Wow! I'd never heard this before! Writer Kenzie* and producers Bloodshy & Avant take a dramatic "Reach Out I'll Be There"-type melody, throw it into waltz time, and make it a funny, bumpy promenade. [EDIT: I meant to say they throw it into SWING time. My brain went herky-jerky there for a second. In any event, this most certainly isn't a waltz; it'
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Swedish, actually.
I'm not sure where you're hearing triplets in "Cinderella/Complex"; the quarter notes are definitely, you know, quarter notes, and if you break them down further, you get eight or sixteen beats to the measure, not the twelve beats you get in "Womanizer" and "L.A. Ex." But I guess you're saying there's some sort of triple/triplet emphasis? As I said, I'm not able to put my finger on that one. Not sure what I'm hearing in the rhythm in "C/C," actually, but it's great.
Not sure how I'd categorize the beat of "Sweet Dreams My L.A. Ex" anyway. It seems pretty rock 'n' roll, to tell you the truth, more pushed than the boogies and swings of the late '40s, but still with a looseness that hard rock etc. tends to lack. What's grabbing me most, though, is the melody, which, while not sounding retro, is totally steeped in the between-wars American Deep South. I'd call it a "blues" melody except to do so would confuse people. In any event, it's neither major nor minor but uses the tones of old African American music (more accurately, the African American Scots Irish rural English whateverishness that came together in the rural American Southeast). Has a feel somewhat like "St. James Infirmary," though "Sweet Dreams" of course is both more casual and more feisty. (But what Louis is doing rhythmically is way beyond what Rachel is doing, and beyond my powers of analysis: there's the basic substrate of quarter notes that are each individually subdivided further into threes, while his singing/soloing will sometimes reach to alternate rhythms, his timing not off-rhythm but differently rhythmic, having moments where it feints and floats.)
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The rhythm of the arrangement in "Cinderella\Complex" is quarter-notes and sixteenths/eighths,(the reggaton rhythm is, using the one-e-and-a sixteenths speaking notation, "one-a-two-and") but the vocal melody is almost entirely triplets.
The exceptions are the "nanananana" hook, which using the one-la-li triplet speaking notation, is "one-and-two-la-li-three," and various parts where if the melody is crossing between beats using pick-up notes, or using only the first two notes of the triplet, (or both, as in the last pre-chorus line) sometimes the rhythm is crushed from triplets to sixteenths.
I've never heard this songwriter do a fully-triplets song. He always ends up juxtaposing them against sixteenths or eighths,(especially in the arrangement) using the triplets as a source of syncopation, where the likes of "Womanizer" are fully committed to only triplets.
"Sweet Dreams My LA Ex" is fully triplets, but isn't as tied to the down beat as "Chocolate Love." "Chocolate Love" also has some pick-up notes, but has more emphasis on the long notes starting on the down beat.
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[...] long notes starting on the down beat. "Run Devil Run" is the same way. Even for the "li-one-la-li-two-la-li-three-li-four-li" runs there's a sense of resolution on the down beats. "Sweet Dreams My LA Ex" has lots of long notes starting on the up beat or pick up note. That initial "Heeeeey" is actually starting on an eighth note up beat. The song also prominently makes use of quarter note triplets (which are actually "one-li-la-three-li-la") surrounded by regular quarter notes, the half time equivalent of juxtaposing eighth notes and triplets. The swing time rhythm is a two-beat measure, and "Sweet Dreams My LA Ex" and "St. James Infirmary" are treating that pattern like it's one beat. Almost cut time style? (Hence juxtaposing triplet quarters-quarters-eighth notes like triplets-eighths
-sixteenths)
Can't speak for the melody/progression, haven't studied it enough, although that blues pattern you mentioned jumped out at me once I played "St. James Infirmary." I think the pre-chorus might be doing a relative key change to the progession's key, though. Both things are absent from "Chocolate Love," as well, but they wouldn't necessarily fit the sultry theme "Chocolate Love" was going for, anyways. Don't want syncopation or deviance from the progression distracting from the seduction, after all.
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As for the impact this has on the sound, I don't have a good idea. SNSD's "Bad Girl" doesn't feel particularly K-pop to me, but "Tell Me Your Wish (Genie)" does, though both have Scandinavian input, the latter actually being Norwegian. (The same crew, Dsign Music, had a hand in ChoColat's "I Like It," the best of ChoColat's three singles.)
It may take a few days before I can concentrate on the music theory stuff.
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And I really have no idea what it is that makes something "sound K-pop" to me. I made a K-pop mix, and Jewelry's "One More Time" fit right in, despite its arrangement having been lifted substantially from the Italian Eurodance original (the Jewelry version does flow better rhythmically, and the accordion hook takes an upturn that the it doesn't in In-Grid's; but I'm not really hearing the rhythm containing different beats so much as using different timbre; however, I haven't sat down to do an in-depth comparison yet).
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