This site is all about music, music that we love and hate as long as it stirs some emotion it is worth listening to and talking about.
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This site is all about music, music that we love and hate as long as it stirs some emotion it is worth listening to and talking about.
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Area of Study 3 - Popular Music Overview of the set works and analysis Set works • Miles Davis: All Blues from Kind of Blue – Only available as a whole album from iTunes £7.99 or CD from Amazon.co.uk for £4.98. Also available is a 5.1 Dual Disk version that contains DVD footage and a documentary of the album. This costs £9.98 • Moby: Why does my heart feel so bad from the album Play on Mute Records (CDStumm172) also available as a single track on iTunes for 79p • Jeff Buckley: Grace from the album of the same name on Columbia Records also available as a single song download from iTunes for 79p Miles Davis – All Blues The legacy of Miles Davis is an unprecedented journey of music, creativity, innovation and personal charisma. His career spanned nearly five decades and he left an indelible impression on how we think about jazz and the jazz trumpet. Miles was responsible for or contributed heavily to five major movements in jazz from the 1940s to the 1970s: bebop, cool jazz, hard bop, hot jazz and fusion. In 1944 the eighteen year old Davis moved to New York to pursue a career in music. He enrolled at Julliard, but his real incentive was to be part of the new jazz being played: bebop. Bebop was music for listening rather than dancing and featured extended improvisation, frenetic tempos, complex and often dissonant harmonies and intricate rhythms. Davis formed friendships with two of the greatest exponents of bebop, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, who had been foremost in reshaping the style of jazz being played. Small groups (trios, quartets and quintets) would replace the popular big band format. The bebop music used fast tempos, favoured swing quavers and triplets and added several new elements to the jazz solo. Their use of alterations1 and chromaticism would become a trademark for the style. 1 Alteration is the technique of sharpening or flattening one of the tones or upper partials of a chord, e.g. b5, #5, b9, #9, #11 or b13.
Bill Evans John Coltrane Cannonball Adderley Miles Davis By and large, bebop songs were either a blues, an altered show tune or a composition based on the chord structure of a show tune. For example, “How High the Moon” formed the chord structure of “Ornithology” and slightly more loosely “Four”, “Honeysuckle Rose” became “Scrapple from the Apple” and “I Got Rhythm” became the basis of “Anthropology”. Bebop melodies usually had complicated themes, more or less like a solo, or sometimes, like “Four” used simple repetitive phrases or riffs in the melody. The rise of bebop coincided with the invention of the LP (long playing) vinyl record in 1948. Prior to 1948, records were made of a resin called shellac, which was made from the ground up shells of the shellac beetle. According to Howard Goodall in his book “Big Bangs” These long playing (LP) records gave a much better frequency response (high-fidelity). They rotated at 33.3 times a minute allowing more than 20 minutes of playing time per side (rather than the 3 minutes of the old 78rpm shellac discs). This was enough to allow a complete substantial work such as a symphony or a selection of bebop tunes, with extended solos, to be released on a single 12-inch disc for the first time. Kind of Blue In early 1959, jazz trumpeter Miles Davis laid down the foundation for a whole new style of jazz music. Through his "Kind of Blue" modal jazz was born. This record became a classic, at times showing its complexity through the soloing, but also allowing the educated listener to revel in the simplicity of the modes. Davis planted the seeds for this new style in his album "Milestones" but "Kind of Blue" showed that the style had matured and was more developed. From the introductory piano/bass duet to the final notes, it is clear that Davis captured something original. The album was recorded in only two sessions and went on without any prior rehearsal or music written out. Davis only provided general "sketches" of each song for the musicians, which they read and improvised over. For the task of recording, Davis put together an all-star lineup with some of the greatest jazz musicians in music history. The rhythm section was composed of Paul Chambers on bass, Jimmy Cobb on drums, and Bill Evans on piano, except for "Freddie Freeloader", which featured Wynton Kelly on piano. To round out the band was the horn section, led by Davis himself, and completed by alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, and tenor John Coltrane. The individual band members were great musicians in their own respect, but when shepherded by Davis for the "Kind of Blue" sessions, the music they produced was incredible. If "Kind of Blue" is a musical journey, then surely the rhythm section is the flight crew, insuring that the passengers have a smooth ride. Throughout the entire album, the beat is kept steady, the “comping” never clutters or inhibits the soloist, and the chord changes are right on the money. With a tight rhythm section laying a solid foundation, Davis, Adderley, and Coltrane are free to take their solos in any direction they choose. The third song on the album is "All Blues", which is a 12-bar blues, but unusually has a 6/8 time signature and has an overcast mood assisted by Davis' use of a Harmon mute and the piece's minor modal tonality even though the underlying chords are based around G major.
Students should realise that the 6/8 time signature is unusual as is the use of entirely 7th chords. The structure of All Blues is simple in that the piano/ bass vamp repeats throughout, providing a 4 bar introduction into each solo and/or chorus segment. This creates the hypnotic, floating quality of the piece where the listener is almost unaware of the robust 12-bar chord structure over which the brass explores modal based improvisation. The vamp is echoed by the 2 saxes at the start of the piece. Students should understand the “rhythm section” consisting drums, piano & bass and its work as a unit. It would be beneficial for students to have 1st hand experience of improvisation through activities in the classroom and they should be encouraged to compose in the jazz idiom showing awareness of swung quavers, repeated chord sequences, solo-ing, blue notes and modal harmony.
Where does Jazz & Blues Come from? The journey started in 1619 when the first slaves arrived in the colonies from places we now know as Sierra Leone, the Ivory Coast, the Gambia and Cameroon. The first shipment docked on the East coast of colonial America that same year. On board were twenty African slaves. A Dutch trader sold them to the governor of the English colony of Jamestown, Virginia, in exchange for food. Jamestown soon became a boomtown, as the successful planting and growing of tobacco brought riches. This boom created an urgent need for labour and that need led to the legalisation of slavery in Virginia and Maryland. By the 1680s, African slaves were mass imported to all the English colonies lining the East coast. By the time Britain forbade the trading of slaves, an estimated 600,000 Africans had been sent to North America. Unlike the Spanish and Portuguese, the English colonies forbade slaves to bring any of their heritage with them. It was demanded that they abandon their native language, faiths, customs, in short; let go of all culture. Any musical instruments, primarily drums, were confiscated by the ship’s captain before arrival in North America.
On arrival, slaves were forced to attend the Christian services and ceremonies of their slave owners and masters. Aside from prayer and instruction, the slaves also had to learn and sing European psalms and hymns, whilst in their minds the music and traditions of their homeland sang on defiantly. The psalms and hymns started to move to the format and structure of the music the slaves had left behind. The slave owners, hearing only successful conversion, were oblivious to the cultural traditions operating beneath the surface and more and more ways were subtly found to Africanize the Christian music, particularly when slaves stayed in the chapel after the slave masters had left and covertly adapt the music . Rhythm in particular became synonymous with rebellion and change. The slaves also crafted approximations of the instruments they had left behind. By nailing a wire to the side of a building they created an instrument called the “diddley-bow” (a name later used by the American blues guitarist Bo Diddley), which some consider to be an early form of guitar. Also created were primitive forms of the banjo, which started off as an approximation of the West African gonje instrument. The most common however was the use of their bodies as percussion instruments. At these after service meetings and at secret camps or bush meetings, where they also discussed their suffering and the cruelty of their masters, they fell into the habit of grafting these feelings to the European tunes and the African rhythm and delivery. And so a new form of ecstatic, religious music was formed. Without hymn books to refer to, a new tradition of spontaneously composing, many as call and response chants, first surfaced in the late 1700s and developed into the negro spiritual by the late 1800s. Ever since the slaves arrived in the English colonies, song and labour had been intertwined. The music was a distraction from the boredom and the suffering of hard labour, and different chants developed for different chores. The lyrical content was mostly to do with suffering, hope and protest and the texture was grinding and repetitive. A worker would sing out a solo line and then the rest of the labour team would repeat it back, all in time with the rhythm of the work they were doing. The slave owners permitted these work songs as they led to increased productivity.
A diddley-bow Gonje Slaves in transit The Blues The Blues came from this music. It journeyed through spirituals, field hollers, work songs and boat songs and with emancipation in 1865 it became the music of the free African-American. Free to move as they pleased, travelling musicians called songsters began hopping from plantation to plantation, performing hollers, moans, shouts and songs which were now considered traditional African-American music. Other singers joined minstrel shows also travelling the country. Through both pathways, the music of the slavery era quickly became a new music in which songs were sung about the hardships of life after emancipation. With access to instruments such as the banjo, harmonica and guitar, the same blue notes that slaves had sung were now used on the instruments to form a backing for the songs in a 12 bar structure, which along with bent, blue notes became the basis for blues. The blues spread across North America in the late 19th century and the first blues recording was taken by Thomas Edison in 1895. The man who played the biggest part in popularising the blues was cornet player and band leader WC Handy, with his song “Memphis Blues”, that was the first blues song to be published by a white publisher in 1912, that brought blues to the attention of both black and white Americans. A black American singer called Mamie Smith recorded the first blues hit “Crazy Blues” in 1920. It sold 100,000 copies in the first month and by the end of the year had sold a staggering million copies, mostly to African-Americans. When the record eventually peaked at sales of around the two million mark, the white recording industry sat up and took note of the new trend. Commerce spoke louder than the racial codes of the day and white labels began hunting for other Mamie Smiths. White record labels rushed to record popular club singers like Alberta Smith, Ma Rainey and most notably Bessie Smith. Bessie Smith was signed to Columbia Records in 1923. Her first recording, “Down Hearted Blues”, sold 780,000 copies in six months. For a time she was the highest paid African-American performer with a string of hits like “Backwater Blues”, “St. Louis Blues”, “Taint Nobody’s Bizness If I Do” and “Aggravatin’ Papa”. However, the impact of the Great Depression and the decline in the fad for female blues singers led Bessie Smith’s heyday to crash. By 1931 the Depression had crushed record sales from just over $120 million to just $6 million. Bessie Smith was dropped by Columbia and for the rest of her life she struggled to make ends meet. In 1937 Smith was involved in a fatal car crash and died from her injuries. Rumour has it that she was turned away from a whites only hospital and bled to death from her injuries.
Bessie Smith Ma Rainey WC Handy and his band Robert Johnson As the female African-American blues singers peaked, deep in the south, Robert Johnson was recording some of the most influential blues songs in the history of the genre. There are six things that everyone should know about Robert Johnson:
Ragtime and Swing Jazz As Bessie Smith and WC Handy fell from popularity and Johnson went to his grave murdered by poisoning, swing jazz started to emerge. It was the latest fad in jazz, which entered the American vocabulary in 1915. Like Rock ‘n’ Roll, jazz was believed to have started life as a slang term for sex (at first spelt jas), it emerged out of the ragtime era. Ragtime was a style of piano playing which had in turn emerged in the late 19th century, when march tunes were all the rage. Ragtime is a style of music with a 2/4 time and a syncopated melody popularised by Scott Joplin. During ragtime’s popularity, pianist, composer and bandleader Jelly Roll Morton later claimed to have invented jazz in the red-light district of New Orleans in 1902. In 1915 “Jelly Roll Blues” became what many people believe to be the first piece of jazz sheet music. In the same way that WC Handy and Bessie Smith introduced blues. And later Elvis Presley introduced Rock ‘n’ Roll to a mainstream audience; Jelly Roll Morton performed this function for jazz and the New Orleans and Dixieland style. The influence of jazz on Rock ‘n’ Roll is clear to see. They are structurally similar, have cultural similarities, both genders and races participate as musicians, composers and audience members and both have rebellious attitudes. The AABA form or rhythm changes is present in both, prominent soloing and the rhythm section are dominant in both and both emerged as a result of society’s problems such as racism and gender oppression. Jazz came together in New Orleans, on account of it being a busy port that many different cultures travelled through. The Creole music from the Caribbean, European classical music brought by immigrants from France and Italy, music travelling with minstrel and vaudeville shows, the ragtime that had been typified by Scott Joplin, African-American parade music, the blues and their origin in field hollers, work songs, hymns and spirituals all combined to form Jazz. During the 1920s jazz flourished and spread across the USA (as a result of the migration of African-Americans looking for work) through the popularity of artists such as Morton, Louis Armstrong and white cornet player Bix Beiderbecke and became known as Dixieland jazz, after the success of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band from 1917. Danceable, suited to good times and characterised by scintillating live performances, it introduced the public to the tastes that would also make rock ‘n’ roll so popular.
Scott Joplin’s Music Jelly Roll Morton Bix Beiderbecke Louis Armstrong Swing jazz came about after Dixieland jazz gradually morphed in the 1930s into the new trend for bigger bands. The bands became bigger to deal with larger venues, without amplification and so numbers rose from bands of five and seven, up to twelve or even sixteen members and to prevent members of these larger bands playing across each other, arrangers and bandleaders emerged, acting in the same capacity as an orchestral conductor. By 1935 the USA was coming out of the Great Depression and the new mood of optimism and swing jazz captured the mood of the nation. The arrival of radio pushed the music hard and gave the record labels an easy way to reach new markets. Suddenly, arrangers and bandleaders such as Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Chick Webb and Cab Calloway were the new stars. Just as important were the musicians who became known as great soloists, capable of improvising brilliant solo breaks. The invention of the jukebox played an important role in the spread of swing jazz as it enabled the public to sample music without buying. Members of the public found themselves enjoying music, mostly without their knowledge, that crossed the race divides. Once the idea of music being good or bad rather than black or white entered the public consciousness, listeners followed up on music they liked, often in the process finding themselves buying music that crossed the race barrier, something that would not have been possible in the flesh due to segregation. The Blues continues, Gospel and Boogie-Woogie Back in the Mississippi delta blues music continued to develop and by the mid 1930s had taken on a looser and yet harder and faster style. It was a raw sound but contained the prototype guitar riffs and stomping beat that would underpin Rock ‘n’ Roll later on. The style was called “rocking and reeling” and featured vocals that were reminiscent of the, now elaborate music of the black churches in the southern states. The development of the spiritual was also key to events later on. After the American Civil War ended, African-American colleges, such as Fisk University, began to collect the oral repertoire and handbook of Negro spirituals. They also had choirs that began to tour the north of the USA and Europe, singing them, and spreading the cultural history and traditions. From the popularising of the spiritual and the spread of the Pentecostal churches came a new style of black religious song, gospel, a combination of spirituals, Christian hymns rearranged with blue notes, syncopated rhythms and call and response vocal technique. Black gospel music helped create the vocal portion of Rock ‘n’ Roll. Boogie –Woogie was a piano playing style that developed between 1910 and 1930. The style involved a driving percussive rhythm played using the blues scale in the left hand, leaving the right hand to improvise over a melody. Boogie-Woogie became a big craze in the 1930s and the biggest stars were Chicago’s Jimmy Yancey and Albert Ammons. Although the style faded from popularity by the outbreak of the Second World War it was later a key ingredient in the rock ‘n’ roll style of Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis. Another key moment in the history of Blues was the first manufacturing of a prototype electric guitar in 1933 by Adolph Rickenbacker.
Cab Calloway Count Basie The Rickenbacker 1933 “frying pan” guitar Jimmy Yancey Be-Bop and Electric Blues By the mid 1940s, both Boogie-Woogie and swing were fading out in terms of popularity and in their place was a hunger for the new jazz sound of Be-Bop, as played by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonius Monk. Be-bop was a new hard, fast and minimal form of jazz that called for smaller bands and placed an immense importance on virtuosity. With the introduction of commercially available electric guitars and amplification in the mid to late 1940s, blues underwent a transformation becoming electric blues. Blues musicians, in northern cities, particularly Chicago, started playing the blues with an electric guitar, creating a harder, harsher sound. They used rhythm sections, bands consisting of bass, keyboards, drums and harmonica. Vocals and harmonica were amplified, again creating a more abrasive sound. This style of blues became synonymous with Chicago as it flourished in the early 1950s, typified by the music of artists such as John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters. Rhythm and Blues (R ‘n’ B) Rhythm and blues came into being as a popular term for a certain style of music in 1947 when Jerry Wexler, then a writer for Billboard magazine, used the phrase ‘rhythm and blues’ instead of the common term for African-American popular music, ‘race music’. A year later the former race music chart was renamed the rhythm and blues chart. In rhythm and blues, all the elements fused. In its most superficial meaning, rhythm and blues was exactly what it sounded like: blues played with a lively rhythm – speeded-up blues. More simply, it came to denote any music made by African-Americans. Although segregation was still in force, within the musical community the race barriers were disintegrating. Jazz in the 1950s With the birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll in the 1950s, jazz ceased to be the popular music of the day. Jazz musicians either became Rock ‘n’ Roll players or they stayed with jazz and started to experiment with more extreme forms of the genre. The modal “cool jazz” of Miles Davis, John Coltrane and friends is an example of this experimentation.
Charlie Parker & Miles Davis Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson Thelonius Monk Dizzy Gillespie Resources The Music of Miles Davis by Lex Giel (Hal Leonard). An American import but fantastically detailed analysis of Davis’ music. Video performances of All Blues on You Tube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJSemoMujQY and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEvqGVV3qsA A MIDI file of All Blues is on your course CD-ROM There are many valuable resources on the internet, including Wikipedia amongst others.
Moby – Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad? Richard Melville Hall, also known as Moby (born September 11, 1965 in Harlem, New York) is an American DJ, singer-songwriter and musician. He plays keyboard, guitar, bass guitar and drums. After eight top 40 singles in the UK in the 1990s he released the album Play, in 1999, which sold 9 million copies worldwide. His follow up albums, 18, Hotel, and Last Night sold 6 million copies and have achieved gold and platinum status in over 30 countries. According to Hall, his middle name and the nickname "Moby" were given to him by his parents because of an ancestral relationship to Moby Dick author Herman Melville: "The basis for Richard Melville Hall – and for Moby – is that supposedly Herman Melville was my great-great-great-granduncle."
Play is the sixth studio album by Moby. While some of Moby's earlier work garnered critical and commercial success within the electronic dance music scene, Play was his first true pop success. The album introduced Moby to a worldwide mainstream audience, not only through hit singles, but also through unprecedented licensing of his music in films, television and commercial advertisements. One of the notable aspects of Play, as opposed to other electronic albums of the time, was the way in which it combined old gospel and folk music rhythms with modern house sensibilities. Moby sampled heavily from the collected field recordings of Alan Lomax in songs such as "Honey," "Find My Baby," "Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?" and "Natural Blues," while the track "Run On" was inspired by the traditional "God's Gonna Cut You Down." The album also has more purely electronic tracks, as well as the rock-influenced single "South Side" and the more ambient "Porcelain." Inside the booklet included with the album, there are five short essays written by Moby, on topics such as veganism, fundamentalism, and humanitarianism. After the essays is a disclaimer written by Moby: "These essays are not really related to the music, so if you hate the essays you might still like the music, and if you like the essays you might hate the music. Who knows, maybe by some bizarre twist of fate you'll like them both." Influences Moby’s work is influenced by many other genres but notably Ambient Music, Hip-Hop and Techno. AMBIENT Ambient music is a musical genre in which sound is more important than notes. It is generally identifiable as being broadly atmospheric and environmental in nature. Ambient music evolved from early 20th century forms of semi-audible music, from the impressionism of Erik Satie, through "musique concrete" and the minimalism of Terry Riley and Philip Glass, and Brian Eno's deliberate sub-audible approach. Later developments found the dreamy non-linear elements of ambient music applied to some forms of rhythmic music presented in chill-out rooms at raves and other dance events, but always with the primary feature that the music is intended to drift in and out of the listener's awareness while creating its effect on the listener's consciousness. Brian Eno is generally credited with coining the term "ambient music" in the mid-1970s to refer to music that, as he stated, can be either "actively listened to with attention or as easily ignored, depending on the choice of the listener", and that exists on the "cusp between melody and texture." Eno, who describes himself as a "non-musician", termed his experiments in sound as "treatments" rather than as traditional performances. Eno used the word "ambient" to describe music that creates an atmosphere that puts the listener into a different state of mind; having chosen the word based on the Latin term "ambire", "to surround". More recently (since 1989) Ambient music has re-established itself to many as part of the dance music scene when beats were dropped over the atmospheric content and it was relabelled by record companies and the media as "chill-out" music. The market has since been flooded with ambient / chill-out compilations and clubs such as Ibiza's Café del Mar play there own brand of this music as the sun comes up after a hard nights clubbing. Ambient music eventually became a victim of its own success and the public tired of the sound, the genre now is heard on television documentaries and club "chill-out" rooms.
Brian Eno in the 1970s Eno's "77 Million Paintings" Rap and Hip-hop Hip-hop is a culture, not a form of music, and although it does encompass rap it also embraces dancing, language and fashion. Consequently, if you want to produce rap music it has very little to do with programming some MIDI patterns and rapping over the top. To better understand why this is, it’s vital to know a little about the history and culture behind it all. Hip-hop, as a culture, can be defined as consisting of four distinct elements: DJ’ing, breaking, graffiti and MC’ing (emceeing). The roots of the DJ’ing element can be traced back to 1950s Jamaica, where the “DJs” began to experiment with groove elements of records, resulting in the creation of reggae, ska and the rock steady beat. In 1968 this became even more experimental when King Tubby created the first ever “dub” record by dropping out all the vocals from the acetate discs he was to press (often called “dub” plates). He then overdubbed sound effects and snippets of other music to create a musical pastiche that became known as Dub. Dub is a musical style that is still produced, notably by the Producer and DJ Lee “Scratch” Perry.
King Tubby pictured with an acetate press Lee “Scratch” Perry in the Ark studio The Wailers first release in 1965 At this same time many Jamaicans were emigrating to the USA, taking these new ideas with them to the ghettos of New York. One particular immigrant, Kool Herc, began to DJ at parties throughout the ghettos and used to chant rhymes over the top of the instrumental breaks of the records he played (The venue at 1520 Sedgwick Ave. South Bronx, New York is attributed as being the birthplace of Hip-hop). As many of these breaks were only short, in 1974 he decided to play two copies of the same record on two decks and then use a mixer to switch between them, in effect creating a longer break beat to rhyme over. Almost simultaneously, in a neighbouring ghetto, Afrika Bambaataa founded the collective Zulu Nation, consisting of a group of DJs, break dancers, MCs and graffiti artists, and offered an alternative to the current street gang culture to express themselves in various ways.
Kool Herc Afrika Bambaataa Grandmaster Flash Inspired by these new DJ’ing tactics and culture, DJ Grandmaster Flash adopted the style and contorted it into a continuous stream of break beats. This allowed MCs to rhyme over the top of the beats to warm up the crowds, permitting the DJ to concentrate on developing new techniques such as “beat juggling”, “scratching”, “cutting” and “breakdown”. It is unknown who invented all these new techniques, but it was Grandmaster Flash who introduced this new complex form of DJ’ing to the mass market with the release of “The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel” in 1981. These continual break beats also gave rise to a new dance style known as breaking (a.k.a. B-boying), which consisted of a combination of fancy, complex footwork, spins and balancing on hands, head or shoulders. This form of dancing was all encompassed and renamed by the media as “break dancing”. Alongside this new music grew another part of hip-hop culture, graffiti. To many, the explosion of graffiti is accredited to TAKI 183 and the publicity he received in The New York Times after “tagging” numerous trains in the subway. The last element of Hip-hop is derived from MC’ing. Although the media considers rap to be the same as MC’ing, rap is only one element of it. Indeed MC’ing encapsulates everything from simply talking over the beats, rapping, or using your voice as an instrument (Human Beat Box). As touched upon, originally MC’ing was used to entertain the crowds by accompanying the break beats rather than taking the focus away from them. Although it would be easy to say that rap developed from this basic form of MC’ing, to many it actually existed long before Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash began to rhyme over the breaks. Indeed, it’s believed to have originated in Jamaica, where stories were told in rhymes, otherwise known as “toasts”. In 1974 these were developed into the very first forms of rapping, where the youth would put together boastful rhymes to sit over the top of break beats in an effort to upstage the previous rapper. The first commercial pressing of rap music was by the Fatback Band in 1979 with the title “King Tim III”, but it took the Sugar Hill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight”, released later that year before rapping came to the attention of larger record labels as a viable and acceptable (in other words lucrative) form of music. Over the following years, rap acts such as NWA, Ice T and Public Enemy brought rap to the forefront of music and demanded a bigger audience through their often hotly debated rhymes that were seen as glamorising violence, prostitution and guns. Techno Originally a term used by the German band Kraftwerk to describe how they mixed electronic instruments together to create pop music. In dance music it is a style, not dissimilar to House, which evolved in the early 1990s and has a minimalist, mechanical quality. With the evolution of technology it has become more complex, with more and more rhythms laid on top of one another, so that the entire recording studio becomes like a single instrument with which to experiment.
Kraftwerk DJ Tiesto Analysis – Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad? “Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?” The song is relatively simple in structure, using only an introduction, verse and chorus. The only break in this structure is a single bar pedal D after the second group of verses.
Structure of the song Intro: 8 bars Verse (1st vocal sample): 8 bars x 4 Chorus (2nd vocal sample): 8 bars x 2 Verse: 8 bars x 2 Single bar pedal D Chorus: 8 bars x 3 Verse: 8 bars Harmony Piano Intro
Verse
Chorus
Texture The texture of the piece builds gradually from a solo piano in the intro and the first verse with the addition of more instruments being added at each pass of the 8-bar verse. Intro – Piano Verse 1st 8 bars – Piano and the first of the vocal samples “Why does my heart etc.” 2nd 8 bars – hip-hop style rhythm track enters with addition of a sub bass and descending string motif 3rd 8 bars – a chordal string wash is added 4th 8 bars – addition of a syncopated keyboard rhythm to add more movement Chorus – the second vocal sample with full backing as built over the last few verses Verse x2 – as per 4th pass above Single bridge bar – a simple low pedal D for 4 beats Chorus repeat with the fuller texture, the second four bars over chords F & C played for an additional third time Final verse is much simpler with just the first vocal sample and a synth wash
Samples The two audio vocal samples used are from Alan Lomax’s collection of field recordings of a 1950s gospel choir. The samples have been left in their original state with elements of tape and atmospheric noise. The drums have probably been sampled from a hip-hop record to give an urban feel to the rhythm section. This sample may have been manipulated to fit to the tempo of the track. Technology Reverb has been used on the piano and the vocal to give an impression of space. After the first chorus, the verse returns with a second instance of the melody in a Q&A form that has been modified using delay (echo), EQ, compression and a filter. The drum tracks or breakbeats have been sequenced using a drum machine with single hit drum samples taken from other recordings. A sequencer such as SONAR, Logic or Pro Tools would have been used to manage the individual tracks in the recording. EQ EQ is short for Equalisation and is a device that either boosts or cuts specific frequencies, be they bass, treble or mid-range in much the same way as the tone controls on an old stereo system. If you have a mixing desk, each channel will have a selection of High, Mid and Low knobs or with a software “plug-in” (that software packages such as SONAR, Cubase and Logic have within them) you can divide a sound into multiple frequencies in order to achieve the desired sound.
A 10 Channel EQ Software Plug-in A Mixing desk showing the EQ section
Reverb Short for reverberation, which itself refers to the reflection of sound off every surface it touches. If you stand in a church and sing a note, the sound of your voice that you hear after you have stopped singing the note is reverb or reverberation. This can be artificially created with an effects unit or software plug-in.
Delay Also known as echo, it has the effect of replaying a sound or phrase in a similar way to chorus but with multiple instances of the original sound each one with a delayed start (hence delay) and a gradual weakening of the original sound.
A Delay Plug-In showing the six instances of delay over six seconds, each pair quieter than the last, so delay 1&2 would be 3 decibels quieter than the original sound, delays 3&4 would be 6 decibels quieter and delays 5&6 9db quieter. Breakbeats Breakbeats is a term used to describe a collection of sub-genres of electronic music, usually characterized by the use of a non-quantized 4/4 drum pattern (as opposed to the steady beat of house or trance). These rhythms may be characterized by their use of syncopation and polyrhythms, which are prominent in music of African origin. Filtering Filtering is gating with a little more finesse. It usually consists of a Low-pass filter, which allows only frequencies below a definable cut-off point to pass, and a high-pass filter, which allows only frequencies above a different cut-off point. Each of the two filters can be used independently or together to create what is called a band-pass (frequencies in a certain band may only pass through it).The resulting sound is whatever fits between the two filters. This can also be used in reverse to create what is called a notch which removes in the created band. It can be used for taming unruly bass and drum sounds to great effect, but is mostly used for warping and mangling sounds to make other sounds, a very versatile but complex piece of equipment.
The Antares Filter, showing four different filters applied to a sound (yellow, blue, red, green)
Resources To view the original video that accompanied the song go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqLvbpcsPj4 Moby’s website http://www.moby.com/ Wikipedia Entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moby On your course CD-Rom is a MIDI file of the song (fairly average but useable) from the internet and a Sibelius 5 file that I created for the musical analysis. Jeff Buckley – Grace Jeffrey Scott Buckley (November 17, 1966 – May 29, 1997) was an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. He was the son of Tim Buckley, also a musician. Buckley gained popularity in the early 1990s by playing cover versions at venues in Manhattan's East Village and he gradually focused more on his own material. After much interest from record labels he signed with Columbia and, after recruiting a band, recorded his debut studio album, Grace. Over the following two years, the band toured widely to promote the album, including concerts in the U.S., Europe, Japan and Australia. In 1997, he stopped touring and moved to Memphis, Tennessee, to experiment with new material for a second album. During his time there, he recorded many four-track demos and completed his third recording session for his new album with his band, with Tom Verlaine as producer. While awaiting the arrival of his band from New York, he drowned during an evening swim in the Wolf River. His body was found on June 4, 1997. Since his death, there have been many posthumous releases of his material, including a collection of four-track demos and studio recordings for his unfinished second album My Sweetheart the Drunk and expansions of debut album Grace and his Live at Sin-é EP. Buckley's first No.1 came posthumously in March 2008 when "Hallelujah" topped Billboard's Hot Digital Songs following a performance of the song on American Idol. Buckley and his work continue to remain popular and regularly featured in 'greatest' lists in the music press. The song “Hallelujah”, written by Leonard Cohen, was used in the film “Shreck”. Grace is the first and only complete studio album by Jeff Buckley, released on August 23, 1994. The album is named after the title track, "Grace," co-written by Buckley and Gary Lucas. While the album initially had poor sales, only peaking at No.149 in the U.S., it received wide critical acclaim. It has now sold over 2 million copies worldwide. An extended version of the album (subtitled Legacy Edition) celebrating its tenth anniversary was released in 2004, and it peaked at No.44 in the UK. The musicians on the album Grace were: Jeff Buckley - vocals, guitar, organ, Appalachian dulcimer, harmonium, tabla (track 10) Mick Grondahl - bass Michael Tighe - guitar Matt Johnson - percussion, drums, vibraphone (track 10) Gary Lucas - "Magical Guitarness" (tracks 1, 2) Karl Berger - string arrangements Loris Holland - organ (track 7) Misha Masud - tabla (track 10) The song "Grace" is the title track from the album and it was the album's first single, and was also released as a video. Written about when he moved from L.A. to New York to live with someone he loved, it is about not being afraid of what lies ahead in your life, and taking that leap, in his own words "(It's about) not feeling so bad about your own mortality when you have true love."
Analysis – Grace Structure The song is in compound time 6/8 which is comparatively unusual for a pop / rock song. The verses and middle sections are predominantly 12 bars long with a variable length chorus. Intro – 14 bars Verse 1 – 12 bars Middle Section 1 – 12 bars Chorus 1 – 10 bars Intro 2 – 14 bars Verse 2 – 12 bars Middle Section 2 – 12 Bars Chorus 2 – 10 bars Interlude – 22 bars Intro – 14 bars Verse 3 – 10 bars Guitar Solo – 16 bars Chorus 3 – 14 bars Coda – 2 bars Harmony The harmony of the song is quite complex and contains multiple key changes and unusual chords, particularly in the Middle Section and Chorus. Intro The intro starts with an ascending pattern of minor chords with a semiquaver ostinato for four bars followed by a two bar sustained chord Fm / | / / | Gm / | / / | Em / | This is followed by a D major rhythmic pattern that continues for seven bars followed by a D pattern with a suspended 4th as a pre-cursor to the verse.
Verse The verse does not follow a regular harmonic pattern (below) with the unrelated chords of Em / FMaj9 / and Eb being used.
Middle Section The middle section has two six bar patterns that start with an ascending sequence Em F#dim G6 A6 before settling on the dominant (Bm) and then the subdominant (A6/9) before returning to Em for two bars.
Chorus The chorus starts with an Fmaj9 chord, resolving down to Em in the second bar. This is followed by an unrelated Eb chord for a beat followed by an Em chord with Eb in the bass which creates an interesting clash. This bar is then repeated, which reassures the listener that it was deliberate. The first two chords are then repeated followed by two bars of Eb before returning to the tonic Em chord. The deliberate dissonance creates an air of unease to emphasise the “Wait in the fire” repeated lyrics. The use of chords such as the Em/Eb is unusual outside of modern jazz and shows that Jeff Buckley has more than just rock and pop influences.
Interlude The interlude follows the same chordal pattern as the first four bars of the middle section. These four bars are repeated three times and then there are two bars of the Em pattern (tonic) before the next surprise of a return to the introduction with an Fm chord. Guitar Solo The guitar solo follows the same harmonic sequence as the chorus. Texture and Instrumentation Intro 1 -The introduction starts with the ostinato played by a clean electric guitar with the underlying chords played by a lightly distorted electric guitar. In the background is an ghostly sounding synth pad creating a mysterious feel to the first four bars. At bar 6 the whole band (2 guitars, bass guitar, synth and drums) hit a sforzando chord for two bars. This is followed by a lighter texture that includes a repeating guitar riff played by a clean electric guitar and a metal strung acoustic guitar accompanied by bass guitar and drums. Verse 1 – The texture thins to allow the vocal to be prominent, still using the same instruments as the second part of the introduction but with the return of the ghostly synth and an underlying string synth wash. Middle section 1 – Full band but without the ghostly synth Chorus 1 – Full band throughout Intro 2 – As Intro 1 Verse 2 – As Verse 1 but with more aggressive use of the synth sound, particularly the portamento downward glides Middle section 2 – Addition of a string wash and clean almost jazz guitar and pizzicato strings interjections Chorus 2 – As chorus 1 but with a big build up into the Interlude Interlude – The introduction of vocal harmonies over a loud rhythm section followed by vocal improvisation some use of vocal compression and EQ in the latter stages of the section Intro 3 – this time with percussive guitar backing and drum rim sounds in the first four bars Verse 3 – A more dramatic final verse with guitar power chords and an improvised distorted electric guitar obligato Guitar solo – Starts as the main focus but is soon overtaken by the spectacular range of the vocals. A phaser or flanger effect is used on the guitar towards the latter stages Chorus 3 – The vocal improvisation continues over the backing vocal chorus and the full band as in the previous section Coda – two bars of vocal ornamentation over a single chord brings the song to an abrupt close Effects Used Distortion Distortion is the effect you get if you overload a speaker or microphone of any kind. If you have an old cassette recorder with a built in microphone, record yourself shouting into the microphone at close range. The result on hearing it back will be distortion. Distortion sounds great on a rock lead guitar but lousy on a recording of a string quartet! Flanger or Phaser A flanger doubles a sound in the same way as Chorus, but then it plays both instances back with a changing pitch and strength. This gives a “whooshing” effect and a phasing quality. Early Drum ‘n’ bass producers used it to death! Resources The Wikipedia entry for Jeff Buckley can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Buckley A video of the song can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siNsgbIWhAQ Sheet music available from musicnotes.com approx $4.90
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