*This is part of an on going series highlighting some unique techniques to make the chorus in a song sound more prominent than the verses. For Part 1 go here.
Harmony is one of the classic techniques to make a chorus stand out. The typical way is to add a harmony only during the chorus, thus further juxtaposing the chorus against the verse parts of a song. But there are some neat ways of utilizing this that goes against the normal way of doing it... But first, what's the normal way?
One thing that is almost always true with harmonies, is that the harmony takes the secondary/background role. In other words, the main vocal melody line is either equal to, or more prominent than, the harmony vocal line(or lines). Otherwise the harmonized vocal line would...sound like the main vocal line instead.
*Even Barbershop Quartets - which can sometimes get confusing in terms of what the "main" vocal line is - have the main vocal line, and three harmony lines, so the main vocal line is still "equal" to the other lines (I should do an entry on Barbershops, they are quite fascinating...). Either way, it's really clear how once you overwhelm the main vocal line, it would get really confusing.*
So what is the normal thing to do if you added a choir to back the main vocal line? When there is a harmony to be sung, the choir would be split in half - with one half singing the harmony, and the other singing the main vocal line. All to prevent the main vocal line from getting drowned out, or confused with the harmony.
But there's a wonderful exception to this rule, and it is a great example because of it's sheer simplicity.
"Weighty Ghost" by the band Wintersleep is a song with 2 chords. That's right, only 2 in the whole entire song. The melody is incredibly simple as well...really repetitive and kind of bland..and the pre-chorus part is the exact same melody as the chorus...yet I think it's a great song, with an absolutely killer chorus. Why? because of the way harmony is used...which is a little different, but super effective (I also think the drum pattern, and the stomps/hand claps add to it, but that's for another post).
What Weighty Ghost does during the chorus, is to have a small choir (or the rest of the band anyway) to sing the harmony, essentially drowning out the main vocal line during the chorus. Exact opposite of what you're supposed to do... but it works.
Here's the song. When you listen to it, pay attention to the vocal lines from 32 seconds to 42 seconds. This will be the exact same melody as the chorus, with 2 exceptions - the lyrics are different, and the harmony is sung by one person. It's neat, but doesn't truly push the chorus. Then pay attention when the chorus hits right after - there's an entire group singing only the harmony, but it somehow really really works. *I was going to post one of the amateur covers on youtube on here, to show what it sounds like without the choir harmony, but I think posting anything on this blog as a "bad" example would go against the spirit of this blog...so I didn't.
It works because it's a simple melody line. It works because the pre-chorus is exactly the same melody but with only one person singing a harmony. That extra boost of harmony somehow pushes the songs even further, thus establishing the chorus section as the most prominent part of the song.
Neat use of breaking the "rule" of harmony.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Music made with Tools
As I've shown in various other posts, you can pretty much sample any sound out there and make it into a musical piece.
Some clever folks over at Craftsman decided to make a musical piece out of sounds that can be made with their tools. Here it is:
You can also make your own mix of the sounds over at their website here.. Neat little marketing campaign..
Some clever folks over at Craftsman decided to make a musical piece out of sounds that can be made with their tools. Here it is:
You can also make your own mix of the sounds over at their website here.. Neat little marketing campaign..
Friday, July 23, 2010
Pushing the Chorus - Part 1 Introduction
When you hear a song for the first time, how is it that you are able to recognize a specific part of it as "the chorus"? What is it that lets you know when the chorus of a song begins and ends?
The simplest answer is that you've been socialized to recognize the structure of a pop song. Think about how many pop songs you have heard in your life (and by pop songs, I mean anything that isn't classical, essentially). All that listening has given you expectations on how songs are supposed to be structured - and the most important part is the chorus. You don't expect the chorus to be the first thing you hear in a song (with some exception, such as when it's part of an introduction phrase). Instead, you expect the first few melodic lines to be the same thing over and over...known as the Verse. After that, a pre-chorus section might follow, or the song might go straight to the chorus. Either way, the modern listener is extremely adapted to recognizing the chorus section of a song.
Maybe you don't think that recognizing the chorus is a big deal. Indeed, the modern pop structure (verse-chorus-verse-chorus pattern) might seem straight forward and obvious, but people 150 years ago would have been dumbfounded listening to modern pop structure. Why? Because it doesn't fit with the structures they were used to, such as Fugues and Sonata forms (or put simply, Classical music structures). If you ever thought that classical music was hard to follow, it's not your fault - the modern musical landscape makes it hard for most listeners to become acquainted with classical music structures. In fact, you might be surprised to know that classical music has many more restrictions and many more rules about the structure of the piece than pop songs do. Once you learn the structure of classical music, it becomes easy to follow because you know what's coming next....in the same way that we can recognize a chorus, and a verse..etc.
But songs are not just patterns of musical notes. If they were, we would be quite content looking at musical notation, instead of needing to hear them. The chorus isn't just the thing that follows the verse...it's the emotional highpoint of a song, the essence of the entire piece. We've all heard songs that have great verses...but mediocre choruses that don't hit that musical and emotional highpoint.
So how do you create a musical and emotional highpoint? Well, that's what artists have been trying to figure out for decades. But sometimes the secret isn't in the musical notes, or the structure of the song....but ingenious tricks that can be utilized in the production of the song itself. That isn't to say that these songs have bad choruses - but that the emotional highpoint is established much more prominently through these production techniques.
In the next few posts, I will be trying something new: A Series! I'll be talking about some songs that utilize really neat techniques to make a chorus sound... like a Chorus. You might be surprised at the implications! Stay tuned....
The simplest answer is that you've been socialized to recognize the structure of a pop song. Think about how many pop songs you have heard in your life (and by pop songs, I mean anything that isn't classical, essentially). All that listening has given you expectations on how songs are supposed to be structured - and the most important part is the chorus. You don't expect the chorus to be the first thing you hear in a song (with some exception, such as when it's part of an introduction phrase). Instead, you expect the first few melodic lines to be the same thing over and over...known as the Verse. After that, a pre-chorus section might follow, or the song might go straight to the chorus. Either way, the modern listener is extremely adapted to recognizing the chorus section of a song.
Maybe you don't think that recognizing the chorus is a big deal. Indeed, the modern pop structure (verse-chorus-verse-chorus pattern) might seem straight forward and obvious, but people 150 years ago would have been dumbfounded listening to modern pop structure. Why? Because it doesn't fit with the structures they were used to, such as Fugues and Sonata forms (or put simply, Classical music structures). If you ever thought that classical music was hard to follow, it's not your fault - the modern musical landscape makes it hard for most listeners to become acquainted with classical music structures. In fact, you might be surprised to know that classical music has many more restrictions and many more rules about the structure of the piece than pop songs do. Once you learn the structure of classical music, it becomes easy to follow because you know what's coming next....in the same way that we can recognize a chorus, and a verse..etc.
But songs are not just patterns of musical notes. If they were, we would be quite content looking at musical notation, instead of needing to hear them. The chorus isn't just the thing that follows the verse...it's the emotional highpoint of a song, the essence of the entire piece. We've all heard songs that have great verses...but mediocre choruses that don't hit that musical and emotional highpoint.
So how do you create a musical and emotional highpoint? Well, that's what artists have been trying to figure out for decades. But sometimes the secret isn't in the musical notes, or the structure of the song....but ingenious tricks that can be utilized in the production of the song itself. That isn't to say that these songs have bad choruses - but that the emotional highpoint is established much more prominently through these production techniques.
In the next few posts, I will be trying something new: A Series! I'll be talking about some songs that utilize really neat techniques to make a chorus sound... like a Chorus. You might be surprised at the implications! Stay tuned....
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Plagiarisng Africa: A Habit of the Music Industry
The FIFA world cup is now into it's final stages, with only a handful of countries left to compete for the worlds biggest sporting prize. FIFA has chosen a few songs as official anthems for this particular world cup, and I'm sure most people have heard them by now. One of them is performed by Shakira called "Waka Waka (This Time For Africa)".
It's a very catchy song, but what I want to talk about is it's origins. I'm not going to be saying anything new here to be honest - it's been said before in many other forums, books, news articles and documentaries - but I feel like it still needs repeating, because this is a trend in the music industry that really irks me.
The music industry seems to be very strict about copyright law, to the point that prominent artists such as CCR can be sued for plagiarizing themselves by lawyers in the music biz. And let's not even get into the horror stories of students being sued for millions in damages for having downloaded mp3s illegally. If there was anything they are extremely sensitive about, it would be respecting copyright and proper compensation to the rightful creators of the music right?
Wrong. I would argue that the most prominent criminals - when it comes to respecting copyright law in music - is the music industry itself. For proof, all we need to do is look towards Africa... and the Shakira song is unfortunately another continuation of the trend. First, listen to the chorus of "Waka Waka" by Shakira:
Now listen to the last section of Zangalewa by a Cameroonian band called the Golden Sounds, released in 1985:
These two songs are not just similar - the lyrics are even the same! You would think that the big lawyers behind Sony and Shakira would call up the Golden Sounds and ask for permission, give them writing credit, and pay them royalties...but no. Instead, they never asked for permission, writing credit was not given, nor did they pay the Golden Sounds the royalties that they deserved. Given how often the music industry flaunts copyright law, you would think they actually respect it. Turns out, they just care about it when it works for them, and ignores it when it's against them.
And this is far, far from the first time this has happened. Without getting into too much detail, such luminaries such as James Brown, Timbaland and Michael Jackson have been caught lifting/stealing entire sections and lyrics from African artists without paying the original creators. And those are just the examples that got caught (I would like to clarify that I have nothing against Shakira or these other artists. The problem really is on the industry side of things, I think). There's very little an artist in a developing world can do to force a major label in the West to pay royalties or get writing credit... and that's not even the most heinous example of this practice. For the worst, hard hitting, unjust example of the music industry ignoring copyright, we go back to South Africa, and the song "Mbube".
"Mbube" is a song written by Solomon Popoli Linda, a South African Zulu musician and composer, way back in 1939. Doesn't ring a bell? Take a listen:
This song has been covered a dozen times, been in countless movies, made millions of dollars for film and music companies, and is even in music textbooks...but Solomon Linda died penniless in complete poverty, unrecognized as the original composer. Solomon Linda was completely forgotten while the music industry stole his creation, and left the artist to die. Indeed, up until a South African journalist named Rian Malan wrote an article in the Rolling Stone about this (in 2000!), did this reality come to light. This led to the PBS documentary "A Lion's Trail", which also highlighted the unjust usage of Linda's song, the poverty that he and his descendants live/d in, and the millions that the song has made for the industry (I highly recommend this documentary, it's quite good). Fortunately, in 2006 Linda's heirs sued Disney and Abilene Music (over the use of the song in "The Lion King") and a settlement was reached, ensuring the acknowledgment of Linda as the original composer, and payments for all past uses of the song.
...but again, this happened only because a major media outlet enabled this to happen. Without it, it's extremely difficult for artists in developing countries - or heck, any other country really - to sue the music industry for stealing their work. Yet the music industry will go after downloaders with the very same law that the industry breaks all the time. Hypocritical, to say the least.
Africa has such a rich musical history, and it keeps growing, evolving, and expanding in it's artistry (as an aside: it's a shame that most people seem to think that there's such a thing as an "African" sound.....when there's really quite a diverse set of musical traditions that are quite different, depending on where you are on the continent). They should be compensated the same way that any Western composer would be.
The good news however, is that you - yes you are all a part of an amazing era where information can't be monopolized by a select few. While it's true that Sony did not acknowledge the Golden Sounds, thanks to the power of youtube and the internet, this discrepancy quickly spread over the internet and has now been addressed. The writers are credited, and compensation has been negotiated with the original writers. What took decades for "Mbube", took only a couple months for Zangalewa. Cool.
By the way, there's a bittersweet irony in all of this. The lyrics in Zangalewa - which Waka Waka stole in whole - are actually about White colonial oppression and corruption, written in the native language of Fang. That's why in the video they are dressed as old men with white beards.
It's a very catchy song, but what I want to talk about is it's origins. I'm not going to be saying anything new here to be honest - it's been said before in many other forums, books, news articles and documentaries - but I feel like it still needs repeating, because this is a trend in the music industry that really irks me.
The music industry seems to be very strict about copyright law, to the point that prominent artists such as CCR can be sued for plagiarizing themselves by lawyers in the music biz. And let's not even get into the horror stories of students being sued for millions in damages for having downloaded mp3s illegally. If there was anything they are extremely sensitive about, it would be respecting copyright and proper compensation to the rightful creators of the music right?
Wrong. I would argue that the most prominent criminals - when it comes to respecting copyright law in music - is the music industry itself. For proof, all we need to do is look towards Africa... and the Shakira song is unfortunately another continuation of the trend. First, listen to the chorus of "Waka Waka" by Shakira:
Now listen to the last section of Zangalewa by a Cameroonian band called the Golden Sounds, released in 1985:
These two songs are not just similar - the lyrics are even the same! You would think that the big lawyers behind Sony and Shakira would call up the Golden Sounds and ask for permission, give them writing credit, and pay them royalties...but no. Instead, they never asked for permission, writing credit was not given, nor did they pay the Golden Sounds the royalties that they deserved. Given how often the music industry flaunts copyright law, you would think they actually respect it. Turns out, they just care about it when it works for them, and ignores it when it's against them.
And this is far, far from the first time this has happened. Without getting into too much detail, such luminaries such as James Brown, Timbaland and Michael Jackson have been caught lifting/stealing entire sections and lyrics from African artists without paying the original creators. And those are just the examples that got caught (I would like to clarify that I have nothing against Shakira or these other artists. The problem really is on the industry side of things, I think). There's very little an artist in a developing world can do to force a major label in the West to pay royalties or get writing credit... and that's not even the most heinous example of this practice. For the worst, hard hitting, unjust example of the music industry ignoring copyright, we go back to South Africa, and the song "Mbube".
"Mbube" is a song written by Solomon Popoli Linda, a South African Zulu musician and composer, way back in 1939. Doesn't ring a bell? Take a listen:
This song has been covered a dozen times, been in countless movies, made millions of dollars for film and music companies, and is even in music textbooks...but Solomon Linda died penniless in complete poverty, unrecognized as the original composer. Solomon Linda was completely forgotten while the music industry stole his creation, and left the artist to die. Indeed, up until a South African journalist named Rian Malan wrote an article in the Rolling Stone about this (in 2000!), did this reality come to light. This led to the PBS documentary "A Lion's Trail", which also highlighted the unjust usage of Linda's song, the poverty that he and his descendants live/d in, and the millions that the song has made for the industry (I highly recommend this documentary, it's quite good). Fortunately, in 2006 Linda's heirs sued Disney and Abilene Music (over the use of the song in "The Lion King") and a settlement was reached, ensuring the acknowledgment of Linda as the original composer, and payments for all past uses of the song.
...but again, this happened only because a major media outlet enabled this to happen. Without it, it's extremely difficult for artists in developing countries - or heck, any other country really - to sue the music industry for stealing their work. Yet the music industry will go after downloaders with the very same law that the industry breaks all the time. Hypocritical, to say the least.
Africa has such a rich musical history, and it keeps growing, evolving, and expanding in it's artistry (as an aside: it's a shame that most people seem to think that there's such a thing as an "African" sound.....when there's really quite a diverse set of musical traditions that are quite different, depending on where you are on the continent). They should be compensated the same way that any Western composer would be.
The good news however, is that you - yes you are all a part of an amazing era where information can't be monopolized by a select few. While it's true that Sony did not acknowledge the Golden Sounds, thanks to the power of youtube and the internet, this discrepancy quickly spread over the internet and has now been addressed. The writers are credited, and compensation has been negotiated with the original writers. What took decades for "Mbube", took only a couple months for Zangalewa. Cool.
By the way, there's a bittersweet irony in all of this. The lyrics in Zangalewa - which Waka Waka stole in whole - are actually about White colonial oppression and corruption, written in the native language of Fang. That's why in the video they are dressed as old men with white beards.
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