AURORA DEEP DIVE PT.6 - Analysing Structure, Texture & Instrumentation (streamed 2025 07 17)

TL;DW - AURORA uses a structure of Intro-Verse-Chorus-Verse-Chorus-Bridge-Chorus* for most of her songs; most also have pre-choruses; the second chorus is often twice as long as the first chorus; the second pre-chorus can also be shorter than the first. Each section is commonly made up of 4-bar or 8-bar sections, but the pre-choruses can be irregular.
*The final chorus is the most unreliable section; after the bridge, lots of different things can happen to finish the song, but another chorus is the most common.
Notable exceptions to this model are Through The Eyes Of A Child, Under The Water, Wisdom Cries, Churchyard and Infections Of A Different Kind.
AURORA's likeliest approach for texture is to begin sparse and to build towards choruses, with each successive version of a section having a thicker texture than the previous version; the bridge generally drops suddenly to a very thin texture after a thick chorus; often in the outro the texture will be its heaviest, but it will also reduce suddenly before the song ends. Sometimes, the bridge will continue the build from the 2nd chorus: if so, normally the outro chorus brings the texture down again before building for the finale. Large textural changes between sections are common, but they stay mostly static during sections. AURORA also uses big long reverbs all the time.
Notable exceptions to this model are Through The Eyes Of A Child, Under The Water, Wisdom Cries, Churchyard and Infections Of A Different Kind.
AURORA's instrumental palettes mostly stay consistent through each song, with extra elements being added as it continues. The most common instrumentation choices are:
Solo Voice
Harmony vocals
Piano
Electric Bass
Drums
Synths
Tinkly Bell-Like Percussion (e.g. Glockenspiel)
Electric Guitars (low in their range)
On the 2nd Album, AURORA has been using more a wider instrumental palette, including kalimba and harp among others.

Support AURORA:
https://www.aurora-music.com/

I go live on Twitch to talk about music every Tuesday/Thursday. Have a look over there if you like! If you would like to follow me, you certainly can.
twitch.tv/snowballfarming

I also have other links here:
https://linktr.ee/sebfayle

00:00 Intro
06:06 It Happened Quiet
40:55 Churchyard
1:06:37 Soft Universe
1:24:29 Infections of a Different Kind
1:40:40 WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED?