Merry's gone Melancholy - Sever (Orchestral), Oscar and the Karma

This is a song that really speaks to me personally, because (as we all know,) I have a massive soft spot for instrumental/orchestral pieces. Oscar has really taken a new route with his music here, and I have to say that I really like where he's going.

Sever was originally an alt-rock, grungey track with the rest of the band, and it sounded a lot more like something we would hear them play live. However, Oscar has completely changed the style of this piece to create a song filled with tension, emotion, and vulnerability, and I'm SO here for it.

When Oscar sent me this version, I was so excited to hear it - I'm big on arrangement, which was one of the components that really stuck out to me. The layers of strings are seemingly endless and they all blend together effortlessly, and with each section the mix seems to spread even further. The softness and vastness of the instrumentation also pairs nicely with the lead vocal because they're in complementary spaces in the mix - the strings are really widely spread, and yet the vocal is so close. Oscar's grit in the main line also accentuates the tone that he has, as well as the smoothness of the rest of the track. It's a really interesting artistic choice - one that I absolutely approve of.

The point that my jaw hit the floor was when I told him that from a music theory standpoint, all the parts are beautiful - they work with each other together so well, all the intervals were just right, and he proceeded to tell me that he has NO theory knowledge and he just DID WHAT SOUNDED NICE. I never can comprehend how some people do that - it takes me years to come up with lines like that!

Long story short, I need to take some notes from this guy - this is a beautiful expanse of a song, which feels like an endless ocean in every direction. This song will be on repeat in the background when the seasonal depression hits and I need a good cry. Oscar says "maybe we'll invest some more time into sad string symphonies of otherwise heavy songs," and I'm probably the biggest fan of that idea (for now).