Classical Music Is NOT Scary - Combining Classical & Pop Themes - PART ONE

When we think of classical music today, we often think of it as something
an average listener can't really understand or enjoy, something that is
old fashioned, time consuming and all around complicated to even understand.
Although some of it is true, the reality is somewhat different.

(here's Beethoven, enjoying a Starbucks cup of coffee)

This kind of notion of what classical music is mostly comes from school.
We are taught to respect the classical masters with a sense of overawe
and we are told that they are better than anything anyone else has done ever since.
We hear about their ''genius'', about how they effortlessly created remarkable art
and how their talent is not to be compared to what people are doing today.
Hell, Mozart wrote his first piece when he was FIVE YEARS OLD
and Beethoven continued to work after he LOST HIS HEARING!
Who could possibly top that?

What we NOT TOLD is that most of their work was commissioned.
That means they had to make art to make a living so money was the first
thing on their minds and art, sadly, had to come in second.
The other thing we are NOT TOLD is that what they did was considered
to be ''popular'' much in the same way we think of popular music today
(and by popular I mean - jazz, blues, pop, rock etc.)
Of course, all of this does not mean that their art isn't superb.
It just means things are not ''black and white''.

(we all know how Mozart and Salieri fought for popularity, right?)

Many people feel that classical music is not for everyone, that you have to
know something about it to listen to it, so they get scared and don't even try.
The best way to listen to classical music is just to let yourself be immersed in it
and not to have any preconceptions about it.
In the end, it doesn't work much differently than the music we have today:
the form is shorter but organised much the same way, the melodies are there,
the instruments are different but they're essentially doing the same thing
and there are still only 12 different tones to work with.

(see, that's really all there is)

I've been thinking a lot about how to combine classical music
with pop forms (for my ''Bubblegum'' electropop project)
and began by thinking about the role of the melody.
The melody is essential in any form of music.
In jazz they call it ''the theme'', in pop music the melody is what gets
stuck in your head for days on end and so on.
Classical music uses melodies in the same sense and construct
other parts of the piece around it (such as variations on the same theme
or repeating the same melody on different instruments)
Many of the beautiful melodies we know from classical music are
really very simple and easy to remember.

Moreover and most importantly - they are basically pop melodies!

So, in order to combine the two, I had to decide what to take
from the classical piece, what to take from the pop song
and what to write on my own.
I chose one of the most famous pieces written for the piano:
Beethoven's ''Moonlight Sonata'', 1st movement.

I took the first few bars of the first movement (the theme we all know and love)
and made a loop from it - the same thing repeated on and on and on and on.
Then, I wrote and recorded my own melody over it with a haunting synth sound.

Now, the pop part kicks in.

I divided the loop into several parts in order to achieve the pop form:

INTRO - VERSE - CHORUS - VERSE - CHORUS - OUTRO

(You can also add a pre-chorus and a bridge, but I felt it wasn't necessary.)

Now I had a well known classical theme played on the piano in a loop,
my own pop melody over it and a pop song structure.
The only thing left were the lyrics.
I wrote some lyrics inspired by the atmosphere of the music and by the
passing of David Bowie (he had passed away a few days before I made this song
so I wanted to make some kind of an hommage to his work).
I sang the lyrics on top of everything, added some reverb guitars and
backing vocals and the track was done!

The trick is to keep it simple, analyse the pieces,
take them apart and put them back together in a
contemporary fashion. You don't really have to KNOW
anything about classical music to do this!
You just have to KNOW HOW TO LISTEN
and the music does the rest
because it's essentially the same music, played
and organised differently throughout the ages.

Here's the result!
Hope you enjoy it and feel free to support!