Sweet dreams (sweetdre.xm)

Overall Impression (10/10)

Elwood's "Sweet Dreams" is easily one of the most popular and recognizable tunes to come out of the tracking era. Upbeat, epic and inspiring, referring to it as a masterpiece might be one of the few cases when it's not an exaggeration.

It's been a staple in my own musical upbringing, so I am honored to come back to it many years later and share my thoughts on it.

Technique, Arrangement, Composition (10/10)

I think Elwood is one of those tracker composers where we focus so much on the brilliance of the end result and on his melodic genius, that we forget that his technical proficiency is actually incredibly high.

If you look through his modules and also watch them played in a tracker, you'll realize how comfortable Elwood is with all aspects of tracking: from variable tempo, to portamento effects, offsets and all sorts of nifty tricks.

And, apart from the signature leads, that one is more likely to spot in a tracked tune, the rest of his music doesn't give away its tracking origins. "Sweet Dreams" sounds very much like the mainstream music at the time.

Development (10/10)

But many of us know how to wield a tracker. The real jaw-dropping talent that Elwood demonstrates is his unique ability to know the potential of a given instrument.

Browsing through the samples used, I can't imagine a less inspiring bunch: poorly looped, bland and seemingly difficult to make sense of.

And yet, Elwood takes something like instrument 18 - a cheap voice sound - and turns it into a fantastic backing organ that he uses throughout the piece.

It is this sequence, by the way, that reflects the mainstream music of the 90s: notice how similar it is to, say, organ stabs in Haddaway's "What is love?" This kind of arrangement was pretty common at the time.

And it is this ability, to take samples that are unimpressive on their own and construct a convincing arrangement, that makes Elwood' work stand out.

Another part of Elwood's secret is the sheer amount of things going on.

He refuses to be frugal and throws in four separate instruments for the bassline, in channels 1, 12-14.

He has instrument 18 playing the chords, which he either combines or switches with the choir (instrument 4).

He offers very rich percussion, using the bass drum, the snare, a congas loop, claps and a couple of hihats, which together create this busy percussion feel.

And then you have the solos on top, to which he adds panned delays.

And he does all that while managing to keep the overall spectrum even and pleasant: the bass sounds are all different and don't overlap each other's frequencies, the backing instruments occupy mid ranges, the leads occupy higher ranges, and the drums, apart from the kick, lack strong low frequencies (although the open hat sample is actually quite bad and has a lot of mud in the lows).

Now, this doesn't mean that better decisions could not have been made.

I feel that the bass guitar in channel 13 is largely inaudible and could be removed. I was not able to spot any desired ghost notes that its presence produces either: you can see for yourself, by muting channels 12 and 14. The only thing it might be doing is adding a bit of a bass hit in the beginning of the pattern, since the bass in channel 1 is played on the offbeat. But in general, I think most of it could go.

Speaking of the bass, I think channels 12-14 don't contribute a lot in some places, and their removal might add more transparency to the mix. For instance, try removing these channels from patterns 19-25 and notice how the key change and the organ lead really take off.

But, all in all, this is an awesome and very inventive arrangement, a testament to Elwood's talent as a sound engineer, and his ability to take the little of what he has and turn it into a commercial-grade arrangement.

Creativity (10/10)

But, of course, the piece is primarily known for its melodies. So, what's the secret here?

One thing that strikes anyone who dives deep into the tracking scene is the immediate contrast between what one hears on the radio and what passes as a standard song here.

Setting all the stylistic and technical details aside, the big difference is actually song structure: instead of the standard AABA or verse-chorus forms, prevalent in pop music, a lot of the tracked music is more akin to soundtracks. This is not surprising, as a lot of the famous tracked works are actually soundtracks - for the demos.

This demoscene context exposed many of us to the music structure that might be quite alien to the majority of your musician friends.

If you think about Unreal 2, for instance, its structure could be described by something like A-B-C-B'-D-B'', where B with quotes are variations. This is because it's a soundtrack and not a song with lyrics.

And so, when we look at Elwood's "Sweet Dreams", it's dynamism comes from the fact that basically nothing repeats: its parts are connected by the chord progression, but everything else is constantly changing. His song structure could probably be described as A-B-C-D-E-B'-C'-B'', where A is the intro, B is the flute theme, C - organ theme, D - synth theme, E - break (which includes the synth theme and the piano), B' - the variation on the flute, C' - the variation on the organ, B'' - another variation on the flute.

Which means that at no point does anything truly repeat. In fact, it's even somewhat counterintuitive, because when you go back to the flute and the organ, my first impulse would probably be to just repeat them as they were. But Elwood makes sure that the themes are similar, but not exactly the same.

He also invests into transitions: his intro is laboriously constructed, he introduces tempo changes to build up momentum for the start of the melody. He approaches his key changes with the appropriate chords, which makes them more exciting, see patterns 16-21.

His key changes are also notable for being rather clandestine. He has two key changes in the middle: up between patterns 1-19 and then back down between 16-21. And I bet most listeners don't even notice, but they do benefit from the movement that these add to the piece.

The change in the end is, of course, made clear, but again, Elwood puts in the extra effort and introduces it with a beautiful transition in pattern 35.

And, I think, it is this series of decisions of going just one step further that eventually makes the tune into such an exhilarating journey: it grabs you from the start and never lets you go. There's no space for boredom, no space when a change does not occur. Even during the break he has little sounds fly around, while you're waiting for the synth to begin playing, see pattern 26.

Enjoyment (10/10)

I have to admit, though, that while this tune always inspired me, I never truly learned much from it. I think Elwood's work has this masterpiece quality to it, where the only things you see are the most necessary ones. It's like that quote from Michelangelo: "The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material."

Elwood's tunes are these perfect statues, with the superfluous material completely gone. And with Elwood retaining the aura of mystery regarding his background and influences, we are simply left enjoying his work and marveling at the illusion of its simplicity.

In a way, it's strange to know that the influence of Elwood's music is confined to our small community. And yet, whole generations of musicians in the 90s and early 2000s at one point or another loaded up sweetdre.xm in a tracker and were blown away, regardless of whether synthpop is even up their alley.

"Sweet Dreams" is, thus, true to its name. It is the north star, that tells each one of us: just follow your dreams, because you have everything you need to create beauty, today and right now. Just like Elwood, who used these lopsided samples and a moving Excel table to create something that is so powerful, innocent and true...