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Post a song and I'll attempt to analyze its music theory. Also, when you post a song, please specify whether you want my analysis to be in audio format or written format. Audio: I will record myself talking about the song in between playing snippets of it on the piano. Written: I will write about the song in between little pictures of sheet music. If you don't know how to read sheet music, then I recommend requesting an audio analysis. I may only get to do one song per poster so pick your song wisely! |
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May 9, 2018 02:31
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 12:49 |
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this sounds really awesome and even if you don't do my song i just wanna tell you you're awesome dude. It took me a while, but could you do an audio analysis on this song? https://youtu.be/fnfijJP3wes Thanks duder, keep on keepin' on! |
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May 9, 2018 02:49
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This sounds neat! Unfortunately, all I have for you is a vidja game song from Castlevania. Nonetheless, I'm curious to see your take on it, and maybe I'll find out more about why I prefer certain melody structure. https://youtu.be/DmFbinUovRc Audio, please! |
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May 9, 2018 03:21
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybGOT4d2Hs8 please write many words about it |
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May 9, 2018 03:36
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i teach music theory and i'm also a jerk here you go! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqY3FaZmh-Y audio format! 
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May 9, 2018 04:38
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Quidthulhu posted:i teach music theory and i'm also a jerk  please be gentle. I've never academically studied music First analysis will be up momentarily
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May 9, 2018 04:56
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i only teach beginning theory and it's been a while (and i'm also only now just getting to the point where my brain actually understands theory) so at this point i wouldn't be able to even fully analyze that if i tried, lol. i'm interested in hearing your take on what's going on, though!
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May 9, 2018 05:06
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Here's the song Venus I talked about just about everything I could think of in this song, which made my analysis 15 minutes long. http://tindeck.com/listen/xvsxx Is this too long? Would people be more interested in a shorter analysis where I just talk about a few things I like about a song? My goal is to make these analyses interesting. Castlevania is next.
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May 9, 2018 05:11
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get ready 4 some math rock https://youtu.be/tP79Xz6gOpI  Format: Dealer's choice |
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May 9, 2018 05:19
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I'd like to hear what you have to say about this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iInvDz1qZg in whichever format you prefer, but if it's too out there or you don't get around to it that's no problem. |
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May 9, 2018 05:43
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however you want to do it but it is time the world finally understood the moon theme from NES game duck tails
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May 9, 2018 05:53
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analyze the heck out of this, friend: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKi5P75-ZJ0 dealer's choice on format
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May 9, 2018 06:04
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blaise rascal posted:Here's the song Venus Hey, that was pretty rad, I'm glad you took all that time since it really helped me notice some small details I hadn't noticed after listening to that song almost every day since it came out. After listening to you, that part about the song getting you in a familiar place, and changing it up for drama really became apparent, I also chuckled when you said it was similar to the polar express theme. You're right about the lyrics, they're pretty melancholy, with parts about longing love and how the singer "doesn't own her, but feels as if she's hers", they're quite pretty. As for the bit about the youtube comment, I agree that most latin music has a "reggae" feeling, but the comment actually says something like "thanks for being an oasis in a desert full of reggaeton", reggaeton is a genre that's pretty much filled with mundane tribal 4/4 beats, misogynistic lyrics, and boring instrumentation, it's quite "danceable" and it seems to be gaining popularity nowadays in latin america (you'll pretty much hear reggaeton at a bar, club or at the gym). Anyways thanks for that great analysis, I'm definitely bookmarking this thread! |
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May 9, 2018 16:03
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eijq7_wGQUQ |
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May 9, 2018 16:47
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Oh, I'm well aware of reggaeton. I dance salsa and bachata here in the USA. Bachata & reggaeton are ubiquitous in the bars here on "Latin Music Night." So I think I understood what that youtube commenter was saying, and even laughed a little when I read it. At least I get a break when I go to places like the gym; it sounds like you have no such luck. Anyway, thank you for the kind words! Feel free to post more music you like in this thread or elsewhere on byob. I'll definitely listen to it!
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May 9, 2018 17:32
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Before we get into Castlevania, here are a few general thoughts about video game music. The Restrictions of Video Game Music As a rule, it is always unknown what is happening in a game at any specific moment, and so a video game song cannot reinforce gameplay moments with appropriate musical cues. This means that video game songs MUST have the same mood throughout their entire length. They aren't allowed to vary in intensity (or lack thereof), or in their type of emotion, or even in their tempo, or they'd risk a mismatch between gameplay action and musical action. The best a song can do is match the general feeling of an area or task. No other genre of music has this restriction. If I make music for a film, for instance, I can perfectly match the music to what is happening on screen because there is a one-to-one correlation between the music, the non-musical sounds, and the visuals. In fact, changes in musical mood are a common way to reinforce stories you are telling, or even to tell stories entirely by themselves. (Here are a couple songs that tell a story through stylistic changes in mood: First Suite in E Flat (Chaconne) by Gustav Holst Come Alive by the Foo Fighters) Another restriction unique to video game music is that it must be able to form a seamless loop. Again, this makes it hard to change the mood of the music partway through the loop, because any change you do must be undone before the loop ends. Compounding this is the fact that many musical style changes are a "one-way street" that are easier to do in one direction than the other. For instance, it is easier to make a key change sound good if you go up a whole note than down a whole note, but for video game music, you'd have to do BOTH to get back to where you started and begin the loop again. Does the combination of these restrictions lead to video game music sounding flat and monotone? Or worse, does it mean that video game music is a strictly worse version of other genres? I do think video game music tends to have much less variety than other genres (e: "more homogenous" is what I am trying to say here), and that it can't tell a story. But it's not the job of video game music to tell a story. If it did, it would distract from the game's story. It's the job of video game music to be in the background, and to make you feel good without noticing why you do. Why Do People Like Video Game Music? But that's not all that can be said about this. If it was, it wouldn't explain why people show up in droves to hear their favorite video game music performed live, or remix it endlessly, or list it among their favorite songs. My theory that video game music exists to not be noticed doesn't explain why so many people notice it. You could just say that "restrictions breed creativity," and that people like this music because its restrictions force its songwriters to go above and beyond expectations when making it, but that sounds kind of wishy-washy to me. I think what happens is something deeper. I think that when people play a video game, they listen to the music so much that they form a connection with it. This connection is reinforced by the happy emotions of playing the game and by specific memories from the game. Video games take a long time to beat, much longer than the time necessary to watch a movie, and so players have a long time to forge new neural pathways - pathways with the music running along their entire lengths. Evidence for this theory is the fact that music from bad games almost never becomes popular, despite the high exposure of many bad games (think of launch titles). You just don't make happy memories when playing a bad game. Another possibility is that video game music appeals to people BECAUSE it has no stylistic changes. Stylistic changes can be challenging. Many classical songs, for instance, have so many changes partway through that they don't even make sense unless you listen to the entire thing. Modern recording technology is great because it makes it very easy for people to listen to music, but it also makes it easy to STOP listening to music before a stylistic change occurs. It's sad, but I think that a lot of people will only listen to half of a song if the first half bores them. This could also explain the trend of pop music becoming simpler and simpler - any musical statement you'd like to make must be made in the first couple seconds, or you risk losing people's interest. Finally, there's the possibility that video game music really IS as good as its fans think it is, and I'm a fuddy-duddy oldster who can't recognize musical evolutions because I'm married to the past. Who knows? The Light at the End of the Tunnel But hey, the point of music is to enjoy it, and all music theory falls short of explaining why enjoyment happens. I think it is probably true that video game music has less artistic merit than other genres, but that doesn't stop me from listening to it a lot and enjoying it a lot. And, of course, the only way to determine if a song is good or not is to divorce it from its genre and study it on its own terms. Let's do that with the video game songs that have been suggested in this thread! I *think* that gusty garden galaxy is my favorite song from a video game. blaise rascal fucked around with this message at 15:59 on May 12, 2018
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May 9, 2018 17:37
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blaise rascal posted:Before we get into Castlevania, here are a few general thoughts about video game music. |
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May 9, 2018 22:09
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Oh boy, a chance for someone to tell me why this song is so good. Audio analysis please, I am not very musically competent (maybe someday). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lKe6CnTk_A I was going to post My Bloody Valentine or something like that, but its been analyzed to death already. |
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May 9, 2018 22:16
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I'm so excited https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE1Gvzxfm1E audio please
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May 9, 2018 23:20
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QQCX4927o0 Written please |
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May 10, 2018 00:47
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ContraBoss posted:This sounds neat! Unfortunately, all I have for you is a vidja game song from Castlevania. Nonetheless, I'm curious to see your take on it, and maybe I'll find out more about why I prefer certain melody structure. I did htis one a little differently than the last one. Instead of going over the whole song, I focused on one short section in great detail.
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May 10, 2018 03:53
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Sham bam bamina! posted:The points that you make are valid but limited. The music in Japanese NES games is pretty homogeneous, but European Amiga developers didn't shy away from variety. Some Amiga games, like Shadow of the Beast and The Chaos Engine, even have "dynamic" (in quotes to differentiate it from the actual musical term) music, which adapts to the action by adding, subtracting, and replacing instrument tracks (and in Shadow of the Beast can switch to entirely different themes depending on where you are in an area), so while there isn't a "one-to-one correlation" between the music and the action, it's not for a lack of trying. Yes, the Flash Man theme from Mega Man II is just a one-minute jingle, and jingles like that are the "face" of video game music, but that doesn't mean that monotonous simplicity is inherent to the medium, even with old games. I guess the question is: does the medium demand that video game music be homogenous? The songs you linked are not homogenous, but it seems like they might be distracting during gameplay. I don't really know the answer. I'm not familiar with shadow of the beast but I know what you mean by the "dynamic" adaptation. Banjo Kazooie does the same thing. When you go underwater, for instance, the instrumentation switches to a solo harp playing the song, which is more "aquatic" I guess. It works pretty well there, and I'm a fan of this kind of attempt to fight against the "jingle" nature of video game music. Monkey Island 2 also has this kind of adaption, and the devs reportedly worked a long time on it, but it is so subtle that no one notices it, so sometimes this works better than others.
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May 10, 2018 04:18
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blaise rascal posted:I guess the question is: does the medium demand that video game music be homogenous? The songs you linked are not homogenous, but it seems like they might be distracting during gameplay. I don't really know the answer. 
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May 10, 2018 04:26
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Analyze this is america, by childish gambino.
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May 10, 2018 05:03
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98XRKr19jIE audio ---------------- |
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May 10, 2018 05:19
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https://youtu.be/0OpjWLPDNRw Written please
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May 10, 2018 18:25
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drilldo squirt posted:Analyze this is america, by childish gambino. agree
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May 10, 2018 18:39
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| I can't click on links right now but if nobody posted the BYOB reggae, close this place down. | |
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May 10, 2018 19:37
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cda posted:I can't click on links right now but if nobody posted the BYOB reggae, close this place down.
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May 10, 2018 23:51
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Sham bam bamina! posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybGOT4d2Hs8 A Second of Suffering Out of all the genres of music, it’s probably metal where you can find the largest quantity of self-aware musicians. It’s impossible to dress up as a demon onstage, and pretend to kill and eat your fellow bandmate, all while screaming about concentration camps, without at least a little sense of irony. Metal is spectacle, and in spectacle, humor is king. This is not to say that metal can’t be artistically significant, or that ALL metal is self-satirical. I mean only that metal musicians tend to be very funny people. You could make a song that parodies metal music, but why bother? Metal musicians already make fun of themselves for you. For example, consider the song, You Suffer, by the British band Napalm Death. The Guinness Book of World Records recognizes this as the shortest song ever written, at only 1.316 seconds. It consists of four quick drum hits, during which a power chord is played on four quick guitar strums, and somebody screams in a characteristic rough “metal” voice. That’s it. When Napalm Death performs You Suffer live, it gets a great response from the crowd. This is almost certainly due in part to the fact that the audience recognizes the song. Says Napalm Death guitarist Justin Broadrick: “’You Suffer’ was largely a comedy thing, one-second song. Utterly retarded. It's ridiculous, but it was hilarious. We played that song in front of 30 local kids, like, every weekend. We played that song 30 times. It was a laugh.” Experimental Music Because of its extremely short length, You Suffer is an experimental song. It is in conversation with composer John Cage’s 4’33”, a song that consists of four minutes and thirty three seconds of musicians not playing their instruments. 4’33” is probably the most famous experimental song ever written. (The musical score for 4’33”. "Tacet" means "do not play your instrument," and the Roman numerals refer to the three movements of the song.) Reportedly, when pianist David Tudor sat down at a piano to first perform 4’33” in 1952, the audience, expecting to hear the piano being played, first shifted uncomfortably, and then grew restless, eventually shouting and leaving the theatre. It must have been quite the experience. Nowadays, however, 4'33" has gained widespread recognition, and has been performed by such groups as the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Nerds everywhere continue to debate if it qualifies as "music" or not. The Verdict on You Suffer While it is similar in some ways to 4'33", You Suffer is much closer to traditional music. It has vocals, rhythm, and notes. All the building blocks are there, and it certainly qualifies as "music." I guess the question is this: If, tomorrow, a song is released on a major record label that is only half a second long, will people continue listening to You Suffer? If it gets struck from the Guinness Book of World Records, will it have as many views per day on youtube? I actually think that it will. People who focus on the short length of the song may forget to even listen to the darn thing. Even though the song lasts less than two seconds, it is still a JOLT. Power chords are power chords, and the combination of fast distorted riffs and rough singing does more to put listeners on edge than anything else in music (with the exception of electronic sounds specifically engineered to be grating). If you are in the market for FREAKING OUT, then You Suffer will deliver a totally reasonable gut-punch to you in a little one-second package. You Suffer is an ideal mix of humor and musical power in just the right amounts to capture the imaginations of people, and not just metalheads. It is a novelty song, yes, but in some ways, it is more than that.
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May 12, 2018 15:57
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Sham bam bamina, thanks for the suggestion! I'll probably put that crazy Snarky Puppy song on hold for now and skip ahead to the byob reggae.
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May 12, 2018 16:29
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbJ63spk48s Hajnal by Venetian Stares, perhaps! In written words, if that's alright.
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May 12, 2018 16:42
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blaise rascal posted:Sham bam bamina, thanks for the suggestion! |
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May 13, 2018 04:59
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A Few Words About A Certain Reggae The BYOB Reggae, also known as "rznv" because of its tindeck url at https://www.tindeck.com/listen/rznv, is both emblematic of a particular period of early BYOB history, and also representative of BYOB as a whole. Yet, little is known about this unique forums song; for instance, did Pookaliscious AKA Midget Porn!, the poster responsible for making the BYOB Reggae, use premade sound loops, or record her own instrumentals? What makes the song so compelling? Some deeply inquiring souls have already examined this song:  But let's take a deeper look. RZNV: A History In February of 2007, less than a year after BYOB was first created, Midget Porn! posted a thread entitled • BYOB, it's REGGAE time containing a link to the reggae song we all know and love. In that thread, she then went on to create other original songs at the request of the other posters. All of her songs are still available to hear on her tindeck profile. The only clue I could find about the creation process for the BYOB Reggae was a post by Midget Porn! in which she said that she made the song using Audacity and Acid Pro.  Audacity is an open source sound recording program with no functionality specifically for music. Audacity lets you do things like record sound from a microphone, or universally change the pitch up and down, but it does not, for instance, let you add individual notes in a piano roll. It also does not supply you with a library of premade music loops.  Acid Pro, on the other hand, is a program specifically made for creating music, especially using its library of premade loops. Acid Pro 6 was launched in 2006, and Acid Pro 7 was made in 2008, making it likely that Midget Porn! used Acid Pro 6 to make the BYOB Reggae. I wonder; if I could find a copy of that program, would I be able to check the library of loops in it? Could I, perhaps, find the building blocks of the byob reggae? If I could, that would shed light on which parts she recorded, and which parts were premade. Unfortunately, Acid Pro 6 appears to be legacy software that is impossible to buy now. I couldn't even find it on ebay. Rather than try to illegally download the program and risk facing the United States' ridiculous piracy fines, I will just leave question of the creation of this song as a mystery. The Music Theory Analysis In any case, let's take a look at the song itself. The first thing I look to look at when analyzing Afro-Caribbean music is the beat pattern. It is the heart of this music! As the Grammy-winning Latin jazz bandleader Eddie Palmieri put it: "From the first album I recorded, the rhythmic structures have been there. You see, I don't guess I'm going to excite you; I know I'm going to excite you. It's because of the structures that I sacredly maintain, which are Afro-Cuban." There are a lot of Afro-Caribbean rhythms. One way to classify them is in terms of what pattern the high-pitched percussion is playing. This is usually the pattern played by the claves, but in the case of the BYOB reggae, I believe it is played by the snare cross-sticks. This beat pattern is called the clave (confusing, right?). Here, taken from the Latin Jazz Real Book published by Sher Music, are some common clave patterns:  As I hear it, the clave in the BYOB Reggae goes like this:  This clave may not have a name. If that's the case, then I dub it "BYOB Clave." At 0:16, the organ and the xylophones come in. This is the defining moment of the song for me because it reveals the humorous nature of the song, and it is a pretty effective punchline. The xylophone establishes the chord progression, and by playing on the offbeats, it gives the song a humorous, groovy feeling. (Other genres that have chord hits on the offbeats include ska and cumbia.) The organ that sounds kind of like a Hammond B3 provides a catchy riff that combines with the drums to create a rich rhythmic texture:  Some of the notes line up, and some don't. To me, the fact that there is no easily identifiable "hit" - for instance, no downbeat when all instruments are playing - is characteristic of Afro-Caribbean music and very cool. The chords of the song repeat in a vamp, and interest is generated as the rhythms change around. I find that often in reggae, the main melody (in this case the vocals) is very simple to provide contrast with the hectic percussion. This song is no exception; Midget Porn! mostly just sings eighth-notes on the C which is fifth of the chord - a boring but solid note. The occasional drum embellishment or electronic sound effect (such as a vocal echo) keeps things interesting. The Verdict It can be tough to remove a song from its context and judge it on its own terms, especially a song as meme-y as the BYOB Reggae, but I think this song is very good, and it innovates in several key ways: -Midget Porn! correctly identified reggae as a genre of music that works well with BYOB (an innovation that spawned at least one emoticon) -"hurf de durf" is a very funny nonsense-phrase. I sincerely don't think people appreciate how hard it is to come up with this kind of thing. (not actually sure if Midget Porn! came up with it though) -The organ riff is simple but original. (again, simple stuff is deceptively hard to make from scratch because it must be distinct from all the other simple stuff that has already been made) -The lyrics are imo a gem. They walk a great tightrope between praising byob and making fun of it. Midget Porn! even plays into her own lyrics with this song; when she says "It's all about threads, see how many you can make," she might as well have been saying "It's all about MUSIC, see how much you can make," in the sense that this song is a product of the exuberant spirit of creativity that is what I like most about BYOB. Postscript: How to remix the BYOB reggae I think the BYOB reggae is due for a remix, and here are some reasons why: -There have been several new BYOB songs created over the years, but none is a remix with the same lyrics. There is great untapped potential here -The vocal melody mostly stays on the same note, so it could be sung exactly as-is within a very wide variety of original chord progressions -If you keep some of the same instruments (for instance, the highly characteristic organ voice) it would be easy to reference the original song even if you change everything else -The original reggae style is quite old-fashioned. Modern, more dramatic musical styles, would provide an effective and humorous contrast Maybe I will take a crack at it when I get done with this business trip and get back to my recording equipment. For now, though, there are other requests in this thread. Thanks cda (although I knew this one would come eventually). Perhaps it is time for me to take a look at snarky puppy and finally - FINALLY - try to wrap my head around bebop.
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May 22, 2018 02:56
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Can you do this one from the Xenogears soundtrack? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPrm1nrkZ3k I have the sheet music for this also I can dig up. Written analysis would be great, since I know how to read sheet music. Even if you don't have time, you're doing an awesome job in this thread. Gentleman in the streets, anime in the sheets. |
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May 22, 2018 13:29
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z17o7QekxJ0 |
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May 22, 2018 20:29
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blaise rascal posted:A Few Words About A Certain Reggae ty for this breakdown, very interesting and informativekind of an effortpost, but hey |
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May 22, 2018 23:09
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Defffffffffffffffffinitely interested. My track of choice is this, the opener from the guy's Tangram album. There's definitely influences in here from stuff he listens to personally I just want to hear another take on it because the guy's work is super technical from an audio design perspective... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWHiS596yaM Audio please. Thank you. |
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May 24, 2018 14:54
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwFS69nA-1w Written. |
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May 25, 2018 02:41
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 12:49 |
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blaise rascal posted:
It's very easy to make a quick mashup using the free Virtual DJ software, you can set tempo, change keys, and though it does not have proper band kills on the EQ, you can drop out the lows and some highs allowing the vocal to stand out on top. I'm gonna make a BYOB summer reggae dub steppa mix for everybody, and was already planning to include an rznv mash I think a rznv mashup/remix contribution thread could be neat. If anyone had the gear to really isolate the rznv vocals and make an accapella track to work with, well, that would rule and be super helpful too edit: wholly original new recordings of the old song would be awesome too ofc, so it could be an rznv cover/mashup/remix thread
Slush Garbo fucked around with this message at 22:29 on May 26, 2018 |
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May 26, 2018 22:26
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