For when I get bored and want to talk about music...

[Maniakkid25]

It's the "Simp" in the opening "The-Simp-Sons". It's used to a different effect, but the exact same placement in "Maria" from West Side Story (the "Ri" in "Ma-Ri-A"). Once you know it's there, it's impossible to forget.

[Moonface]

Ah.

I forget if I've asked this and I'm curious what others have to say on this one too. I sometimes feel like when I listen to someone from say, the UK singing, that I can't really notice an accent to their voice like I would if they were speaking, so I'm curious if other people here find that sometimes accents just seem to disappear when certain people sing and that it would be hard to distinguish an American singer from someone elsewhere in the world if you heard them side by side.

[Maniakkid25]

This is a well-known phenomenon. You are not the first to notice it, you won't be the last. Accents are hyper-dependent on pronunciation, and singing has a tendency to "normalize" those key characteristics. That being said, there are specific quirks that some accents have that let you more readily identify them, especially if the singer is concentrating on keeping that accent. Bloc Party immediately comes to mind for me, with Kele's accent being very distinctly English (he is from Liverpool, though I can't say if that is his accent for certain). So, it's not impossible to maintain an accent through singing, it's just much more difficult due to the mechanics of singing itself.

[ShiraNoMai]

I feel like the closer the vocalist is to a speaking intonation in their singing, the more their accent comes through. There's a part in the beginning of this song that you can distinctly hear the Australian in the lead's voice from how he delivers the lines, and I think it definitely has to do with how it is enunciated here.

[Moonface]

Finally watched that video and I like how it gets to the point concisely instead of doing that drawn out tailored to the algorithm stuff most videos on YouTube tend to be nowadays. I find it funny how it talks about everyone taking on a generic American accent because Shira has said before that standard American doesn't have any accent and I've never been able to describe it as anything but just neutral, so I guess it really is just a nothing burger of an accent. XD

I get the impression you didn't check out the video @ShiraNoMai because it mentions how singing closer to a regular speaking pattern results in a more pronounced accent, which is exactly what you're describing.

ABBA was also a super good example in that video btw. I always forget they're Swedish because of how they sing and I've never actually heard them talking to know what they actually sound like. XD

Also the way people sound different when they speak versus singing reminds me of how certain heavy metal singers will have a very soft spoken voice when talking, such as the lead singer of Machine Head. I always find it fascinating to hear they don't talk with a voice that sounds like grinding metal or just really rough when I consider their singing and how harsh they can go for it.

[Maniakkid25]

Welp, time to necro this thread for its original purpose. So, today's topic, inspired by the Music Video thread, is about Sick Sick Sick by Queens of the Stone Age. It is a very vulgar song from an already vulgar album, but why? What makes it so disgusting (in a good way)? Probably has to do a lot with the main riff!

So, we're in C standard tuning. Quick aside about tuning. "Standard" tuning refers to the tuning that is usually used on a guitar, where almost every string is tuned a perfect 4th up from the string lower than it. So, "Standard" tuning is usually, from the lowest-sounding string to the highest, E-A-D-G-B-e. The last E is usually written lower case to distinguish it from the low E. So, when we say "C standard" we mean "standard tuning, but everything is two whole steps down so that C is the lowest note", making it in this case C-F-Bb-Eb-G-c or C-F-A#-D#-G-c depending on how you want to write it.

Back to it: C standard tuning. This is actually Queens of the Stone Age's favorite tuning, honestly. Most of the time, they are playing in this tuning, though some of their songs can be played in E standard. Now, the big reason why this song was a wild west back in the day: the riff is HEAVILY distorted. Distortion is the name of the effect that makes the guitar sound "fuzzy". The easiest way to accomplish this is amplifying the tone to the point the amplifier can't handle it anymore, "clipping" (i.e. cutting off) the crests of the sound wave. This is also referred to as "Overdrive", because you are literally Overdriving the Amp. Distortion has its uses, and making a song sound a lot harsher and harder than normal is one of them, which it is accomplishing in spades here. Song Hardness is another topic for another day, though. What is more important is that Distortion actually, well, distorts the nature of a tone so much, it can add new frequencies to an instrument.

See, when any instrument is playing a note, it's not actually playing just the one note. It's playing that note and all the harmonics above that note, and how soft or loud those harmonics are gives an instrument its "tone color", or "timbre" (pronounced "tam-ber". Don't ask me why.). But Distortion can interfere with those harmonics so much, that it creates new frequencies that interact with the note, especially if it's, say, paired with another note in a chord. This interaction is known as "Intermodulation", and the more dissonant a note pair is, the worse it gets. So, just trying to figure out this damned chord in the main riff was a nightmare, especially considering how unorthodox it actually is.

See, when the dust finally settled, the music world figured out that the riff is composed of a single note pair: a low C, and a Bb one octave over it (So, for guitar, it would be a C2, and a Bb3). That is a NIGHTMARE of dissonance. If you recall from my opening post, this interval is already a Minor 7th, and Minor 7ths aren't exactly known for their pleasing qualities. Oh, Minor 7th CHORDS are pretty chill, but Minor 7ths raw? That's pretty rough. So, you take an already dissonant interval, and distort the living hell out of it, and you get this guttural roar coming from the guitar through the entire song! It's honestly impressive what two notes by themselves manage to do for this song.

[Moonface]

...Minor 7ths aren't exactly known for their pleasing qualities. Oh, Minor 7th CHORDS are pretty chill, but Minor 7ths raw? That's pretty rough. So, you take an already dissonant interval, and distort the living hell out of it, and you get this guttural roar coming from the guitar through the entire song! It's honestly impressive what two notes by themselves manage to do for this song.

I'm assuming it's really risky and unheard of for songs to dare use this sort of thing even sparingly, and so for a whole song to use it is probably such a rare and "taboo" thing to do that I won't be surprised if you tell me Sick Sick Sick was the first song to use it so extensively? I'm also curious how if Minor 7th isn't pleasing how it just doesn't automatically ruin that song like would be expected?

As an aside thing I wanted to ask but didn't really know where, is there any reason in music for artists to put incredibly long stretches of nothing in the last song of an album? I know 30 Seconds To Mars does it on at least their first two albums, with one track running for 7:52 but only uses the first 4:44 for the song, and another track running for 14:14 but only uses about 3:00 for the song. Both of those tracks also have another song bundled into that same track but at the end after whatever period of silence has to run until that song comes in, and I guess the silence is meant to help hide these "extra songs" but I don't get what the point of it actually is when most people aren't going to care to keep skipping through the track every time they play it to reach the hidden part at the end.
Deftones is the worst offender for doing this though that I know of; their Around the Fur album features a final track with a run time of 37:18, of which only the first 4:52 is used for the song. After 14:40 of silence, the first hidden track plays, and then it's another 12:41 of silence until the second hidden track plays.
I just....don't get the point of this or why any artist would do it. It just seems like such a waste to produce a song and then hide it inside tracks like this, especially in the era of CD's where the silence would just make most people assume the album ended unless their CD player showed a track run time to let them know something's up.

[Maniakkid25]

...Minor 7ths aren't exactly known for their pleasing qualities. Oh, Minor 7th CHORDS are pretty chill, but Minor 7ths raw? That's pretty rough. So, you take an already dissonant interval, and distort the living hell out of it, and you get this guttural roar coming from the guitar through the entire song! It's honestly impressive what two notes by themselves manage to do for this song.

I'm assuming it's really risky and unheard of for songs to dare use this sort of thing even sparingly, and so for a whole song to use it is probably such a rare and "taboo" thing to do that I won't be surprised if you tell me Sick Sick Sick was the first song to use it so extensively? I'm also curious how if Minor 7th isn't pleasing how it just doesn't automatically ruin that song like would be expected?

As with everything, context matters. Minor 7ths can be very useful. Anything in Mixolydian will have them, after all. I have my doubts that this is the first song to do it, but just using that as the main "chord" is certainly...unorthodox. And Minor 7ths are a lot more consonant than Major 7ths. Major 7ths DESPERATELY want to resolve to the tonic, and just letting it hang out is one of those things that is very alien. But Minor 7ths are a little more chill; there's more space it has to cross to get over to the tonic, so they're much more willing to wait around. But just jamming on a Minor 7th interval is not conducive to a song. Like, at all.

To give a comparison of the difference between Major and Minor 7ths, it's sort of the difference between Habanero and Jalapeño. Both of them will make your taste buds hate you, but one is SIGNIFICANTLY more extreme than the other. ...actually, that comparison is great for describing dissonance, now that I think about it.

[Mr EliteL]

As an aside thing I wanted to ask but didn't really know where, is there any reason in music for artists to put incredibly long stretches of nothing in the last song of an album...

That's something I don't really understand either. Hidden songs fine, but why make the wait time so long, perhaps half a minute at most? I know Kamelot has done something like this for their Karma album even without a hidden song just to make the runtime reach 55:55 for their 5th album which is a pointless reason, yet have two bonus tracks and not add at least one into it? Then on a different album have a cello solo after silence when the listed end track had finished.

Anyway, about Sick Sick Sick, I normally dislike heavily distorted songs but I wanted to mention 0:55-1:15 (plus any other instances of that moment) is the best part I enjoy but after the third listen of the entire song, I've come to like it which surprises me.  

Also dang your knowledge on music astounds me, Maniak. Good read so I don't usually have anything to say.

[Maniakkid25]

Ah, this bit I missed. That's much more about music PRODUCTION, so I am the wrong guy to be asking that sort of question, but my guesses are to either be cute or annoying, potentially both. It's really down to what the producers want out of the album than anything.

I did have to check to see if the segment you mention is the section I thought it was. It was, and that's also my favorite part of the song, too. You get a moment to breathe during that riff with a four on the floor drum and just the guitar, and then the bass comes back in and it's ALL gas from there until that haunting synth guitar starts up. It also just makes for a really interesting bridge section. This is the sort of thing that makes me sad I can't write music worth a damn!

[Moonface]

Ah, this bit I missed. That's much more about music PRODUCTION, so I am the wrong guy to be asking that sort of question, but my guesses are to either be cute or annoying, potentially both. It's really down to what the producers want out of the album than anything.

Ah, fair enough. I wasn't sure if it was possibly something that was done for a musical reason to add more to one of those songs than if it didn't have any silence beforehand, similar to when songs put in short sudden stops in the audio to put additional impact on a note.


Hopefully this next question fits better to the sort of things you know about music.

So I was listening to a song (Are 'Friends' Electric by Tubeway Army/Gary Numan) that uses a keyboard (or at least sounded like it did) and it reminded me of something Simon Cowell would always bitch about on Britain's Got Talent; anyone who came on stage with the intent of playing a keyboard. I was curious if his dislike of that instrument has any merit and that it isn't generally a good idea to use one most of the time, or if he just disliked them due to personal tastes? It's the only instrument I've ever heard anyone take a strong disliking to.

[Maniakkid25]

I'm willing to bet it's the "Stairway to Heaven" effect. I don't know if the phenomenon has a name, but do you remember this joke from Wayne's World?



If you do, there's a kernel of truth to it. if you were a guitar noodler, you might have gone into a guitar shop, and one of the features of a guitar shop is they let you play on the guitars to see if it's a good fit for you and you like the sound of it. And people ALWAYS...ALWAYS play Stairway to Heaven. So, guitar shop workers get flashbacks every time they hear that opening riff, remembering all the terrible people who have played it badly.

I think something similar is happening here. Simon Cowell has seen SO many idiots with a keyboard that don't have any idea what they are actually doing that he instinctively flinches when he sees one, having a premonition of how terribly this will turn out. Again, not really a music thing, but it is tangential to music.

[Moonface]

I never watched (or have really heard of) Wayne's World so this is the first time I'm hearing of the "Stairway to Heaven" effect or that it's the song a lot of people use to test on a guitar.

I can see that being translated to Simon's issue with keyboards though; he tends to get that look of "here we go..." I suspect guitar store workers have.

Taking that to mean keyboards aren't bad instruments and instead just end up in the hands of too many people who use them poorly (I suspect because they're one of the cheaper and more widespread instruments especially when I consider how many of them I saw in school) is there actually any instrument in music that really isn't good for much or is everything just a case of "blame the worker, not the tools"?

[Maniakkid25]

I mean, when is it not "blame the worker, not the tools"? Unless those tools are fundamentally not conducive to the job, then it's the worker.

Next topic I will babble at length about: Chord loops! I have briefly mentioned this in other posts, but with these, we actually start seeing modern music being born.

A chord loop is, well, exactly what it says on the tin: it's a set of chords that constantly repeats in a song. If you've been around the youtubes, you may be familiar with this joke:



That is what is now commonly referred to as "The Axis Progression". The chords in question are I, V, vi, IV. There is actually a stupid amount of songs that use this specific chord loop, and it's actually a great way to train your ears for chords by just trying to identify the Four Chords of Pop. But there are several others, such as the Doo-wop/50's Progression (I - vi - IV - V), the Andalusian Cadence (i - bVII - bVI - V in western music thinking, iv - bIII - bII - I in its namesake of Andalusia), The Royal Road Progression (IV - V - iii - vi) -- Which is the progression that confused me from "God Knows" mentioned of a previous post. Hell, the Axis progression is actually really flexible, because you can start it on the vi chord, and have a minor version of the progression (i - bVI - bIII - bVII), Actually, you can start it on any chord in the progression, but those two are the most "stable" variants. But those don't hold a candle to my favorite: the 12-Bar Blues.

The 12-Bar Blues is to the Blues what the Axis Progression is to Pop: it's absolutely bloody everywhere! Seriously, if you want an old-timey rock and roll sound to a song, play this at a fast tempo, and everyone will get the point. In fact, there's a bit that still gets to me when I found out about it at first, and now I'm going to infect you with it because it's SUCH a cool detail. In Back to the Future, when Marty famously plays Johnny B. Goode about 3 years before it was first written, just as he's about to get into it, he says to the band that "[it's] a Blues riff in B". First off, it's actually impressive that the band manages to catch that it's actually a Blues bar in Bb, but also that that's all they needed to know to get ready for what was about to come out; Just hearing "Blues riff", they knew what to play from there. That's how disgustingly overused it was back in the day! And people say all Pop songs sound alike...

A 12-bar blues is a very simple progression, actually. I for 4 bars, IV for 2 bars, I for 2 bars, V for 1 bar, IV for 1 bar, I for 2 bars. After that, it just circles right back. You can vary the last four bars a bit (maybe play the V for 2 bars, or something like that), but that's the basic progression. Usually, all the chords are played as Dominant 7ths (Because Blues don't give a Fu-!), though in the Johnny B. Goode example, it's just a power chord with the occasional 6th for flavor. I actually use the song "Wipeout" to remember the progression, myself, because it's the exact same progression.

Alright, this is all fascinating. But why do they work? Well, the answer to that is the same as every good Lawyer's answer to a question: it depends. The Axis Progression, for example, feeds into itself through the use of multiple cadences ("cadence" in this context referring to one chord resolving to another). The Doo-wop Progression (this time the links are videos, so you can hear them in action) builds into a "Perfect Cadence" (V going to I), before coming back around. The Andalusian Cadence either also builds into a Perfect Cadence or comes back to its resting point, depending on how you look at it. Royal Road, while coming to resting points, never actually comes back to its I chord, keeping a sense that something's about to happen next. And the 12-Bar Blues is weird, because of course it is. See, the Blues uses a more African definition of tonality, rather than European like I've been talking about. As such, tonal concepts as we usually define them don't really help us out, here. Sounds really cool, though.

But yeah, now comes the fun part: try and see if you can listen to your list of favorite songs, and pick out these progressions. It's kind of like finding out that a Voice Actor voiced two different characters in different shows.

[Maniakkid25]

"Mom! The crazy person is babbling about music again!"

Yes, it's time for me to use this topic for what I originally intended, and babble about music for a good long post. Today's topic is Unsung by Helmet.



This is a song that doesn't really need an introduction. It's a classic Alt Metal tune, and was one of Helmet's earliest hits that launched them to being the influential band they are today. But it has had me tossing and turning with a simple question.

WHAT KEY ARE YOU IN?

"Yes, it's time to listen way too deeply into a track to determine its musical contents." This is what I would be saying if this song wasn't already solved. This is a song available on Rocksmith, after all, and it's here that I have an addendum. I previously stated in my intro topic that Muse's Plug In Baby is the fastest song I can play with any proficiency. This is incorrect; I had forgotten that, despite this being a fast-paced metal song, this is ABSURDLY EASY. It's Power Chords in Drop D tuning (Same as E standard, but the low E is tuned to a D); a child with no music training could learn this song within an hour.

Back to the question. So, given the Power Chords used in the main riff, there are two obvious candidates for what it could be. Those keys are D Minor and E Phrygian. I've talked about modes before, so I won't litigate the differences in too much detail, but there is one note different between these two keys. D minor has a Bb, while E Phrygian has a B. And technically, the instrumental does have a B in it.

See, a Power Chord is a specific set of two notes: the root, and its perfect fifth. So, an E Power Chord has a B in it. Case closed, right? Not necessarily. In music that uses a lot of power chords, you still play the fifth even if its out of key, because it's so much easier than worrying about that tritone (E forms a tritone with Bb). So, just because it's found in a power chord doesn't necessarily mean it's in key. Which means we're going to have to whip out the Piano again, because despite me calling myself a musician, I can't innately hear pitches. I could if I ear trained enough, but who has time for that?

So, there are actually two ways we can go about this. We can brute force noodle on the piano until we get the vocal line, and read back the notes played. The other thing we can do, though, is just play a note over and over, and see if it feels "like home". That note will tell us our tonal center, and since we only have two suspect keys, we can easily narrow it down. The problem with the second method is that it's much more subjective, so for this post we will use the first one.

So, in the vocals, the first lyric is "Your contribution left unnoticed some". At the "left" in the lyric, there is distinctly a B being sung. So, there, now it's cased closed. The song is in E Phrygian. Which actually makes the song really interesting, and not just because of the use of its mode.

See, when I first mentioned modes, I said that if you focus hard enough, you can make any note your tonal center in the scale, and this song actually proves my point. The entire song is in E Phrygian, but the ending solo, if you watch the rhythm guitar in the Rocksmith video (the bottom track is Rhythm guitar), is jamming on a C Major chord. C Major the scale is the base mode that E Phrygian is derived from, so right at the end of this dark and foreboding song, we get this brightness that is completely uncharacteristic of the rest of the song, without changing any notes played. It's actually really cool given its a song in a genre famous for not giving a single damn about music theory. ...Or does it? Page Hamilton, the song's writer, is actually a classically trained guitarist, having gone to University of Oregon. He's actually surprisingly well-versed in music theory amomgst his peers, so maybe that's how this happened? I can only speculate.