I was listening to One Night in Bangkok the other day and was trying to work out what gives the rhythm such an interesting pulsing insistence.
Then I had a hunch what I was hearing: the track seems to be full of tiny breaks of silence.
I put the MP3 into Audacity and looked at the amplitude graph and confirmed this - when they’re not singing, the drum/synth combo stops for about 1/10 of a second on every single beat. It’s very effective, even if you don’t love the track (which I don’t).
Can anyone think of any other tracks that make use of this effect?
Interesting! I wonder if Seether did something similar in their song Remedy. It kind of sucks my ears in and makes me want to dance. And I hate dancing! Must be the syncopation.
I think you may be right. Just after the snare, I think the guitars are momentarily silent. Unfortunately I don’t have the sound file to have a look. (BTW the opening sounds like a complete rip-off of Come As You Are.)
Punctuated and recurring bits of silence only, or can we talk about songs that have a pregnant pause at merely one point?
If the latter is OK, I’d like to mention the break in the bridge guitar solo of Heart’s “Magic Man”. Probably my favorite all-time break in a rock song. Love Roger Fisher’s immediate riff coming out of the break, too.
All I Really Want by Alanis comes to mind as well as a Madonna song that I can’t think of right now but I remember when my friend bought the CD she thought it was skipping.
There was a false alarm when I first heard D.O.A. by Bloodrock. There was several seconds of silence at the end, followed by a cacophonous musical collage which I assumed was the second part of the piece, describing what happened after they died. Of course, it was another track entirely.
Yes! I had that in mind too but couldn’t put my finger on it.
The one that starts with the sampled acoustic guitar?
I know a guy who’s a standup comedian who does a great riff on that. He can play the way the Madonna track starts perfectly, with all the pauses, repeats etc. He goes through it a few times then puts the guitar down disgustedly and says “it’s no good, the guitar’s fucked”.
Here’s a good cover of Cage’s 4’33. You might want to check it out. There’s quite a number of other covers on the internet done by everything from single flutes to full orchestras (in fact, I think it’s typically done by orchestras).
I Googled “Madonna song with pauses” and found the wikipedia entry based on an excerpt that said “The unexpected brief pauses of silence heard on the guitar riff at the beginning of the song initially caused some listeners to think that track on the Music album was defective”
Yeah, Madonna’s Don’t Tell is one of my favorite songs, particularly because of those little pauses. That is a technique often used in good hip hop and reggae/dancehall songs too. Love it.
