Breakdown of Oh Dear Mama (demo song) by Amadeus Code

Amadeus Code
AmadeusCode
Published in
3 min readMay 4, 2019

A good song with a strong topline melody transcends genre. This is where the Amadeus Code app’s artificial intelligence powered algorithms can help musicians by proposing unlimited topline melodies for inspiration.

Today, we breakdown the creation process of the song Oh Dear Mama, composed with Amadeus Code and then produced further on Apple Logic.

Oh Dear Mama (demo song) by Amadeus Code

Select a chord progression

The Amadeus Code app’s Discover library has hundreds of chord progressions from today’s top hit songs to classical standards and is updated daily. Chord progressions can be searched just as you would search for a song on a music streaming service, by title, name, genre and even mood. Oh Dear Mama was created with none other, Dear Mama by 2 Pac.

Search and Discover in Amadeus Code app

Create your song with Amadeus Code app

Amadeus Code’s Beats feature lets users quickly create song sketches with various genre styles applied.

There are 4 Beat types in the Amadeus Code app:

  1. Urban Pop
  2. Chill Disco
  3. Hip Hop & Rap
  4. Songwriting Mode

Selecting a Beat updates the tempo and a rhythm track is applied to the generated song. Chill Disco was selected for Oh Dear Mama and here’s the song that was made by the Amadeus Code app.

Dear Mama 2 Pac in Chill Disco

The original tempo and other interesting attributes of the original song are available in the app as well.

Producing the track in Apple Logic

The source of inspiration for the general direction on the arrangement came from 2 concepts:

  1. Crossing genres with Hip Hop and Country
  2. Express the relational concept of “Mama and child” through contrasting a traditional genre of Country with modern EDM elements.

All song sections in the final demo are there in the initial song sketch exported from the Amadeus Code app. In particular, the 3rd verse section’s topline melody was catchy and was chosen for the main chorus hook theme of the song.

Sample of 3rd verse section topline

Creating dynamics with instrument layering

The arrangement of Oh Dear Mama builds in dynamic toward the chorus, deflates back during the 2nd verse and builds back up with an epic EDM style build up leading to the last chorus sections.

By layering different instruments effectively, the dynamics of the arrangement come to life.

  1. Verse: Harmonica
  2. Pre-chorus: Harm.+Banjo
  3. Chorus: Harm.+Banjo+Synth lead
  4. Verse2: Harm.+Banjo
  5. Pre-chorus: Harm.+Banjo+Strings
  6. Chorus: Harm.+Banjo+Strings+Synth lead

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