If you kids are done syllable-counting, I want to mention that I uploaded clips of some of the aforementioned great bass-coming-in moments I posted about early this morning. Click here to watch clips from Silent Hill, The Queen and Miracle Mile. Boost your speakers and get ready for goosebumps!http://www.jordanorlando.com/bass
50PageMcgee UPDATE: sorry to keep bumping these two posts all over the place. i'm moving them back to the top only because i took a big whack at trying to reply to Jordan's posts in as great a level of detail as possible without breaking my own brain. if you have no interest in this topic whatsoever, disregard. but if you're curious about the inner workings of music, i tried to present some nerdy stuff about it, and i've tried to do so in a way that's not too hard to digest. there's *a lot* here (and some of it is nestled amidst Jordan and HandsomeStan beating the crap out of each other over 2010), so i won't be offended if it gets skipped, or if people don't comment.
but if you are interested, please, read on.
PS - an additional word of caution, now that i've reread what i wrote: my idea of "digestible" might differ from yours to some degree.
17 comments:
obviously i'm taking this topic seriously, but this is also my own personal HHD, so in deference to myself, i'm moving your topic temporarily below the HHD -- i'll move it back at the end of the day.
sincerely,
A. Kidd
Okay, sure. Sorry about that. I have no idea how HDD works or what the time limits are etc.
Did you watch the clips?
I would just like to point out that the Grumpy Man can ALWAYS cross the street in the middle of the parade.
I'll click on those links and comment appropriately. Very soon.
I mentioned it in JOrdan's last post but I'll mention it again, that Silent Hill siren is one of my ringtones. I also have a fantastic Suspiria ringtone.
Extracting the clips made me realize all over again how good those bass moments are.
silent hill -- i think i'm missing the cello on the third air horn blast. what i'm hearing is a deep electronic rumble, and what sounds like someone scratching a fingernail down the coils of a bass string of a piano.
what also contributes to the weirdness of the sound for me is that there's a teeny bit of an upward push on the oblique note -- so that one note that's just hanging there isn't quite just hanging there. it's pushing up almost imperceptibly (might be an aural illusion). as far as your intervals go, i'd call that first interval a minor sixth (no such thing as a major 5th --there's perfect, diminished and augmented (which is, by the way, a minor sixth -- might have just been a typo).
Ah! Good to know.
That upward drift trick was used by (I assume) John Williams in War of the Worlds, when the aliens blast their weird signal horn.
I'm delighted to have found an interlocutor for this stuff!
50, re: Silent Hil, it's GOOD, though, right?
the Queen -- my favorite of your examples. demonstrates an interesting principal about the role of intervals in triadic harmony. lemme break it down for you.
a major triad consists of three notes, root, 3rd and 5th. the 3rd is a major third, and between the 3rd and the 5th is a minor third. with a minor triad, it's the other way around -- minor third on the bottom, major third on top (the outside interval of the 5th remains the same distance away from the root, it's just that one note changing.
the first two notes you talk about are indeed a third apart. in this case, it's a major third. but because there's no corresponding fifth, we can't tell if we're listening to the root and 3rd of a major chord (a "happy" chord) or the 3rd and fifth of a minor chord (a "sad" chord).
Queen Elizabeth passes by different cards and reads messages on cards, some of which are withering condemnations of the honor of the royal family. she reacts very personally to this. so we're inclined to think we're building towards something that's just going to get sadder and sadder.
then bass comes in. still no fifth, but because it's the lower of the two notes we've just been hearing, we're inclined to interpret that first chord as an incomplete major triad. the low note changes as the high note changes, indicating not just one chord in inversions, but two chords now.
this new chord is lacking a *third* -- just root and fifth, so no particular mood indicated. there's still the suggestion of major tonality.
but even at this point, we find no comfort in this pair of chords. there's nothing pulling us in any emotional direction, and we're still riding the wave of bad vibe from the words on the cards.
Pink Floyd played on this principal all over the place on the Wall, and then later on the Final Cut -- think of the chord movement in the song the Post War Dream. Roger Waters is singing from the perspective of a young boy leaving his father's military funeral after WWII -- his voice evoking the boy's trembling guilt and confusion. "was it you? was it me? did i watch too much tv?" (i swear, that's one of the most heartbreaking lyrics he ever wrote...) but that chord movement -- all major chords.
and here's where the distinction of major as "happy" and minor as "sad," runs into problems. it's all about setting. if our setting is sad, it doesn't make any difference that our chords are in a major key -- if anything, we're almost being mocked by the ghost of our own happiness.
(and by the way, any time you hear a musician say, "oh man, ___ is the saddest key," it's a pile of shit. you're listening to someone making pretenses towards musical knowledge they don't really have (Beethoven's insistence that C-sharp minor is the saddest key, notwithstanding. it's like Poe saying that "cellar door" is the most beautiful pair of words in the english language and someone trying to cite it as laboratory-proven fact). especially if the key in question is D-minor, because it means they're getting their musical information from Nigel Tufnel.)
complicating the harmonic setting here is this weird *minor* third that's getting thrown in to the melody line (you can hear it right around when the "they have your blood on their hands" card hits the screen, and then a little later when Elizabeth is saying hello to the little girl) it sounds sour to us because we're already accustomed to the major third we've been listening to. there's a clash (one of the strongest in all of music, actually -- and something composition teachers caution students away from, because it's difficult to know how to use such a clash effectively).
so by the time Elizabeth asks if she can place the girl's flowers and the girl says "no," we're feeling the knots twisting in Elizabeth's stomach. (and this feeling isn't assuaged at all by the somewhat inscrutable smiles Elizabeth gets when she reaches the ropeline.)
we hold on that last chord -- the dominant, the traditional harmonic foil to the root chord or "tonic." -- *still* it's just the root and the fifth. so even at this point of greatest contrast, we *still* don't know how we're feeling about things.
then the girl says "these are for you," and then a new note is introduced and it's the fourth still the resolution of the chord is in question but now we're about to crest emotionally.
then the fourth resolves to the third, "for me?" and we're now toppling over the edge of unease that's been hanging over us every moment since we saw the first scathing card.
Elizabeth smiles, awkwardly, deeply touched.
then she begins to move down the ropeline, and the harmony dips gently into true, unequivocal major harmony. it's obvious relief we're feeling now. relief with a slight decoration of some nameless feeling -- it's the harp playing the added 9th (warning: watch the volume on the link, if you turned up your speakers to watch the clip) on the dominant chord. it's a chord extension, so it's more complicated than a triad, but it's a 9 so it manages to color the chord, but not batter our ears the way a dominant 7th would - even though, harmonically, it'd be a perfectly fair chord to play here. it would have evoked totally the wrong mood though.
this was a great example, jordan.
my grammar in these posts is atrocious. sorry -- my mind was on a weightier matter.
and yes, the Silent Hill stuff is really good.
one of the things i find interesting about that moment is that it's the first time it happens in the movie. as far as Radha Mitchell is concerned, she's in a fucked up situation, but she has no idea how bad it actually is just yet.
then the siren, and in the ensuing moments, she learns that she's in a kind of danger so off the charts, it doesn't even exist in the "real" world.
nor do we, the audience, have a clear idea just yet of how bad things are going to get (unless we've played the game or seen the trailers). so we hear the horn and think, "hmm, that's eerie."
later on, we know all too well, the way in which that siren is the harbinger of something far worse than death.
should have just made my own full post -- i think only you, me, and stan are reading this anyway.
maybe jpx too.
i'm going to bump this back up to the top, along with the original post.
there's no f-ing way i'm writing all this just for an audience of three.
not as much to add about Mircale Mile. it's rad for all of the reasons you mentioned.
I'm so happy!
Are you into Alan W. Pollack's Beatlesnotes?
By the way, you can go into a little bit less detail because I did hear those details in The Queen including that dominant/tonic trick and the minor note when she's at the cards. Or not. It's all good. I'm so happy!
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