Hello, my name is Trevor de Clercq. “The Science of Songwriting” is my blog about popular music theory and analysis. I am interested in exploring how songs are written and how to write better songs. My posts are perhaps overly technical once in awhile, but I try to include enough musical examples and general conclusions so that those without a background in music theory can still get the basic gist. I am a Sproull Fellow at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY working towards my PhD in music theory. This web site also includes samples of my own songwriting as well as academic work.

Why midside? Mid-Side is a microphone technique that I have used a lot on my more recent recordings, especially the Christmas songs and the more folk-oriented stuff. Mid-Side involves the use of coincident microphone capsules and is thus amplitude-based stereophony. The main advantage of Mid-Side is that it allows the balance between the direct and room sound to be modified post-recording in the mixing stage. My NYU Master’s thesis explored the use of Mid-Side techniques when using real-world microphones with inherently non-ideal polar patterns.

Cheers,
Trevor de Clercq

N.B. Short, edited mp3 files are available in all of my posts to illustrate particular points in the analyses. Additionally, these mp3 samples are embedded in a streaming audio player to make download more difficult. These are mp3s of copyrighted material, but I believe my use of them here constitutes “fair use” since the mp3s are excerpts only and used in an academic/journalistic fashion. Please do not hesitate to contact me at trevordeclercq@yahoo.com if you disagree with my definition of “fair use” and wish to have any musical examples removed from this web site.