Rammstein is, well, Rammstein, but what made me first like them so long ago was this guitar rhythm (I have no idea how to describe it correctly) in Mein Herz Brennt that just built up and up and up. Awesome.
I don’t like Maná quite as much as they insist on showing up in Pandora “Latin Rock” stations, but I can’t help feeling the guitar for Dejame Entrar is just so cool, right at the beginning.
And of course, there are always the fun little surprises that come with live music, such as this hot Russian girl rendition of This Love by Maroon 5, that gets interrupted (for the best).
Huun Huur Tu - Chiraa Khoor [Yellow Trotter] Mongolian dual note singing. It is a song about the Hero riding around the steppes naming things. I can just hear the little pony running around.
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The final verse of “She’s Gone,” by Hall and Oates. “They can never be what she was (was!) to me”–it just works perfectly for me, how the voices interplay, the “echo” on the word “was,” the resignation in the words and their vocals. Great song, great moment.
One of the most profound lines I’ve ever heard in a song came from Mess by Ben Folds Five. The song is about how the narrator has a tendency to fuck things up in his relationships, and, by extension, his life.
At one point, he’s taking to the love he’s just had, and talking about the new one he’s just starting to get to know. He realizes he’s been a complete dick to the old love, and he wishes like hell that that never happens again. During the last verse, he says
And “The Birds.” I absolutely adore “Gli Uccelli.” (I adore Renaissance and Medieval music, and The Birds is a re-orchestrating of old dance music. And I bet you already knew that, so I’m only mentioning it in hopes of enticing someone who might be reading this. Hey, you! People reading! Respighi! You’ll thank us!)
Anything by Haendel does it for me. I’m listening to the Music for the Royal Fireworks right now, and I can’t put into words the feelings it evokes. Had I ever been married, I would have insisted that The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba be played instead of the traditional wedding marches, which I loathe, and the Water Music would have been played at the reception.
“Behind Blue Eyes”, by the Who. “But my dreams, they aren’t as empty as my conscience seems to be.” In the middle of the word “dreams”, Roger Daltrey’s voice casually jumps up an octave and back down again. It seems like a tiny thing, but I cannot do it.
If I have to pick just one moment, it would be the ascending arpeggio sung by the chorus as it comes in after the instrumental introduction at the very beginning of Bach’s Matthäus-Passion. Here, it’s at 1:20 but you really have to listen to it from the start to get the full effect.
The music before it is already great but this simple four-note motif launches the whole thing and makes it well... greater than great.
I’ve mentioned a few before, but I’ll now add the closing section of the Tannhäuser Overture - as the stringy section in the middle has been getting increasingly frantic, the “Pilgrim’s Chorus” theme returns, originally compromising with the strings by playing four to the bar, then asserting its right to go three to the bar as it did at the beginning and pulling the strings around it to settle on its rhythm. Fantastic music marred only by the fact you can never quite manage to not think of Bugs Bunny.
Dire Straits - Brothers in Arms
The guitar part after he sings “But we live in different ones.” There’s the muted slide, the power chord, a hammer-on and then that wonderful slow bend up. . . Literally makes my scalp tingle when listening through headphones. All of the guitar work in this song (and pretty much all Knopfler songs) is great, but that moment is the highlight for me.
Elbow - Ribcage
A somewhat strange song that nevertheless I like a lot. But it transforms into something even more interesting when the choir comes in suddenly. . . Just listen! I intentionally did not link to the specific time because it needs to be heard from the beginning to have the full effect.
Bach - St. Matthew Passion
“Wir setzen uns mit tranen nieder” when the choir begins, and even moreso at about 5:57 with the soaring high notes. Overall a beautiful, sorrowful piece of music.
Near the beginning of Liszt’s Un Sospiro, after starting in D-flat major with lots of arpeggios in that key, there is one arpeggio in D-flat minor, then the piece modulates to A major. 1:03 in this performance. Liszt - "Un Sospiro" - YouTube
This is pretty lowbrow, but mine occurs in the opening theme for Stargate SG-1:
It starts with a sort of melancholy theme, then there’s some bombastic and menacing strings and low brasses. And then, at about 0:20, the higher brasses and strings suddenly break in with a beautiful lyrical melody, like the sun rising. Lovely.
A couple of my favorite musical moments are all in one song - Steely Dan’s "My Old School. They’re not “Tingle Moments”, they just make me smile.
[ul]
[li]02:56 - The little drum fill in the middle of the instrumental break, with a kind of reprise at 03:22[/li][li]03:39 - The horn fills in the last verse, especially that big fat bari sax note at the end of the first fill.[/li][li]04:27 - The change in rhythm on the final “And I’m never goin’ back to my old school.” Every syllable is on an upbeat, without that pause in the middle of the phrase you get every other time.[/li][li]05:09 - The drums, which have been very mannered and almost delicate, just go into a straight-on-the beat, driving rhythm and come forward in the mix.[/li][/ul]I love this song. It just makes me smile at all the little things they do musically.
For me, it is actually a point in one song which is reached from things that happened in the song before it on the record. Yes, I said record, because it was originally released on vinyl, and it doesn’t work on any other format. I am talking about Pink Floyd’s “Have a cigar”, followed by “Wish You Were Here”. Someone actually put both songs together on Youtube. I am starting in the instrumental part at the end of the first song. At 4:50 you hear a sound effect, and abruptly it sounds like you are hearing the song on an old mono AM radio. The song continues in mono, and abruptly ends as someone starts tuning the radio dial. The next song starts, still in mono with lots of radio interference in the background. If you are listening straight through on a record, or a tape, your ear gets used to the mono at this point. At 6:07, Gilmour cuts in with a simple guitar riff, but it is crisp and clear and sounds beautiful. It doesn’t work on CD, at least for me, because the interference is too crisp, and you can’t buy an MP3 of the too songs together, so I guess this piece of brilliance will fade away. http://youtu.be/NP4JeyJCVag?t=4m42s
