Music

A friend of mine calls me a musical mutt. Actually, he referred to me as a media mutt the other day. What this means is that I will watch and listen to anything. I think I've covered this before where my iPod will shift centuries and genres between songs as I keep it on a good, random mix. And random means totally random. He says it would make an average person's head explode.

Anyway, I acknowledged to myself that I was not up on current music the other day, and resolved to have a listen to see what sort of quality the most popular songs have in common. In any era, there is something the songs have in common that people expect to hear. So, I (your perhaps not-so-average 37 year old) grabbed me some Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, Carly Rae Jepson (Call Me Maybe), Rihanna, and some other stuff that was at the top of the Grammys the last couple years. I had already listened to Adele; the Queen loves her.

As I've been listened, there is a common musical thread that flows through these songs. To an extent, it is something I noticed when we've played new stuff at church also. It's kind of hard to describe, but there's a particular groove inherent to the music. A lot of songs are almost like concert pieces where you sit, listen, and take it in.You're not supposed to do that with new music. Even ballads. Every song has a groove (be it fast or slow) and you're supposed to keep moving (keep dancing). I imagine chairs exist in modern concerts, but I doubt people use them. If you're not dancing, you're not experiencing the music. It is supposed to get into your bones and keep you going.

Of course, the other big characteristic is that it is largely electronic: keyboards galore, loops and sound effects, and drum machines. The beat is king more than the horizontal and vertical sheet music, though the beat is somehow inherent in printed page.

A couple of other things that occur a lot of time are tone correction on the voices and instances where the hook is actually the counterpoint on the chorus. Tone correction is obvious when it comes up. The human voice is not capable (in most instances) of making certain sounds on its own. One of these is a direct slur from one note to another without glissing through every pitch inbetween. And yes, "gliss" is a musical term short for glissando which is what I described. Tone correction forces the vocal line sung into it to go from one pitch to the next in perfect pitch, which skips every partial between those notes. It means the singer just has to get close to the note without exactly hitting it. It's more than a bit of a cheat, but it is used a lot as much for a sound as actual note correction for people who can't exactly sing but are pretty in front of a camera.

The other thing about the counterpoint is when the chorus has background singing a line over and over while the lead vocalist sings something about that topic but in a manner that is often musically easier to sing than that counterpoint. You, as the listener, will walk away singing that counterpoint over and over without remembering anything else about that song.

Those are my observations about much of the music I heard. It obviously doesn't apply to all of it. Adele, for instance, is still all about the beat for many of her songs, but it sounds largely acoustic in nature, and I don't think I've ever heard tone correction on her. She is a really good singer in her own right, and her music is quite catchy. Many of the others are extremely similar.