Music Analysis Requests

When I hit "play" there are all sorts of listening modes I can go into.

There's the "musical chewing gum" state, where I put some music on while I cook or browse forums, my attention wandering from task to tune and back again. There's the "brain-mush marinade", the music I put on just prior to collapsing from exhaustion into a comfortable chair at 9.00 in the evening, the music that just sort of washes over me. Oh! There's also the "itch & switch shuffle", a kind of dance where I get up to change CDs after only a track or two, compelled by an urge brought about by associating one song with another: an unending stream of consciousness playlist.



Then there are those special moments when I get lost in the music, a total absorption when time has no meaning and my entire universe consists of constellations of melodic fragments and nebulae of tone colour. This is when I notice stuff, when the penny drops. I feel like the musicians are somehow communing more closely with me and I get what they're saying. This is particularly so when I understand the music on a rational level before the needle drops or the hard drive spins up.

All this is a long winded way of saying that getting your mind around music before you listen can be a cool way of enhancing the experience.

In this thread I invite you to choose a song or two that you'd like to understand better. You could just list it and leave it, embed a video, ask specific questions or whatever you want related to musical analysis. It can be any style or any time period. I'll respond by making some analytical comments that you usually won't need to be a musician to understand. This could relate to the structure of the piece, the mode/scale, how harmony is used to create tension and release etc.



Think of me as a backyard mechanic, stripping down an engine and putting it back together again. I'm not some know-it-all expert in the field, but between us there might be some insights that result in a heightened herb-free musical experience. I'd invite other members to roll up their sleeves as well and get under the hood/bonnet.

Edit: It might take a week or two for me to respond, but I'll do what I can when I can. If I'm dragging the chain others might want to jump in.

 

I’ll go.

 

Bill Evans - "Peace Piece"

Thanks @jowls for this great suggestion.

You know, to my shame I can't remember having heard it before and despite loving jazz at a surface level I don't know much about it. What I do know is that Bill Evans went on to play with Miles Davis and contributed greatly to the recording of that monumental modal jazz record, "Kind of Blue". The little jazz theory I know I learned playing in a community stage band / big band for a year or two and writing some arrangements for them.

With this in mind there's probably much more that can be said than I'm about to describe here. Mostly you won't need a music theory background to understand, but I'll be throwing a few extra tidbits in brackets



The first thing you'll notice is that there's a repeated pattern: A bass note, two chords and then a bass note, almost like a bass guitar and rhythm guitar looping for over six minutes ( Cmaj7 - G11, simple alternation between tonic and dominant). This technique of using a repeated underlying pattern is the continuation of an "ostinato" tradition that's hundreds of years old. Here's another, more recent Jazz example of an ostinato:

GoGo Penguin - Murmuration



The melody that Evans plays over the top is very free and improvisatory in character, like a very skilled person making it up as he goes along, which is probably how the piece came to exist. The melody consists of simple little fragments broken up by sustained notes and coming to frequent points of rest. The fragments are often arpeggios, notes of a chord, played one after another instead of all together. The notes of repose are laid back characters, usually the major seventh or ninth of the tonic. These are the sorts of pitches that give jazz flavour, like adding nutmeg to a lasagna.

Bill is holding himself back here in the name of mood, the sound of a Sunday afternoon. Not only is he using one of the easiest scales to play, devoid of sharps and flats, he's not even using all the notes of that scale. Have a look at this and tell me what's missing:

C D E G A B C

Yep - He's left the F out entirely, making this a hexatonic scale (formed by stacking perfect fifths C - G - D - A - E - B). As long as he sticks within this restriction there's no note he could play that would sound wrong. A non-musician with some musical sensitivity could do it... but not as well as Bill. He creates interest through rhythm and melodic patterns.

Bill brings in a new idea at the 1:37 mark by turning the wandering melody into a duet, but a duet in which both singers move perfectly in step, a fifth apart. It reminds me very much of a piece of music written about 50 years earlier by the French composer, Debussy. Can you hear any similarities?

Debussy - La cathédrale engloutie (The Sunken Cathedral)



Back to PP, things start to get weird at 3:36 until we have some relief and familiarity at 4:15. But, no, he's not done with us yet! In the section from 4:47 to 5:35 there's an other-worldliness, a splinter in Neo's brain that doesn't belong. It's jarring, disjointed and agitated. Evans has turned to the musical modernist's playbook.

The "melody" is in an entirely different key to the underlying ostinato, also shifting keys between one fragment and the next. This simultaneous use of different keys is called "polytonality" and if it weren't for the underlying chords we'd be in the land of atonal chaos where we'd have nothing in the landscape to find our bearings. But, no. Evans keeps his left hand in the perpetual Sunday afternoon and harmony is restored at 5:35. We drift off to sleep and all is well with the world.



Let's shift from analysis to interpretation where we're asking the question "what does this all mean". Is there a message in this music?

There's obviously a mood here and the title "Peace Piece" conveys something, but how far can we take it? We know that Evans was emerging from a period of burnout when he recorded this as part of the 1958 "Everybody Digs Bill Evans" and his father was having some health problems. We're also deep into the cold war with a "red under the bed" mentality that gave rise to such great literature as "The Crucible".

The postmodernist would say that interpretation is a creative act and that it's difficult, if not impossible, to know authorial intent. Rather than digging into Bill Evan's personal history and reading other's interpretation I'm going to take the postmodernist path and create a mini-narrative to guide my listening, and maybe yours, informed by my analysis.

There are two musical ideas. Simplicity and rest on the one hand and a total dissonant alienation on the other.
If I wanted to play devil's advocate I'd say that there's a sense here that peace is just an illusion. The listener is like an addict in an opium den shrouded by a narcotic haze that lifts him from meaninglessness and pain. The effect of the drug wears off, letting life's despair creep through until he refills his pipe and takes another drag. Is the title "Peace" Piece ironic? A diversion from an escalating arms race and the countless problems of the human condition?

No. I'd say that this is too cynical and that "Peace Piece" is just as it seems. That four beat ostinato just keeps on going, like the ripple on a calm sea. It never stops. Even when the polytonal madness threatens to overwhelm, those two restful chords are there. We're told that it's disorder and despair who are the intruders. There might be a snake in the garden, but there's still a garden. We've struggled and might still be experiencing grief... but there will be rest for the weary.

We should all take six and a half minutes out of our day and listen to "Peace Piece" again.

 

As you wish. Prepare for Kyuss. This was my gateway track into heavy music. It starts with a gentle groove and transforms into "Caterpillar March." I must stop here, once you go Kyuss you go heavier.

 

Amazing. THANK YOU. Super interesting to learn about the compositional elements and your interpretation isn’t dissimilar to my own.

 

So if "metal" isn't off limits, here's one that I very much struggle with. (And yes, it's technically Prog/Djent, but eh). I was a drummer for a while, so this engages me greatly. Animals as Leaders: Monomyth from Parrhesia.

Here's the full cut:



And here's Matt Garstka's playthrough so you can see sticking, etc.



edit: rewatched the playthrough for the 88th time and it still baffles me how effortless it looks.

 

Any style at all @Deep Funk and @yotacowboy . I love cranking up some metal from time to time and have heard a few Animals as Leaders numbers, but am certainly no expert. I'll do what I can sometime in the next week with these two requests. Honestly, I'm glad of the opportunity to learn along the way.

To others, please hold off on your requests until I get to the two above. Looking forward to seeing what you've got for me.

 

He is a beast behind the drum-kit. A few years back Animals As Leaders performed in Haarlem. Drummers of his kind are special.