As we ring in the new year, we thought we’d take a look at some of our best videos of 2022. Taking the crown for our ‘Deconstruction’ series is Ski’s live production of Beyonce’s Break My Soul live from Amsterdam Dance Event.
After a 10 year hiatus, our Head of Education and Curriculum, returns to the Dutch capital to deconstruct Beyoncé chart topper, ‘Break My Soul’. As you should know by now, a deconstruction is where we break down the key elements of a hit track and build it back up from scratch.
A departure from the regular Beyoncé sound, ‘Break My Soul’ harks back to the times of classic house music coupled with her iconic voice. The song has charted globally and hit number 1 on the Billboard Top 100 as well as receiving 3 Grammy nominations. Currently, the song has amassed over 240 million streams since its release in June this year.
Motivated to learn more about music? Why not take up a music production course at our campuses in London, LA or online. As a bonus, Ski has graciously shared the MIDI files for this project, simply register on our site and they’re all yours.
Some key facts come into play at the beginning of the video around the tracks conception, songwriters and stats to lead into the music aspects. The song takes inspiration from tunes like Robin S’s ‘Show Me Love’ which highlights the Korg M1 Organ as a key element of the track. Another element the song uses is swing where the musician plays in parts of the track slightly off time to give the song a feeling of groove and movement. Using Push 2 and Ableton Live 11, Ski then recreates all the individual parts and finishes it off by layering the original acapella.
These deconstructions are a key tool we use to teach our students composition and arrangement but to get the full experience, why not take on a course yourself? For the aspiring music producer who wants to put their best foot forward for their music career, take a look at our BA (Hons) in Music Production and Sound Engineering (also available online).