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Musical Dimorphism

12 October 2009, 12:25 pm

Men and women are an octave apart. So too are boys and men.

Using the falsetto, or head voice, any man can sing like a woman, or more accurately, sing like a little boy.

Try out your falsetto at home now. Sing like the boy who dreamed he was a man. Use your mind to change the shape of your vocal chords. Let your head do the vibrating. Contrary to popular belief, women can do it too!

Ain’t nothin’ false about falsetto. That shit is real. They should call it realsetto.

Musical dimorphism is found in many species. Check out the calls of the Canada Goose. The male sings "a-honk" and the female sings "a-hink".

The male goose honks an F, while the female hinks a G. The interval between them is called a whole tone, the 2nd smallest next to the semitone.

The hoots of the male and female owls are a major third apart, meaning they are 4 steps away. When their calls overlap, it makes for some sweet harmony.

Los Doggies supports dimorphism in sex and music!

Best Falsetto Ever
100 Million by SDRE

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Meta-songs

6 October 2009, 12:24 pm

A meta-song is self-referential. A fine example of a meta-song is found in "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen.





Click on the sinusoid to hear. The lyrics in the melody refer to the chords as they are played.






The ‘Fourth’ and the ‘Fifth’ refer to chord degrees. There are seven chords in a classic major & minor scale.





“Hallelujah” begins on the C ( I ), then goes to the F ( IV ), the G ( V ). The A Minor VI, and the F major IV.

The singer of the song attempts to serenade his lover, who doesn’t “really care for music”, with a description of the chords he’s playing. According to Cohen, girls adore the finger-picking, but they like chord degrees even more.

Now let’s take a look at “Hallelujah” on the oscilloscope.

hallelujah

Wow, look at that! This little waveform reveals much. You can see five major spikes as marked above. These are volume, or amplitude spikes. The five spikes denote the five verses & choruses of this song. The inbetweens are when Buckley is just playing guitar. Right before the first verse is the quietest moment (*) of the song.

Listen to Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah”






Buckley Breath with Guitar Slap



I heard there was a secret chord, that David played, and it pleased the Lord. Hail Jah!

Other Meta-songs
“I’ll Have to Say I Love You in a Song” by Jim Croce
“This Song is Just Six Words Long” by Weird Al
“Hook” by Blues Traveler

Los Doggies is hard at work on a new album of a meta-songs!

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Toney Toney Tone

4 October 2009, 12:24 pm

Every single musical tone is a chord that contains a scale.
The secret scale inside every tone is called the Harmonic Series.

The Harmonic Series begins with the Fundamental, in this case the C. This is the tone that you hear as pitch. If you strike this tone on a piano, the rest of the tones in the Series will sound. These harmonics color the timbre of an instrument. They let you know it is a piano that is sounding.

The first harmonic is a higher C, the octave. The second harmonic is a G, the fifth, followed by another octave C. The fourth harmonic is the Major/Minor Third E.

Together, C, E and G form a C Major chord.

Thus, there is a natural basis to tonality. Scales and Chords came pre-packaged inside every Tone. So it’s no wonder why babies prefer Major keys.

The Harmonic Series is also know as the Lydian Dominant scale. It is an obscure key. I can’t think of one sing-song that uses it.

However, Alexander Scriabin, the Russian tone poet, uses this scale extensively in his Poem of Fire. Below is Scriabin’s favorite chord, The Mystic Chord, which is created from the Lydian Dominant scale.

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Thus Spake Zarathrusta by Richard Strauss reveals the origins of music in the harmonic series. The song begins with the Fundamental, C, and adds the other harmonics – the Fifth, Octave, and Thirds.

Musicologist Robert Fink has a beautiful anaylsis of Zarathrusta. His Origins of Music site has great articles on the natural basis of music.

Well that’s it for this Bloggy! Here’s what we learned today:

1) Every tone is a chord that contains a scale.
2) This scale is called the Harmonic Series, or Lydian Dominant.
3) The Series shows there is a natural basis to pop tonalities.
4) Thus, babies prefer Major keys.
5) Scriabin was obsessed with Lydian Dominant.
6) Richard Strauss is awesome and babies love him.

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Wooh Hooh H’oh Oh Oh

29 September 2009, 12:23 pm

“Wooh Hooh” is a non-lexical vocable, or an “utterance without meaning”, though the meaning is quite clear in the example below.

Non-lexical vocables express the pure joy of playing and singing music. Fa la la la la. Ob-la-di Ob-la-da.

Backwards, these notes form a D Major Pentatonic Scale. The vocable from Weezer’s “Dreamin'” is also found in an older song.

In both examples, the “Wooh Hooh’s” are sung in falsetto, as “Wooh Hooh’s” ought to be.

Weezer frontman, Rivers Cuomo, carries around a three-ring binder known as “The Enyclopedia of Pop” which breaks down the song formulas of Nirvana, Green Day, and Oasis. (I’d sub in The Beatles for those last two.)

It seems likely that “Dreamin'” was inspired by “You are the Woman,” at least unconsciously. There are 3 main reasons why come I believe this:

1) They both go “Wooh hooh whoa oh oh” .
2) They have the same chord progressions.
3) And for Jupiter’s sake, they’re both in D Major!

Imagine if Music Publications actually reviewed songs? Actually talked about real music?
Here’s what it’d look like:

Dreamin’ by Weezer
Keys: D Major and G Major
Chords: I III IV V
Feel: 4/4 Swing. 4/4 Straight.
Tempo: 130 for beginning and end. 90 at the bridge.

You are the Woman by Firefall
Keys: D Major
Chords: I III II V
Feel: 4/4 Straight.
Tempo: 120

In You are the Woman, the third chord is an E Minor instead of a G, but the movement in both songs is essentially the same.

A Song Schema, like the ones above, can reveal so much more about the music than buzzy adjectives can.

So here’s my music review, fortified with real music talk.

“Dreamin'” by Weezer is a sick song. The melodies are belt-outs. The music is swinging and straight, yet rocks throughout. The structure is adventurous, featuring a bridge section with a little song within the song, sung by Brian Bell with Rivers Cuomo doing counterpoint. The attitude, as always with the Weez’, is bravura – musical bravado.

“Dreamin'” harkens to some of the best moments from Pinkerton. The tempo slowdown at the final chorus is reminiscent of Pink Triangle and the same “One Three Four Five” chord progression was used in Why Bother and Across the Sea.

The kiss-the-sky feedback in the intro is like the drowsy hypnogogic state preceding the kick-in of sweet rockin’ dreams.

How can one not like this song? It’s 4/4 D major anthemic punk-pop with a swing and child-like lyrics and it’s got crazy changes.

Weezer Rules. Wooh Hooh.

Dedicated to all the Post-Green haters. Whoa oh oh.

Other Dreaming Classics:
Daydream Believer by the Monkees
I can’t wake up by Krs One
Dream by Sean Lennon.

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Crying Codas

28 September 2009, 12:23 pm

coda The coda is the very last hoorah of a song. For example, the classic Beatles Coda from Sgt. Pepper. Click on the sinusoid to play/stop.





The coda lets you know the end of the song is nigh.

Let’s take a look at a couple of Crying Codas. The first one is from MJ’s debut album Off the Wall.





According to Quincy Jones “he cried at the end of every take, you know. We recorded about—I don’t know—8-11 takes, and every one at the end, he just cried, and I said ‘hey – that’s supposed to be, leave it on there.”

Here’s another; a Crying Cocker Coda.





After 3 minutes of passionate manly crooning and screaming on this ballad, Joe goes to falsetto for the final notes. Beautiful.

Codas make heavy use of the Cadence. A Cadence leads to the Resolution, the “doe, a deer” or Root. The cadential chords takes you a home.





Above is the classic cadence that takes you home to C Major. Drag over the noteheads.

Try to spot the Coda in the next song you hear!

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Dreamjam

4 May 2009, 12:22 pm

I dreamed that Ludwig and I are playing a grand piano at the shoreline of a turbulent ocean. He is dressed in a tuxedo and is whaling 3 chords over and over on the bass keys, except it doesn’t sound like a piano. It sounds like a chorus of Sirens and Merwomen singing into conch mics. The chords themselves are visible when I look through the piano cabinet.

Below is a chord widget of the Ludwig dreamchords. Drag over the stemmed noteheads. Play the guitar loop and try to drag over the chords in time to create a double-voiced dream timbre.





Here is a scale you can use to play over the Dreamchords. It is an F Phrygian (spelled wrong below) kinda dealy.





Certain notes will only sound good atop certain chords. Go ahead and take yourself a nice long solo. Explore the consonances and dissonances of this progression.





You’ll probably wanna put this oceanic loop on in the background and go take another solo. Just click the orb.

You’ll also probably wanna have some cymbal swells too.





Just click on the Saturnal Cymbal and try to time it so that it crashes on the F Major in the chord progression above. This is called Resolution.

Well that’s it for this dreamjam.

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♪ Little Notes ♪

27 April 2009, 12:22 pm

The ictus is the Moment of Music, the vertical dimension, the instant of the beat, the flick of a conductor’s hand. The flam is an ictus split into two. Drag over the noteheads to hear a flam of snare drum rimshots.



In Percussionese, the flam is pronounced “Plah!”.

Now try it at home: Exectue a flam on the membranophones of your own body. Take your hands, and use them to hit your left and right calves as if at the same time, but right before the ictus, hit your right first.

Audiences are flammy. Listen to this 4/4 stomp & clap beat from Queen’s “We’ll We’ll Rockya.” Click on the score to PLAY/STOP.



Here’s a snapshot of 3 waveforms all meeting up on the ictus.

The top waveform is a little late, the middle, a little early, and the bottom, a little later than the top. All human music is naturally flammy, as even the tightest drummers are always a split-second early or late. Thus, the ictus is always flammed.

As a musical ornament, the flam concept is conveyed by the appoggiatura – or the added little note that precedes a note in a melody.



The appoggiatura above is a little D note, quickly played before the whole note E.


* * *

Appoggiatura’s in Karnov

Check out this melody from the NES game Karnov. Click on the score to PLAY/STOP.



Now, hear this ornamented Karnov with appoggiaturas up the wazoo. These little notes add so much character to the original phrase.



I wish I could speak with appoggiaturas—little grace words preceding what I’m about to say.

As a child, I suffered from glossolalia, or “speaking in tongues”. Later, as a drummer, a new kind of percussalalia would overtake me, that is “speaking in drums”. For as long as I’ve played, the flammy beat below has been on the tip of my mind’s tongue. Like picking at a wound, I love to sound this little beat out again & again. It feels more immediate and readily usable than my human speech.

In Percussionese, it’s pronounced “Plah! Boom! Psaz! Boom! Bloomph! Boom! Ptang!”.

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