September – Songwriting and Arrangement

The alternative rock song “September” of The Verge uses interesting songwriting and arrangement techniques. Each step was carefully planned. I would like to present them in this blog post. An exclusive insight to songwriting and music arrangement of alternative rock music.

Songwriting of a rock song

An autumn love story

“September” is about a young man falling unhappily in love. After being rejected, he still tries to understand the reason. Though this love story is quite easy to follow, the musical background is interesting enough to fill a whole post. Plenty of thoughts, songwriting and arrangement techniques and stylistic methods are implemented in this rock song. Within this post, I often link to Wikipedia to explain technical terms. Please comment, if you have questions. But first, I’d like to show you the song “September” on our SoundCloud page.

Choice of words, rhymes and phrasing

The verses describe the love interest of the narrator. You may expect flawless traits of character and appearance, but the choice of words has a mocking undertone. Each stanza ends with an impure rhyme or homophone. This song does not appear like a poem. It resembles a diary entry. It is quite obvious, that is written after the narrator got the brush-off.

During the song, the choruses are slightly modified. The diary theme is picked up, using different days of September with the same amount of syllables. Of course, September the 31st doesn’t exist. Thus, it is a metaphor for the catastrophe.

Changing the narrative form

After the ditch (2:41) the narrative form switches from storytelling into a dialogue. The words are heavily influenced by the feelings and interpretations of the narrator. It seems quite clear, that the narrator rejects the second chance.

Arrangement of an alternative rock song

How to write an alternative rock song with a simple chord progression without being too repetitive? September neither uses complex chords nor many melodies. The whole power lies in the arrangement, where the instrumentation, effects and drum patterns change permanently.

One leitmotif – One musical theme

The arrangement of this rock song builds on one musical theme. It is a melody which goes upward and slides a step backward. This leitmotif emphasizes the lyrics which jumps from present to past. Variations on that theme can be found in the strings and choir.

Five chords that stick in your mind

Comparing all songs of The Verge, “September” is the one with the most compact music sheet. The main theme consists of five chords and the melody has lots of repetitions. The only variation is during the bass solo, which was recorded spontaneously. This is the whole sheet:

Verses, Chorus
Bm | Asus4 | G | F# A#dim |

Solo
Bm | A#dim | F#7 | F# A#dim |
Bm | A | A | F# A#dim |

Creating tension with the arrangement

The tension is created by adding new elements after each stanza, changing the playing techniques, volume, filters and modifying the stereo field. The subtle transition from palm muted chords to openly played power chords is realized by layering and filtering lots of tracks. We also use psychoacoustic tricks to enlarge the stereo field. The drum line becomes more complicated over the time. We switch from closed hi hats to open hi hats to sound more aggressive. The climax (4:24 – 4:46) is a tutti, a part, where all instruments play. The amount of vocal layers rises dramatically. Near the end we can listen to all layers, ad libs and even a choir.

How many tracks does this song have?

While dealing with songwriting and arrangement, we recorded over 40 tracks for this rock song. Here is the complete list:

Vocal tracks (mono):

• 3x lead vocals (one best-of-all-track)
• 10x layers of vocals (3x thirds, 3x fifth, 3x fifth on the lower octave, 1x octave)
• 8x female choir (2x higher octave thirds, 2x octave, 2x fifth, 2x thirds)
• 3x male choir (2x thirds, 1x lower octave fifth)
• 2x ad libs

Instruments:

• 2x acoustic guitar (L + R)
• 2x electric guitar with crunch (L + R)
• 2x palm muted electric guitar (L + R)
• 4x distorted electric guitar (L + R)
• 1x piano (stereo)
• 1x electric bass (mono)
• 2x contrabass (stereo)
• 2x cello (stereo)
• 1x string arrangement (stereo)
• 1x stereo sample of stormy weather

September is a complex song

The first time you listen to “September”, you may find it repetitive. After reading this post, you may understand the ideas behind this song. The devil lies in the details. “September” was really demanding to mix, and its effects are used creatively. In my honest opinion, mixing the guitars was a tough job. I had to deal with muted, crunched and heavily distorted records from three different guitars. And there were vocals – plenty of vocal tracks, which have nearly the same frequencies and would have been masked easily. We are very proud of the outcome.

“September” is part of our debut album “Something you did not know” that you can download on our SoundCloud profile.