Go ahead and watch the first minute of the above video. I’m sure many of you have seen it. Admit it…Yes it is a Fall Out Boy music video. So did you watch it? Yea? Notice anything odd besides Pete Wentz’s outfit? It happens right around the 0:49 second mark. The band is grooving on their catchy little bass riff, the crowds clapping along with the snare drum, and then…what the, WHO’S PLAYING THE GODDAMN TAMBOURINE??!
As you look around and notice that the other instrumentalists do not have a hidden tambourine somewhere on their
Guy behind Patrick=Tambourinist
instruments, and Patrick Stump’s hands are empty, the only other explanation is that someone in the throng of prom-goers must be the secret 5th member of Fall Out Boy. Yea. That must be it.
The truth is that many popular bands, if we were to examine their music like this, would also have secret 5th, 6th, or 7th band members comitted solely to full-time tambourine playing. Now, a note before I move any further. Technically this “elusive tambourine” trend is more of song producingtrend rather than a song writingtrend. In other words, during live performances of Fall Out Boy’s Dance Dance we may or may not hear the secret 5th member’s tambourine; and I doubt that when the band was actually writing this song one of them stopped and said, “we need to add tambourine right here.” In other words, the elusive tambourine added to the final version of a band’s “hit” song (the music video version) is a recording or production trick or technique used to add a strong rhythmic backbone to move the song along.
In some songs that use this technique the tambourine is quite audible like in the Fall Out Boy song above and Fountains of Wayne’s Stacy’s Mom. Others, such as The Jonas Brothers’ S.O.S. song, I believe are not really supposed to be noticed. Hence the elusiveness of this tambourine. There are many songs where the rhythmic backbone that is the tambourine is not meant to be heard consciously, but rather subconsciously. It is almost as if the production engineer didn’t want you to notice that there was a tambourine, but did want you to notice that there was something about the song that really “made it move.”
Since it is so often hard to hear, here (wow back to back homophones! Awkward…) are some tips for finding the elusive tambourine within the song “jungle.” It’s a treasure hunt! Crikey!
Very often a tambourine is incorporated into a song with a very slow tempo, as can be heard in Blue October’s Hate Me, Foo Fighters’ Wheels,and the very beginning of Weezer’s Perfect Situation. Thus the tambourine helps to “move the song along” and somehow actually weakens our perception that the song is moving at a very slow tempo.
Most of the time the tambourine only plays, or is predominant in the chorus of the song. The chorus is after all the most important part of the song, and often times a tambourine will just add that extra sparkle. An example of a song where the tambourine is only used during the chorus is Blue October’s What if We Could.
When listening for the tambourine, be aware that, relative to the meter of the song, the tambourine is almost always playing 16th notes. If the tambourines played 8th or quarter notes then they wouldn’t be the rhythmic powerhouses that they are! If they played 32nd notes or something, well, then it just wouldn’t sound humanly possible. All five of the examples given so far have 16th note tambourines.
Here is a playlist of the songs mentioned already plus other tambourine-happy songs. Enjoy, and I hope you might do some tambourine hunting yourself!
Spinal Tap was way ahead of me on the topic that I would like to discuss. As a satirical rock band, Spinal Tap managed to make fun of everything rock n’ roll; their most popular skit being the “turn it up to 11!” scene from their fake rockumentary “This is Spinal Tap.” Besides the gags, they have also managed to write some very clever songs. One of my favorite Spinal Tap songs (mainly because I can remember playing it on Guitar Hero II) is “Tonight Im Gonna Rock You Tonight.” Haha they used the word “tonight” excessively! They really only needed one!.. yes I know. I know. Thank you.
It makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Why did they decide to use the word “tonight” instead of any other? Well, either rock n’ roll lyric writing followed the same trend as many lyricisits are following now, or Spinal Tap could see into the future. I’m open for possibilities really.
This trend in either incorporating the word “tonight” or at least having the story or content of the lyrics take place during nightime is probably the most pervasive trend that we have talked about thus far. It can be seen in pretty much all genres of music, but is especially prominent in the Pop/Alternative music coming out of B 97 everyday. Some songs, like Spinal Tap’s song, are open about its lyrical content and have the word “tonight” in the title. Examples include Chris Daughtry’s “Feels Like Tonight“, The All American Rejects’ “It Ends Tonight“, and the Jonas Brothers’ aptly titled song “Tonight” (which, by the way, can be found under countless other artists). Other songs like The Black Eyed Peas’ “I gotta Feeling” and Secondhand Serenade’s “Fall for You” don’t actually have the word “tonight” in the title but still make plenty use of it.
The #2 iTunes download right now is Train’s “Hey, Soul Sister”, and I am all over this one. For not only does it randomly throw in the word “tonight” at the end of the chorus, but it uses that darn I V vi IV chord progression for the majority of the song. An interesting similarity arises when comparing this Train song with Boys Like Girls’ song “Great Escape.” During the choruses of both of these songs, the singer is going along telling his story all fine and what not, only to pause for a second at the end to insert a “tonight” to qualify it as a hit song I guess. I don’t know.
Like I said earlier, while some lyricists don’t actually overtly use the word “tonight” or “night” in their song, many of them still center the lyrics around nightime. Lady Antebellum’s “Need You Now” (#4 iTunes download) and Owl City’s “Fireflies” are both popular examples of this.
In thinking about why this trend exists, I have come up with a number of reasons. The first two deal exclusively with the songwriter. 1.) Since I enjoy writing songs as well, I understand that the usually ideal time to really write a song (especially the lyrics) is nightime. Nightime provides the quiet atmosphere often times needed to sit, reflect, and write. 2.) Many songs are about emotional encounters or aspects of the songwriter’s life, and, in my opinion, I would say that most of these emotional encounters occurr during the nightime. If you just broke up with someone, you can’t stop thinking about someone, your best friend just got way to drunk and did something stupid, it is probably nightime. Or not.
The other two reasons deal with the listeners or audience that the music targets. 3.) Alot of the Pop/Alternative songs are being heard primarily in dance clubs and bars by this target audience, and what time of day do you go to bars and clubs? Thus it would only make sense for the music to which they are listening to talk about how “tonight’s going to be a good, good night.” 4.) Teenagers are also the other big target audience, but they are too young to go to clubs and bars. But that’s OK. Nightime is the teenager’s world. After being in school all day, they listen to their music and talk to their friends primarily at night. So, it would only make sense for Boys Like Girls to sing to them about how we are going to make a great escape tonight and not today. Where does a song like Train’s “Soul Sister” fit in? It’s definitely not club music, and judging by the age of these guys, are they really going for teenagers? Is the word tonight just thrown into the song because the lyricist saw this trend? Once again, I don’t know. What do you think?
Here is a playlist of the songs mentioned in this post as well as other relevant songs:
Let us see if progressing through the different periods of European art music (“Classical European Music”) would yield any evidence for this entropic theory. The history of European music is normally broken down into the following periods:
Medieval (500 -1400)
Renaissance (1400-1600)
Baroque (1600-1760 )
Classical (1750-1820)
Romantic (1815-1910)
Impressionist (1890-1940)
The music of these periods have characteristics unique enough to set them apart from the music of other periods, and, as we shall see, these defining characteristics became more and more experimental, chaotic, and disorderly over time.
The 1. Medieval(500-1400) period basically gave birth to Western music. During this time, earlier, cruder versions of instruments like the guitar (the “lute“), the trombone (the “sackbut“), the flute (made out of wood instead of metal e.g. the “pan flute“), and the violin (the fun-to-say “hurdy gurdy“) were prominently used to create music. Much of Medieval music, especially during the beginning of the era, was sacred music used in churches and monasteries. However, more important for our discussion was the fact that early medieval music was also largely homorhythmic and monophonic. In terms of music, this is about as orderly and anti-chaotic as you can get, for it says that a typical song or piece of music consisted of one melody with no harmony or accompaniment (monophonic), with each part moving in the same rhythm (homorhythmic). Think Gregorian chant… Towards the later Medieval period, regular harmonies began to be introduced, and our increase in entropy or disorderliness in Western music began. However, things are still pretty orderly, for the only prevalent harmonies in this late Medieval period were octaves, 5ths, and 4ths; harmonies that were considered “pure”, “stable” or “consonant” in relation to the melody.
Often grouped with the Medieval period, the 2. Renaissance (1400-1600) period further developed the instruments used in the Medieval period; and by the end of Renaissance period the four basic categories for musical instruments that are still used today (brass, strings,woodwind, and percussion) had emerged. This is something that I would like for you to remember, that since the end of the Renaissance period no new types of musical instruments used to make popular music have emerged. Rather, instruments such as the piano, electric guitar, the drum set, and even the modern day kazoo are all just modernized versions of a type of instrument that already existed back in the Renaissance period or maybe even earlier. Sure, you could say that electronic keyboards like the one I am sitting next to right now can make sounds that a Renaissance musician would never have dreamed of hearing, yet the basic way in which you manipulate the instrument (via a “keyboard”) is not at all new. As we all saw in the movie Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Beethoven had absolutely no problem playing the three double-tiered keyboards (even though he was too deaf to hear the 80’s music emanating from them in the beginning). So, holding on to that point, besides finalizing the array of popular musical instruments today, the Renaissance period also gave rise to the popular use of “polyphony,” which is the use of two or more independent melodic lines in a song. Also, the interval of a 3rd became accepted as a consonant interval (which was probably made by the same person who decided Pluto wasn’t a planet anymore…who has the authority to decide these things???).
After the Renaissance period came the 3. Baroque (1600-1760) period of music. During this time composers such as Bach, Handell, and Vivaldi really began to incorporate even more elaborate musical ornamentation, experiment with new playing techniques for the instruments already set down in the Renaissance period, and began to make changes in musical notation to better notate the new music. Tonality was in full swing, and the polyphony from the Renaissance era now became counterpoint. In fact, I would probably say that by the end of the Baroque period the true roots of the music we listen to today took shape in terms of instruments used; how the instruments are played; how melodies, chords, and harmonies interrelate; and how music is notated. And people in instrumental bands rejoice! During this time it started to become all about the instruments. During this time people would actually listen to a group of instrumentalists without singing! Holy crap where did that go?!
Next came the 4. Classical Period (1750-1820) that contained some of our most famous early composers like Mozart good ole’ Ludwig Van. Now, the Classical period is a bit tricky to talk about when I’m trying to develop a theory that says our popular music is growing more and more unorganized, complex, and experimental because during this period there was actually a big push towards simplicity of form in all things such as music, art, and architecture. Known as “Classicism,” the Europeans tried to emulate Classical antiquity, especially the Greeks, and favored order, clearer divisions between parts, and simplicity. This simplicity was shown in the music with the rise of homophony
O Amadeus. You're so silly.
instead of polyphony, where one main melody was harmonized by underlying chords, rather than have 2 or more separate melodies. In other words, people were being retro. The past was cool. Does this put a hole in my theory? Nah. Just shows that the past was more structured and ordered, implying that the future becomes less structured and ordered. At least that’s the way I’m spinning this. Moving on…
The 5. Romantic period (1815-1910) more than made up for the apparent oxymoron that is the Classical period. Experimentation was abound in this time! Composers widely expanded previous “acceptable” forms of music like the “sonata” or the “minuet” and developed free-form songs like “nocturnes” and “fantasias.” The music suddenly was getting more chromatic, dissonant, and doing crazy stuff like switching in and out of different key signatures. Nowadays the use of resolving dissonance and the changing of key signatures, or modulation, are no big deal; but it was back then.
The experimental fervor of the Romantic period naturally flowed into the 6. Impressionist (1890-1940) period. Still the experimentation was taken a step further. Whereas the Romantic period still used the common major and minor scales predominantly, the Impressionist period started using uncommon scales like the whole-tone scale, and dissonance (like the dissonance found in the beginning of our Alice in Chains song from part 1) was even more common.
Well. This one is getting a little long. So I will bid you farewell for now. The next post will conclude this whole spiel, where we discuss the implications of what was just laid out and see what this may mean for the future. Until then, enjoy Beethoven rocking out on the electronic keyboards:
Most of us can probably remember our high school physics or chemistry teacher mentioning the word “thermodynamics” at some point during the semester. Maybe as you were drawing random geometrical shapes in your notebook you also picked up that there were these “laws” of the thermo-whats its. And as the end of the class drew near, you may have even heard over your impatient pen-tapping a brand new word that was recorded as… “trophy??” in your notebook just before it was slammed shut for the day. It wasn’t until the night before the test that “trophy??” became “entropy,” and fit nicely in a set of parentheses on the reverse side of a flash card entitled “Second Law of Thermodynamics.”
Hello again.
As I tried to illustrate with the trippy-looking image above, the Second Law of Thermodynamics states that in any isolated system (not in equilibrium) the amount of entropy or disorderliness will tend to increase over time. When explaining this to me, my Physics teacher reminded us that at the beginning of time and space as we know it, the Universe was one big organized point of energy. You basically can’t get more “orderly” than this. The Big Bang then hurled all this energy and newly created mass in all directions, and since then the Universe has been constantly expanding, getting more and more unorganized.
Keeping all this in mind, I happened to listen to Alice in Chains’ newest single called “Check My Brain” over the weekend. It’s a pretty rockin’ song with a catchy chorus and your typical Alice in Chains vocal harmony arrangement.
However, the main Intro and Verse guitar riff of this song really threw me off guard. The riff basically revolves around one note, on one fret, on one string of the guitar that is bent to create the particular sound. When I first heard this riff and realized that it played a very important part in the song, I immediately thought:
“Huh, that’s interesting. It seems as if they have chosen to abandon any sense of melody or chordal progression. Well, why shouldn’t they, when there are people like me yelling at other bands for using the same chord progressions. I guess that is one way to avoid copying other artists’ melodies or chord progressions in your “hook”…just abandon traditional concepts of melodies and chord changes. Interesting.”
Alice in Chains
After thinking this over a little more last night, this particular decision that Alice in Chains made in writing this song reminded me very much of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Would it not make sense, given that there are a finite (although large) number of chordal progressions, melodies, harmonies,etc., for the art of writing music or writing a “song” to follow the Law of Entropy? Since the number of chord progressions and melodies not yet “written” decreases everyday, how can songwriters continue to press out new and interesting music everyday? The solution seems to be to branch out, to experiment, to mold or even sometimes completely abandon the available orderly set of melodies, harmonies, and chords dictated by the concept of Western tonality.
Does there exist other evidence throughout the history of the music we have been listening to that suggests this trend towards disorderliness and experimentation? If so, just how disorderly can you get? Will this continue? What does this mean for the future of music?…
O darn. Looks like we are out of time. Tune in later on this week to see what I’ve found out. Later.
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