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Soul

Origins

Soul began in the 1950 in America and is essentially a secular version of gospel music with some jazz and blues elements. Atlantic, Stax and Motown were major labels in the soul world, and they each developed their own signature sound.

Musical Fingerprints

Instrumentation: Vocals (main and backing), piano, bass guitar, electric guitar, drums, strings, brass/horn section, Hammond organ.

Texture: Thick textures.

Melody: Use of call and response (gospel influence). Bass lines are mostly riff based. Vocalists often improvise.

Harmony: Use of pentatonic scales (jazz influence) and blue notes (blues influence)

Technological Fingerprints

In the early days of soul, plate reverb would have been used to add reverb to recordings.

Even though technology has developed to allow for overdubbing and multitracking, some (not all) soul artists/producers still prefer to record the whole ensemble at once in an ambient style as it maintains the ‘live’ feel.

Extreme panning is often applied to multitrack recordings.

Most recordings are quite heavily compressed.

Artists

Ella Fitzgerald, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder.

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Soul

Origins

Musical Fingerprints

Technological Fingerprints

Artists

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