This week, when I was listening to a newly-discovered artist (DeVotchKa, if anyone wants to know), I realized something interesting. My thoughts ran thus:
“This band is awesome.”
“Wait, the singer’s vocals are nothing like what I usually enjoy. I’d even call them a bit on the crappy side.”
“…so why am I listening to them again? And again? And again?”
And it hit me. I am a sucker for certain instruments. All other things being equal, these things will bias me heavily in favor of a mediocre song that uses them:
1.) The accordion.
2.) Buzzy muted trumpet.
3.) Spaghetti Western guitar. You know, with lots of reverberation (said the person who’s completely ignorant of guitar jargon. Sorry.)
4a.) Overly clever, verbose lyrics.
4b.) Slant rhyme, and other overly clever ways of writing the lyrics.
5.) 3/4 time (or 6/8, or however the crazy musicians choose to denote that general rhythm.)
So, it turns out that these things give me the opposite of the sort of visceral hatred I have of saxophones or hippie flute. If you’re a musician trying to gain the wunderkammer demographic, you just have to slip a few of those things into your songs and I’ll be helpless against you.
Time signature other than 4/4 (or 2/4, which is pretty indistinguishable if you’re casually listening). That basically means 3/4 or 6/8, though you find weirdos like Pink Floyd’s Money in 7/4.
Catchy guitar lines. Slide, Sweet Child O’ Mine, More Than A Feeling.
Violins, violas, and cellos in rock and roll. Kansas, the Eels, R.E.M., Oasis, ZOX.
Complex vocal harmonies. Styx, Queen, the Barenaked Ladies.
I swear I can’t tell the difference between different time signatures. Does anyone know a good book or website that has a good introduction to basic musical theory? I know almost nothing about it.
I couldn’t either until I started dancing and had to learn it. Listen to the drums: in 4/4 the drummer often alternates between hitting the snare drum and tapping the cymbal, producing a boom tic, boom tic, boom tic, boom tic while in 3/4 the drummer commonly taps the cymbal twice before hitting the snare drum, giving a boom tic tic, boom tic tic.
Compare Waltz #2 by Elliot Smith to Slow Dancing In A Burning Room by John Mayer. Those are easy ones to pick out the time signature. A waltz time can give a more swaying feel to a song.
Use of “non-kosher” instruments for the genre (i.e. rock with a lot of trombone, flue, saxophone, violin etc). Barenaked Ladies and Pain are great with this.
Really upbeat (not necessarily “happy” but more “crazy with insane synth work”). A lot of the stuff Vox links to fits this (you and your addicting Europop smile.dk Hit ‘n’ Hide stuff!)
Changes between “traditional” and “modern” music (i.e. Yasashii Yoake from .hack switches from a fairly standard violin chorale into a more modern J-popish fare)
For that matter, extreme tempo changes.
I can’t recall what the technical term for this is, but when they strip all the parts except one or two. Usually it’s either the melody and one harmony or the melody and the rhythmic accents.
Lyrics that tell a story with made up characters.
Lyrics that either don’t take themselves seriously, or make you think about a serious subject while still being fun.
Cramminglotsofwordsintoasinglemeasure.
When composing:
I really, really, REALLY like neighboring groups and pedal points for some reason.
I just wanted to tell you I approve of your approval of DeVotchKa.
I’m a sucker for:
The use of samples of industrial machines, general grinding noises, or air-raid sirens. I love these sounds. (KMFDM’s “Dirty” uses an air-raid siren to great effect.)
Really clever imagery, or lyrics that work in pitch-black humor (Tod A. of Cop Shoot Cop/Firewater and Tom Waits do this very well).
Female singers with powerful alto voices and who don’t act like sex kittens except to make a point (PJ Harvey, Neko Case, etc.).
Interesting chord changes, artfully used dissonance, melodies that veer into surprising territories.
Drums that sit slightly behind the beat, giving the song a kind of swaggering sound.
Non-traditional song structures (no verse-verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus-chorus business)
Happy-ish music with depressing lyrics. See Elliott Smith and Belle & Sebastian for good examples.
Counterpoint. I loves me some counterpoint, and it’s often the best aspect of the song. From Bach’s Inventions to Radiohead’s Paranoid Android to Les Miserable’s One Day More, there’s just something about different melodies being interwoven skillfully that just does it for me.
Good use of harmony. Simon & Garfunkel and The Beatles are classic examples. Elliott Smith was a master craftsman, as well.
Jangly guitar- Quichua Mashis is my favorite example of this.
Organs- any kind; huge church organs, rock organs, synth-y organs, whatever. I blame my dad for this.
You know how in “Zydrate Anatomy” (from Repo! The Genetic Opera) there’s the repetition because it’s like a perverted nursery rhyme or such? That. I listened to that song for 3 hours in a row once. No kidding.
what i call beach electric guitar, not sure the real term - you can hear it in the score parts of Kyle XY
fullness of sound - the background chords don’t end - coldplay, kristian leantoiu, most ambient type music, heavy production on the vocals so it sounds like more than one person singing
obscure instruments - toy piano, whatever asian instrument they use in the Earth Final Conflict score, whatever wind instrument they use in The Big Blue
non traditional percussion, or maybe i should say traditional, anything you hit with your hand, or wood against wood
on the other hand, anything with the Cher robot voice thing instantly turns me off, as does overly artificial percussion
