Random thoughts about music

I do get why one would feel completely indifferent to that song, to be honest. On paper, I shouldn't like it this much, but the workings of the brain are mysterious.

I've always had trouble with Phil Collins, but it so happens I found myself enjoying one of his songs recently and I think I Got It now, the appeal of Phil Collins. But this needs further research.

The jury's in: I like it. Some pretty decent musicianship overall. Except maybe the drummer who left me mostly unimpressed. Also the guitarist's playing sounds quite metal to my ears at times.

As a side note, Helter Skelter is often mentioned as one of the precursors to metal. I suspect it's partly due to its association with Charles Manson and early metal's childish need to appear transgressive, but musically, there's something to it. It might not be their most famous song, so here:

Although, what kind of compliment is "I like it when you don't do you"?

Speaking of audio engineering, I wonder if we're seeing a new trend: I've listened to a couple of songs, some of which very popular, where the audio had a lot of distortion. More specifically, a form of distortion known as clipping (but confusingly, that's what people usually mean by "distortion"), which is something mixing engineers normally fight against like hell. It is because of clipping (mostly, but not only) that the oooold song of mine I posted not long ago sounded the way it did, i.e. like shit.

It happens when the audio signal exceeds a certain threshold and parts of the audio wave get clipped, as the name suggests. You could describe it as a degradation of the sound because some information is lost, but it has been used tastefully: that's what "distortion" in the sense of the stereotypical rock guitar effect is. But you would usually use distortion on a track (or instrument)-by-track basis, not on a song as a whole, and when it happens, it's usually by accident. A great deal of the art of the audio engineer consists in avoiding clipping at every stage of the audio signal chain.

But now they're using it as an effect on the master track, which I find pretty interesting. Here's an example. The effect kicks in around 3:02, but it's more noticeable in the instrumental part starting around 4:30, in the messiness of the drum hits in particular.



I think it works quite well, especially considering the first part of the song is a very quiet ballad.

Cool song. I didn't know the band's name but it's fairly popular here as well. A good example of how rhythmical fuckery can pass pretty smoothly if done right!

I'd be tempted to say 6/8, because what would be two consecutive measures of 3/4 feel like a call and answer but I'm still not an expert and as always there's some subjectivity involved. Maybe 12/8 would work.

x.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1796867819604152671

Not universal of course but generally true I would say.

Something my middle school music teacher told us still comes back to mind from time to time, namely that non-Western music tended to be much more liberal in terms of mixing the major and minor scales within a song than we were accustomed to. At the time I didn't know much about music theory (and I'm still not an expert) but it fascinated me, and I wondered how it worked.

I didn't like fado much, growing up. Now I do, but I can still relate to the kid who didn't, and in hindsight one of the things that made fado hard to process for me was that alternation between major and minor. Not only was it confusing, but it was also frustrating, as I didn't like the happier/major side of fado, and to this day I still much prefer its darker side. But there's no question the alternation brings a lot to the genre.

The first switch happens at 1:00.



This song was famous in its own right due to its legendary singer, but a cover by Dulce Pontes, arguably the most popular fado singer alive today, was used in a 1996 American movie and became popular in a few countries.



Francophones might be more familiar with the 1999 adaptation by Hélène Ségara. It can still be heard from time to time here.