We’re back with another Track Deconstruction, this time from one of our Course Developers, Risa T. In her first-ever deconstruction for pointblank, Risa T tackles Ariana Grande’s infectious ‘No Tears Left to Cry’, breaking down each element from the Billboard Hot 100 track.
‘No Tears Left to Cry’ was released by Republic Records in 2018 and has since gone on to amass over 851 million views on YouTube alone. It was produced by Max Martin, the man behind Britney Spears’ eponymous ‘Hit Me Baby One More Time’ and The Weeknd’s ‘Can’t Feel My Face’, and ILYA, who has produced for the likes of Cher Lloyd, Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift to name a few. If you’d like to learn more about music production be sure to check out the number of courses we run in this field here.
For this deconstruction, which was filmed at our LA school, Risa T fires up Logic Pro X and kicks things off by running us through her drum one-shots before punching in the beat. To add structure to the track, she copies and pastes her drum patterns, adding in some time-stretched claps to signify the different phrases in the song. Now for the chords, bass and melody! Risa T demonstrates the key used in the track as well as dropping some knowledge on the music theory behind the melody of ‘No Tears Left to Cry’. She combines numerous sounds to match the synths used in the track by pairing Logic’s inbuilt ES2 with Native Instruments’ Komplete. After finalising the last automation, pads and tweaks Risa T drops in the vocal to complete the deconstruction.
This isn’t the first time Risa T has jumped into the hot seat to shed some light on music production. Previously, Risa explored some creative drum programming techniques as well as some remixing tips which are sure to get your vocal samples sounding polished and professional.
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