Rolling Music Theory Thread

Haven't read the whole thing yet but this looks like it might be of interest to people here: http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.14.20.2/mto.14.20.2.biamonte.php

Noticed before but didn't read, thanks. Wondering if I should try to count out "Just What I Needed" before peeking at the solution.

Def

Weird thing is because I was trying to count it out this time, I didn't get faked out at all. But a few months ago even when I relistened to it a few times I still would get faked out.

Think moral of story is
1) when getting faked out by intro for your initial attempt assume first beat your hear is one and see if it works out.
2) if the intro is reprised later on the song, just count your way into it starting in the (hopefully) metrically simpler and more intuitive section preceding it.

This kind of thing happens all the time in Latin music. Still need to read paper

Your hear = you hear

Is "Just What I Needed" more of a fakeout than "Be My Baby", which also accents beat 4?

Moral 2) is OTM but moral 1) seems too trial-and-error imo. I would rather suggest working backwards from the point where the downbeat is obvious.

B-b-but how does one count backwards?

"Be My Baby" has a strong downbeat from the get-go, no fakeout. Closest thing to a fakeout is signature Hal Blaine quarter note triples on the fadeout.

I guess the agogic accent in "Be My Baby" makes the downbeat more obvious right away.

xpost

Well, I just meant that in this case, once the drums enter and you can hear the 1 clearly, you can go back and count the number of beats between the accented chord and the 1 and then extrapolate. (It's easy here since it comes exactly one beat before the 1.) If a song is obviously in 4, you could just use trial and error too, of course. (I guess I did just count starting on 1 when I listened to this today tbh. I just wasn't sure it was good as a general principle.)

Yeah, it is trail and error, but I just found it useful to concentrate, to plant a claim stake in the timeline if you will. Maybe will try using letters, A,B,C, D or "subtracting" as you seem to be suggesting.

You know what's an incredibly tricky one? "Bang a Boomerang" by Abba has this part at the end of the verse where they're accenting upbeats. First verse goes "Every smile and every little touch/Don't you know that they MEAN SO MUCH."

Those last three notes are what I'm talking about. I find it very hard to sing those notes in the right place. If I got it, I'd imagine it would also be hard to find the downbeat again afterward.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CsJCa2TlXU

Actually, the upbeats start on "Don't you know." Wild.

See if you guys can stream the studio version of Cheo Feliciano's "Esto es el guaguanco" from the classic album Cheo and count out the intro and notice where the accents fall.

That is great.

In a way, that first downbeat comes in when you think it's going to, but the melodic line throws you off. That first melodic descent ends (and yeah, is accented) on the note after it. (I don't know if you'd call it an upbeat or a weak beat. Depends on how you count it.)

I could discern the downbeat immediately, but I've been listening to a lot of samba-influenced latin + brazilian music lately

:)

This tune is why I came up with my takeaway 1) upthread.

Only started to figure it out when l realized that the end of the intro was kind of a variant of what Sund4r would call the "Be My Baby" beat.

Confession: I had stopped playing any kind of musical instrument for a decade and completely lost the ability to count out simple beats and it took forever to get some of it back. The mind is a terrible thing.

crüt, see if you can not got lost in the part starting around 2:35
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MX__RFXq4s

Also have any of you guys spent time thinking about drop-2 voicings or did you just memorize them and forget about it?

xpost ha yeah that one got me!

Maybe have to run if through some slowdown software.

Also, sometimes I do this weird thing on the subway whilst listening of alternate tapping my left and right foot on quarter notes so I can see and feel the beat better. Sometimes works.

lol, there was some free music in Bryant Park this Friday that I was not alerted to until too late but one of the acts was named The Guidonian Hand.

See if you can guess what sort of ensemble they are before googling.

The guitar intro to "I Go to Pieces" (Del Shannon/Peter and Gordon) starts on the upbeat of one.

Did you see the live version of Hommy the other day? A friend of mine posted on facebook that he took the train from Philadelphia to see it.

No! I wanted to go but got into something else then forgot. It got rained out before the second half, I read

There was a similar event at Lincoln Center about 4 years ago, maybe Ruben Blades and Willie Colon were involved, that set some kind of attendance record. I meant to jump of the train and soak up some atmosphere then jump back on the train but I plumb forgot.

Maybe it was Larry Harlow in 2011. Looks like another thing This August

Guess that was last year

Thoughts on drop-2 voicings:
Middle voices are adjacent- top two are a fourth or fifth apart, as are bottom two.
Moving up a string set to next inversion , bottom two voices move up an octave, maintain orientation, top two voices drop an octave or two and invert. For dominant seventh chord tritone is invariant under inversion so one can "follow the bouncing tritone" as it goes above and below the "equator."

Raising or lowering by an octave the even or odd pair of voices creates another drop-2 voicing of same chord.

Raising next to lowest voice by an octave creates a drop-3 voicing, as does lowering the top voice by two octaves when possible.

The tritone pair of seventh chord up or down a fourth/fifth is a half-step away. To get to that chord if desired, shift the tritone pair a half-step and flip the relevant note of the fourth/fifth pair a whole step on the other side of the dividing line. In this the four voicings per stringset are broken into two pairs.

That is all for now.

The tritone pair of seventh chord up or down a fourth/fifth is a half-step away

Now back to p i m a torture

I guess the agogic accent in "Be My Baby"
Still don't know what 'agogic' means in this context. Or in any context really.

Okay, when I woke i found I could count "Gracia Divina" without getting lost.

Just heard "Hit The Road, Jack" and thought "Andalusian cadence!" cause that's how I roll.

Then I heard "I Feel Good" and thought "arpeggiated ninth chord!"

Nothing gives the autodidact away more then the overeager, ostentatious display of his hard-won crumbs of knowledge.

"than"

Would add "oh and moronic misspellings and homophone substitutions" but not sure if they count in autocorrect smart phone era

Because autocorrect seems to help introduce as many errors as it fixes.

Metric ambiguity at the beginning of Prefab Sprout's "Appetite."

That's a tough one. Were you able to figure it out?

Thought I did but then forgot it. Plays at being a treble meter but then shifts into 4/4 in an interesting way.

Counting it in 12/8 with the pickup as '(FOUR) and Two and Three ONE" and with the big hit arriving at the middle beat of three. Then at the very end the last quarter-note is truncated, and morphs so you count "and four and" into the 4/4 part. Still not confident I am correct.

OK, two things, in no particular order

1) Maybe everybody already knew this or nobody cares, but it is interesting how the modes (or two keys) starting a whole step apart are related. Since a whole step or major second is the inverse of a flat-seventh and more importantly, is equal to two fifths up or two fourths down, you can think of going up a whole step as progressing two notches in the counterclockwise direction on the circle of fifths, whereby you are getting two more flats. So

Ionian + 2 flats->Dorian + 2 more flats -> Phrygian,

Lydian +2 flats->Mixolydian+2 more flats -> Aeolian +2 more flats -> Locrian.

Going a half step, is more complicated, and you'll have to wait for next post.

2) Heard this tune last night and it is my new jam
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0bOwviSGv8

It's in G (harmonic/composite) minor and the bass really moves between playing the tumbao and playing various lines along with the rest of the band. There is a lot more rhythmic complication built into the actual structure of the tune which normally would be relegated to the intro, some turnarounds and the soloing.

One takeaway from some of the more esoteric academic papers we glanced at is, however you slice it, most all pop music is based on triadic harmony. What harmonic palette the triads come from or whether the melody fits or has been D-I-V-O-R-C-E-d is another story. But I kept this is mind recently when I remembered a while back some guitar player I knew couldn't figure out the intro to "September Gurls" and when I finally sat down and tried it. seems like it is just descending pairs of alternating A and E triads -in different inversions of course. And to get the full effect you probably need to play it on a Manditar.

Here is link to review of Allan F. Moore book I mentioned briefly upthread and was glancing at today, mainly the capsule history of pop music in the fifth chapter, which is called "Style" and is pretty interesting although obviously one may disagree with some of his judgements or interpretations and this phrase seems to be a gaffe "(James) Brown's obsession with accenting the second beat"
http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.13.19.4/mto.13.19.4.endrinal.php

first example that springs to mind is "Cold Sweat"

Good point, crüt. But the title of his biography is The One, not The Two, and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncOfAoDQbQk

"I'm Free" off of Tommy seems to have a metrical fakeout. What seems to be the one is the AND of four leading to the one, I think. When vocals kick in it they seem to be a half a beat late because of this. You can also notice a difference between the relationship of the other parts and the piano. During the intro the piano *seems* to be syncopated but when the figure repeats it lines up. Do u see?