Music Portfolio
Aleksandra Bardajian
Comparative Analysis
I chose to do a cover of "Chandelier" by Sia because I really like the catchy melody and I thought it would be cool to have another instrument play the melody. The main features I chose to change in my cover were duration and structure because I felt I could change these to make the cover unique and different to the original to give the piece a whole new feeling. I also explored tone colour and texture.
Here is the original song and my cover to help assist your understanding.
Duration
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The main difference regarding this concept for this piece in duration. The original is 88bpm with a very upbeat tempo that includes drums and other rhythmic parts.
My cover is 60 Bpm and has a smoother and calmer tempo with no percussion parts. Though, the piano part adds a sense of pulse and direction throughout the whole piece.
Both versions are 4/4 time, and there is no major rhythmic differences in the cover.
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In my arrangement, I did alter the rhythm of the bassline. The original bassline consisted of quavers, however, I used crotchets instead for a smoother and calmer pulse in the bassline.
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Another aspect I changed was not having vocals for my melody line. Instead, the melody was played on the violin. The lack of lyrics enabled for the melody to be even smoother.
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Tone colour
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I changed the toe colour in my cover by changing the instrumentation. The original consists of vocals, drums, bass guitar, synth. In my cover, the instrumentation is violin, keyboard and acoustic guitar. The main instrument that altered the tone colour was the violin, as it played the melody line and is the most obvious difference between the two pieces.
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Structure
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The change of structure in my cover was very significant as I made many changes to the original.
The original structure is verse 1, pre-chorus, chorus, post-chorus, verse 2, pre-chorus, chorus, post-chorus.
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The structure of my cover is 1 bar intro, verse 1, pre-chorus, chorus, 1 bar outro.
Pitch
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I chose to keep my cover in the original key Bb minor. Every part was kept in the same pitch as the original song. I didn't do much to affect the pitch of my cover.
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Texture
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The texture is another big difference between my cover and the original. The original has a very thick texture, having lots of different parts playing at once. My cover only consisted of three parts, so the texture is thin compared to the original.
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Dynamics and expressive techniques
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The dynamic contour of the original is quiet in the verses, moderately loud in the pre-chorus and loud in the chorus and post-chorus. So there is a build-up in dynamics.
In my cover, I used accelerandos and diminuendos to gradually build up and build down dynamics.