Creative arrangement Unit 49

Nirvana- Smells Like teen spirit cover in the style of House Music


https://soundcloud.com/beatenyoualready/nirvana-house-music-cover


In this assignment i chose the song, Smells like teen spirit By Nirvana to be recreated into another genre.  the genre I chose was House Music. I therefore carried out some research on the House music genre to give me inspiration on what to do to make the cover sound like a genuine House music song. For research, I looked at artists such as Calvin Harris. I found that in his music the song gradually builds up to the chorus, he also implements a lot of synth, However instruments such as Trumpets and Violins were also used often. I also learned that a big aspect of the genre was full to floor bass drum. This was used on most of the songs i listened to. i therefore decided i was going to implement this in my track.

The first track i made was the Drum Track. To make this i used the groove Agent Input. I made sure I made the bass drum very prominent as this is very common within the house genre. later on in the track a snare drum is added to accentuate the beat drop i was trying to achieve, i did this by making the snare gradually get faster until it climaxed into the chorus. This made the beat drop more powerful and also adds to the effect of it being a house type genre.

The second track i made was a small intro synth track at the start of the song. to do this i used the Halion Sonic SE input. at the start of the track i edited the volume to gradually fade in the synth . i didthis to give the effect of it all gradually becoming louder as this is a common aspect of House music. I also used EQ to make the track have more bass as at first it was quite twangy.

The next track I inputed was a trumpet lead melody. To make this I listened to original song by nirvana and recreated the guitar solo in the song to fit in with my house style . I therefore used the sound of a trumpet instead of a guitar, as artists i had researched, such as Calvin Harris also used similar instruments for there lead part. I used this track in the chorus section of my song as repetitiveness is a big aspect of house music. However in the chorus section I doubled it with a track exactly the same just  2 octaves lower, this gave the main melody a feel of more power in the chorus. In this track i used the EQ to to make some of the very highest sounds to be quieter and to accentuate more of the mid to high sounds.

the next few tracks I used was an arpeggio type synth melody for the chorus. to create this i used Sylenth. I first picked a base sound and then edited it to make it be an arpeggio. I then proceeded to change like the timing of the arpeggio and the amount of octave it switched between. I also used the effect of distortion and reverb to give it the feel of the House music genre.

The next tracks I used were a selection of sylenth sounds to add into the chorus to give it some punch. i noticed in the house music genre that the chorus had many different sections a parts with differing sounds . I therefore implemented sounds like buzzing and and an underling bass line in my song to try and make it an authentic house music song.


Throughout the verse I used a riff which was used in the original song. I did this to make it so there is more of a feel of the original song in the cover. I used a sound from Sylenth which i then aded a small amount of delay, this gave it good sound because as the riff only consisted of two notes it made it sound more complex. I used the effect of compression to accentuate more of the mid to bass sounds as I learnt from my research, that bass was very prominent feature in house music. I was very happy with this track as it used a melody from the original track but changed it to fit a house music genre.


In conclusion I am happy with the track as it for filled the requirements of the track needing to be in the style of House. To improve this song I would have added more parts to the track and maybe increased the tempo to fit the genre. I would have also edited some of the sounds using Sylenth. This is because I thought some of the sounds were not as House music sounding as I would have wanted, For example, in the chorus I thought it could be perceived as being more electro than a House music song.