussion so I came up with a way of making my bass sound a bit like a kick and snare combination. To do this I changed my preamp setting to the one with the most natural drive while also keeping the gain up high. I found these settings combined with hitting the strings of the bass against the neck in a specific way did quite a good job at creating a sound that resembled a kick and a snare.

Reflection

I’ve learnt a lot from this process of writing and recording. Firstly, I think it took me far too long to move away from my initial idea. I should have realised relatively early on that the idea wasn’t going anywhere and that it simply wasn’t going to be viable under the time constraints. This ultimately led to me being under a lot of pressure to write and record the song I have eventually submitted meaning I’ve had to miss out certain things I would have liked to include. Had I left myself with more time to do so the song would have included both a piano and cajon with both instruments being recorded using either the VoiceLive Touch2 Vocal Processor or the Roland VT-4 Voice Transformer. I would have also really liked to have written a part for a six-string guitar and added an extra layer to the song. However, had I done that I would have potentially left less room to experiment on my ME 90B. While there are plenty of things I would have done differently, there are a number of things I’m very happy I did. It took me a while to work out the best way to do it but in the end, I think both the audio recording and videos are of a good standard. This recording is the first time I’ve used a DAW and recorded anything myself which is a valuable skill I’ve learnt through this assignment. Not only have I learnt how to use a DAW but I have also learnt how to edit video through this assignment and I can now so I am confident in that skill.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I came into this year with a very minimal understanding of how to use electronics to create the sounds I wanted in my music. I would have an idea of what I wanted and a general understanding of what things like reverb and delay are but creating exact tones was guess work. Over the course of studying performance with electronics I have learnt exactly how to get the sounds I want through developing an understanding of phrases such as attack, decay and envelope. Furthermore, through collaboration in lessons I have learnt how to effectively build tension and anticipation through different effects while also constructing a narrative using different instruments. In addition to this, this assignment specifically has taught me how to record using an interface, use a DAW and edit together multiple different videos into one in order to best showcase how I have recorded my work. I strongly feel that this module has greatly improved me as a musician and everything I have learnt will be greatly valuable to me in the future.

2metersessions (2024) Jacob Slater (WUNDERHORSE) talks about ELLIOTT SMITH, the new album MIDAS (2024). YouTube. Available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOPF49Oj99o [Accessed 4 May 2026].

Fender (2022) Easy Life | Fender Sessions | Fender. Youtu.be. Available online: https://youtu.be/KSPsBnNeIFc?si=WhtEgh8jnwIDPnmL [Accessed 4 May 2026].

Jamiroquai (2005) Seven Days in Sunny June. Sony BMG. Available online: https://open.spotify.com/track/2bwxqGKS5GPXfNanAIRe2p?si=680169a8c94e41dd [Accessed 4 May 2026].

Life, H. (2021) Music to Walk Home To. Island Records. Available online: https://open.spotify.com/track/2LFLkwyXZQn0ssPLiZns3x?si=7c359090984c4d2c [Accessed 4 May 2026].

McKenna, D. (2024) The Phantom Buzz (Kick In). Tomplicated. Available online: https://open.spotify.com/track/1wvh2OmuJkO9czmCKbuvpk?si=700189bba77a4941 [Accessed 4 May 2026].

Morphine (1993) Buena. Hi-N-Dry. Available online: https://open.spotify.com/track/2SSBJhvMsujY94GK5JAtKs?si=a9d481e01cd94f99 [Accessed 4 May 2026].

Reverb (2023) Declan McKenna’s Vintage-Inspired Touring Rig. YouTube. Available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0S_9Zx-WWc [Accessed 4 May 2026].

Slater, J. (2023) Untitled. Available online: https://open.spotify.com/track/0GbzD0WDauwaLfd8Mm35Qk?si=e350682816fd43c1 [Accessed 4 May 2026].

Slater, J. and Wunderhorse (2023) One For The Pigeons. Available online: https://open.spotify.com/track/5X2t84WKJ3DyLejAVbSxcI?si=6a952d9f179245c6 [Accessed 4 May 2026].

Smith, E. (1997a) Between the Bars. Kill Rock Stars. Available online: https://open.spotify.com/track/52Bg6oaos7twR7IUtEpqcE?si=b0635f165c814c3f [Accessed 4 May 2026].

Smith, E. (1997b) Say Yes. Kill Rock Stars. Available online: https://open.spotify.com/track/7zVfEu1dEvRw4EkWoqrBkx?si=f848c9e21a324454 [Accessed 4 May 2026].

Wunderhorse (2024a) Aeroplane. Communion. Available online: https://open.spotify.com/track/0TtjR35lp2qz5Nos3LEnut?si=827760dfc6644460 [Accessed 4 May 2026].

Wunderhorse (2024b) Superman. Communion. Available online: https://open.spotify.com/track/1gI1BuQAiwo5UiUEOlLpv4?si=177018ece129439a [Accessed 4 May 2026].