Announcing the release of 'Circles' featuring Scarlett Quinn by Franskaya

I am thrilled to announce the upcoming release of the pop single 'Circles,' featuring the beautiful voice of British singer Scarlett Quinn.

"Circles" is the result of a mandatory assignment completed at the end of the second session of my audio production course at Musitechnic Montréal in 2015. It was a prescribed exercise in orchestration and arrangement creation using an a cappella vocal excerpt from Loopmasters (Iconical Vocals Acapellas). Each student approached the task with the same vocal base, and the results, presented at the end of the session, were unsurprisingly diverse!

The lyrics can, of course, be interpreted in various ways, and it's challenging to decode precisely what the lyricist had in mind when writing them. However, it's possible that she describes herself, seeking comfort from her lover to ease the difficulties of breaking into the closed circles of the music industry. She's not alone. Thousands of other musicians and singers aspire to make a career in music but often face sometimes insurmountable challenges. In the arms of this lover, she asks him to teach her how to make her place in the industry. It's probably an artist with more experience. But we can guess that the singer's efforts remain in vain, and she takes refuge in love to alleviate the pain of her shattered dreams and disillusionment. These lyrics resonate with my own personal challenges. The lyrics can be found here..

During the creation of the arrangement, I had the idea to try adding other verses to the text, as the excerpt was very short. It was electrifying to discover the possibility of writing phrases like "No ordinary love for stars" and "I keep on chasing circles of wind" by drawing only from the short list of words available in the excerpt! The exercise allowed me to put into practice techniques learned at school, such as audio cutting, editing, and pitch adjustment with Melodyne or Logic Flex Pitch to change the sung notes. A significant amount of sound editing was necessary to accomplish this addition of new phrases. It was an instructive and exciting exercise. These passages may seem more mechanical, even "robotic," but I tried to make them as natural as possible through various effects and modules.

I had a lot of fun recording the synthesizer! Without being a virtuoso of the Wurlitzer or Rhodes, I wanted to weave some jovial flights of rapid notes on a more conventional sound, bringing a retro touch to the arrangement.

For composition and mixing, I used several software programs, including Cubase, Logic Pro X, Ableton Live, and Pro Tools. The "vintage" sound of the synthesizer is inspired by bands like The Doors, among others. The bass, deep and warm, quite cavernous, blends influences from the '80s and rhythm & blues double bass. The "stutter" effects on the vocals were created with Izotope Stutter Edit, and the vocal harmonies were fine-tuned with Celemony Melodyne and Apple Flex Pitch.

The singer's name is Scarlett Quinn. She is 36 years old and comes from Brighton, UK. She participated in the 2014 season of "X Factor," somewhat akin to "The Voice" on TVA here in Quebec. Since then, she has been rolling her way in the music industry and with her band. Many other versions of this song exist: head here to listen to a few of them on Spotify.

I hope you will enjoy this rhythmic, colorful, energetic, and jovial pop song.

The song will be available on October 6, 2023, on all major platforms. This is the original 2015 version. I always leave some production notes for each of the singles that can be read in the music section of this site. The song's lyrics are also available there.