#all the instruments. the melody. the harmonies. oh my god my poor ears | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

firelord-frowny · 3 years

Text

!!!!!!!!!!!

someone booked me to play violin stuff at a marriage proposal event and liiiiiiiiiiike.

im CLEARLY not a People Person lmaooo so ordinarily i say Hell To The Naw Naw Naw for these kinds of gigs. but i’m also Poor these days so i agreed to do it and then i was all 😭 to discover that the songs they wanted were all r&b songs???? and like.

legit, r&b is probably my absolute Least Favorite genre of music as a whole. cue every black person within a 100 mile radius gasping and insisting that i’m Not Really Black or something dumb like that lmao and obbbbvvviouslyyyyy there are a handful of r&b songs that i’m kinda into, but for the most part, the genre totally misses all of the most critical marks that usually inspire me to enjoy a song. (but also like, just to placate those annoying ~how do you hate r&b if you’re black~ people, i’ll mention that i AM partial to other Black Genres in the rap and/or hip hop range, particularly like... pre-early 2000s stuff.)

so i was like aw SHIT now i have to listen to these rhythm and blues songs long enough to actually learn them. :( which i mean, i’m hella expert at learning shit exclusively by ear, and popular music is almost BY DEFINITION easy as fuck on classical instruments, so it wasn’t difficult at all. Just... not enjoyable lmao.

BUT!!!! i DID learn something interesting!

I’ve never really though too hard about why it is that i tend to dislike r&b. But in the process of learning the songs i had to learn, i noticed that the rhythms were so imprecise. Which i mean, it’s like that On Purpose. There’s a LOT of eb and flow. a LOT of really drastic liberties taken as far as entrances, and how long certain notes are held for. there’s obviously a LOT of ~runs~ as we call them, where the singer just kinda... sings a whole bunch of notes in rapid succession, usually more-or-less improvising around a certain chord or scale with a VERY carefree rhythm.

And??? despite all the theatrics of the runs and the improv-like rhythm, the melodies are usually SUPER simple. I mean, most mainstream music has simple melodies, but it really stands out to me in a lot of r&b music because so many of the verses are literally just... the same three notes over and over again in various configurations. This works out fine in vocal music where the lyrics are a major part of the musical experience. But when you transcrive these songs into instrumental versions, it’s SO dull. Maybe not to an untrained ear, but a classical player is going to be SUPER BORED with playing/hearing G G G G G A A, A D D A D A D* 8 times in a row in the same octave and at the same tempo.

And don’t get me wrong - i enjoy a lot of songs with simple melodies that only feature a few notes! But for me, those songs have to have lyrical content that is interesting to me, and/or instrumental content that is engaging to my ear. So, r&b fails in this capacity for me because almost ALL of the mainstream songs in the genre are about love or sex or romance in some capacity, and i hate that shit lmao. And, I’m usually not enamored with the instrumentation, most of which is synthesized, and the live instruments that usually do get featured... aren’t instruments that I usually enjoy lmao like piano. or plain ol electric lead guitar without any distortion, usually just lil single-note, melodic solos, and i HELLAAAAA prefer rhythm guitar over lead most of the time. I mean, please fuck me UP with a killer solo a la Hendrix or Morello or Malakian. But I wanna headbang to some power chords, too!

So like, comparatively, Nirvana is a band whose music isn’t complex. Usually just the same three-ish chords over and over again. and cobain honestly was not a stellar singer lmao. but i like the actual sound quality - the timbres, the instrumentation, etc. and i like the lyrics for the most part, too.

system of a down, on the other hand???? their music is some of the most complicated and technically demanding non-classical music i’ve ever heard lmfao god it’s INCREDIBLE. key changes, a variety of time signatures, unconventional scale modes, use of middle eastern and/or south asian harmonies and instruments... it’s fucking fabulous. And MANY of their melodies are complex enough that they’d still sound engaging in an instrumental version. A lot of manistream music sticks to just a couple chords per verse, but a lot of SOAD songs feature more frequent chordal changes. and then there’s obviously the fact that both tankian and malakian are fantastic singers. OH and their lyrical content/subject matter is sophisticated as FUCK.

Vienna Teng! She’s a genius! Oh my god! Melodies that make use of the entire range of a key rather than just sticking to two or three notes. instrumentation that features actual, non-synthesized instruments, and those instruments vary depending on the subject of the song. piano, strings, background vocals that function solely as instruments in their own right...

and back to my original point,

Most of the songs in these genres by these artists stick to a consistent rhythm. they don’t take very many liberties. You could easily transcribe any SOAD song because the rhythmic subdivisions are precise. But in order to properly notate the rhythm of many r&b songs, you’d need to subdivide right down to 132nd notes instead of the usual 16ths or MAYBE 64ths. and i ain’t about that life.

SO,

adhering to a precise rhythm is something that’s almost ubiquitous in classical music. i mean yeah, we do take liberties from time to time, and many pieces call for increases or decreaases in tempo, but for the most part, imprecise rhythm is a whole ass cardinal sin lmaooo. unless it’s some of that freaky New Music.

And since I’m soooooo accustomed to rigid rhythmic standards, i think the ebby-flowines of r&b makes my ear super uncomfortable! It’s unpredictable for me, which makes me anxious because it’s difficult to know when the next note or the next lyric is going to be sung. so it’s hard for me to get a feel for it.

so like,

the point of this post is just to say how neat it is that i could learn something so interesting about my musical tastes from playing music i don’t like lmaooo.

#*lmao those notes are the main melody in Bitch Better Have My Money #it's easily my FAV rihanna song but anyone would look so fucking dumb playing that on a violin #or a piano #or a trumpet #or a guitar #or any non-vocal instrument omfg

2 notes · View notes

ineffably-in-love · 5 years

Text

Good Omens Soundtrack: The “Lift Home?” Music Analysis

So, I’ve been way too deep into the Good Omens OST lately, and it’s a real shame that not every piece we hear in the show made it to the final soundtrack. One of the pieces most people miss is the romantic violin song that plays in Episode 3, when Crowley hands Aziraphale his unharmed books and bastard angel canonically realises he’s in fact in love with that demon thanks Michael Sheen.

I thought it would be fun to unpack this piece of music --- and even though Aziraphale and Crowley don’t have an explicit theme of their own, by now I firmly believe that this melody is Their Theme. Read my take on it under the cut :’)

First of all, a brief definition from Wikipedia on what a ‘motif’ is in music: “A motif is a short musical phrase, a [...] recurring figure, musical fragment or succession of notes that has some special importance in or is characteristic of a composition.”

With that outta the way, let’s dive into this.

So, this is basically the melody we’re hearing when Crowley hands Aziraphale the books:

But that’s not the first time we hear this melody. It first shows up in the Main Theme, after the A Minor and Major parts, that, as far as I’m concerned, are Hell and Heaven respectively. Or at least two different ideologies/ideas/fractions. This new little theme is still in A Major, but it’s not as elaborate as the melody from before. It’s playful, sure, but very simple and repetitive, maybe even to a point where it can get kind of annoying. It goes like this:

As you can see, both motifs start on an E --- the same note that the Main Theme (the first thing that plays in the intro) starts with. The melodies go down from there, to D sharp and C sharp respectively. But the little new motif takes a very different turn with C sharp, because C sharp is what distinguishes the sound of A Major from A Minor. It’s E - C sharp - F sharp. This new motif does not turn into A Minor, like the Main Theme did. It ends on a high A and stays A Major throughout.

That’s very interesting, and I kept wondering --- what does it mean? Why is there such a cut in our intro music? It’s a completely new theme. What kind of theme is this?

Whose theme could it be???

Crowley and Aziraphale, of course. This melody and the fact that it stays in A Major until the very end contain a lot of things they stand for: That they stay true to themselves and their Arrangement. That they share the same “origin key”, but turn it into something that’s solely their own. Their positive nature (we’re in Major, not Minor). But more on that later.

So when do we hear it in the show? The motif does not always play during vital turning points in the plot involving them (I’ve talked a bit about ‘Is That You?’ here), but I think it does play when something changes fundamentally about their relationship. Something personal. I’ve not actually counted all the times the motif is played in the show, but here are some instances as examples:

Crowley’s Lullaby: Sung in C Major, for David’s sake, maybe? Crowley and Aziraphale have thought of this *brilliant* idea to keep the Antichrist normal. They’re actually watching the wrong boy, but they don’t know that, so they’re very enthusiastic about it. but they’re actually being dumbasses Crowley sings to Warlock as “the evil fraction”, but it’s actually part of his and Aziraphale’s mutual plan, and as of right now, everything is going according to that plan.

It’s interesting that a variation of the Main Theme plays when they enter the scene as the Nanny and the Gardener. It’s the “representative tune”. But in that intimate moment, when Crowley is alone with the child he believes to be the Antichrist, he sings our motif, the little new one that sounds so simple and sweet, during the mission that might save his and Aziraphale’s precious Earth.

Before that, we’ve only heard the new theme briefly play when Mr Young names Adam after his birth in the hospital (in the key of C Major) and before Crowley tries calling Aziraphale. You might think that it is out of place here, but remember: The Antichrist is what will drive Crowley and Aziraphale for the next eleven years and make them work together -- even when they first think it’s all about Warlock.

We’re Not Killing Anybody: This is their break-up scene in Episode 3. Now we’ve changed to A Minor (E - C - F). We even get a bit from ‘Holy Water’ in here. But our motif begins when they start their break-up: “This is ridiculous, you are ridiculous”, showing how their relationship is changed by this conversation and by their different ideas about dealing with Armageddon. Showing how their past relationship is coming to a sad end. “It’s over!” Sob.

Bookshop’s ON Fire: An altered version (F - D - B flat - A - D), but it’s there. The motif goes up to B flat before it falls to A and D, showing Crowley’s great emotional distress and the destructive mania he drives himself into. Listen to the choir when he picks up the Nice and Accurate Prophecies, one book as a souvenir, the last thing that connects him to his angel now -- that’s our motif. Sobbb.

Requiem for A Bentley: Even more altered, distorted even (A - G sharp - C - B) --- The Bentley has accompanied them with the greatest loyalty, and their theme is showing here, too, if you listen closely to the strings at the end. The Bentley is gone, that’s how close they are to Armageddon. Everything’s a mess already, how much worse could it get?

End of This Story: We’re back! Well, sort of. Not A Major, but G Major, the key of the Them. One note below A. An only slightly altered version of our motif plays as Aziraphale believes the war is already won, believes that he and Crowley did it. It comes up again when he starts talking about the Beginning and how his husband was a wily old serpent and how he was technically on apple tree duty and---

All Change: They reverse their bodyswap and chatter happily on their bench in St James’s Park. We’re finally back on the old pattern in the key of A Major. After the motif, there’s a nice line cliché down to A [=harmony’s “going down” note by note in a very pleasant way; Queen used those a fair bit, e.g. in ‘Somebody To Love’] and then to E without resolving the tension that comes from this dominant of A Major. It only gets resolved in the piano version of Nightingale later on, which is written in A Major as well.

Okay. So far, so emotional the ugly sobbing. But, especially when watching Ep3, you might be asking yourself: Isn’t the “Lift Home” scene the first time in Crowley’s and Aziraphale’s mutual past when this motif plays?

The answer is yes.

Let’s revisit Episode 3 before the Blitz scene. At the Globe, when Aziraphale looks at Crowley, eyes begging him to make Hamlet a success using a miracle, an E plays quite prominently and you could think it would kick off our little motif. But it doesn’t; it somewhat changes into a sweet little downwards melody, ending in a happy little E Major chord (while showing Aziraphale’s sweet smile) before cutting to Paris. E Major is the dominant to A Major, as written above, and the dominant always means tension. Tension that, to our ears, feels like it needs to be resolved, ideally to the tonic, which in the case of E Major could be either A Minor or A Major. Now we don’t actually get that feeling right away, because the whole phrase is written in E Major, but keep it in mind still.

Because apart from the many times the Main Theme plays (e.g. when Crowley enters the church), I think that’s the closest we get to our little motif: The two of them bickering about their Arrangement and doing each other’s deeds, when suddenly Aziraphale wants Crowley to do something for him. Not for head offices, not for God, not even for poor Shakespeare, but for him. And when Crowley says yes, “my treat”, our angel gives him the most precious smile ever. Urgh.

The motif first plays in its proper form when Crowley hands Aziraphale the books and offers him a “lift home”. This is when Mr Sheen decided that Aziraphale would finally realise his love for Crowley, and the camera and music department support his acting rather strongly in that regard. As for the instruments, I believe it’s a violin playing the melody, with those cute recurring chimes sprinkled on top. The chimes play so often on this soundtrack I’d have to analyse their meaning/symbolism as well, oh God. Back to our scene with Aziraphale staring into the middle distance. Finally he’s on the same level as Crowley, who’s had it bad for 6,000 years already, and maybe Aziraphale even knows. I think that in this scene, Aziraphale not only realises his own love for Crowley, but he also realises that Crowley very much loves him as well, and has loved him for a damn long time already. That’s a big effin turning point for these two.

However, this would mean that the variation we hear in the Blitz is actually the original version of our motif! It’s a quiet tune that sounds like realisation, yearning and loving, and it’s written in A Major. It would mean that the times we hear it later on in the timeline (e.g. the Warlock lullaby or the happy ending) are actually an evolved version of Aziraphale’s love theme from the Blitz.

Let’s take a look at this early motif again:

It goes up to G sharp before falling onto F sharp. This kinda sounds like a sigh, doesn’t it? The second time around, the melody goes to G sharp once more, before falling down to E -- an even more longing sigh in here, a quickened heartbeat in the quavers there... At least that’s what I hear :’) Aziraphale’s heart is practically beating out of his chest here. That’s one brilliant way of musicalising the feeling of falling in love if you ask me. But the best part is that the music also conveys Aziraphale’s confusion about those feelings, his insecurity, because we do not get a resolution. We are in A Major but we end on E Major yet again.

Now, let’s look at the evolved version we hear in the intro once more:

The melody is much more refined by now, it’s steadier, quicker and overall more complete, mainly because we end on an A Major chord. We climb up from our E Major to a high A and the thing finally, finally resolves. Aziraphale and Crowley have come into their own, they are comfortable with their feelings and their mutual love for one another. It’s whimsical, playful and laid-back at the same time. This little motif is about them and them alone, it’s the signifier of their relationship, and it has turned into their Theme. In this regard, the omniscient intro has given us a fully developed theme since Ep1, and it has been evolved from Aziraphale’s little love motif.

So, if you ask me, this melody is as close as we get to a Theme for Crowley and Aziraphale. It’s more joyous than the Mystery Theme (which plays very prominently during their pep talk to Adam), mischievous even, but quiet and solitary when compared to the pompous Main Theme. It also lends itself to more serious tones when shifted in key, as seen above. But most important of all, it gives us a resolution after Aziraphale’s confusion in Ep3. Now we have a happy ending in fucking A Major, the key that is said to sound the most emotional, bright, proud and joyous; the key that closes the series with ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’.

Bach, famously one of the demons’ composers, once said that “the glorious heights of the light of A Major have only seldomly been really reached” by other keys in music. If that isn’t worth a Hallelujah then I don’t know what is;;

Thank you for reading!

#dear god I'm in love with that gif #ineffable husbands #episode 3 #music #meta #analysis #david arnold #good omens #*

96 notes · View notes