Welcome to another edition of Free-for-all Friday on Another Flavor!

I have been called many things. Pedant. Mansplainer. Sex bicycle. But I’ve never been called an educator. Not even when I was teaching other people things. Today I want to use my skills as a pedant and sex bicycle to teach about the appreciation of pop music. This may or may not be an ongoing series, so I thought I better put “Part 1” in the title.

Now, you might be thinking, “Don’t most people already enjoy pop music? Isn’t that why it is called pop music in the first place?” While it may be true that most people enjoy pop music after a fashion, they are doing it wrong. Dead wrong. You might think you are enjoying a song, but without the proper knowledge your enjoyment is a hollow shell. A solid foundation in music theory, rather than being a hindrance to enjoying music, is a boon. You’ll start noticing things that you didn’t notice before. You’ll develop an appreciation for the art of songwriting and nuances of performance that will cause you to sneer at all the philistines surrounding you. Eventually you’ll become unbearable and spend all your time listening to Borbetomagus:

All joking aside, I do think learning a little music theory enriches your life and enhances your appreciation for music. You can find a number of books out there by hacky, faux-western composers about how to enjoy classical music but I think there is a gap when it comes to pop music. Pop music operates on the same general principles as classical music, but in practice it ends up pretty different. My goal with this series is to talk about some common techniques used in pop music so you can start listening for them in any music you might be listening to.

As a note at the beginning, a lot of people are really down on music theory. They think it is a set of rules that stifles creativity. It isn’t. The origin of music theory was looking at existing music and describing trends found in it. It’s not like someone sat down and made up a bunch of rules that all composers then had to learn and follow. It was more like a bunch of composers all happened to do the same things because they sounded good and someone else noticed and wrote it down. It’s a lot like science that way. Scientists don’t create the laws of nature, they try to figure them out from observing nature.

As a writer of music, knowing music theory teaches you what other people have done when confronted with a musical problem. Or explains why certain music makes you feel a certain way. You can then use these tools to help you rather than having to start from scratch with every piece of music. A car maker doesn’t have to discover the wheel independently and then try to invent the internal combustion engine. That is more work than any one human can do. Rather, they learn what other people have already learned from books and then try to add to that knowledge.

As a listener, knowing music theory enriches your experience as well. Hopefully today’s post will show you that as you hear more about how songs are constructed.

Today, we’ll be talking about key changes. Almost all pop music is tonal, which means it exists in a key. You may have heard of a song being in C major or F-sharp minor. That is the key. Each key has a tonic note which can be thought of as home base. Listen to this, Louie Louie by The Kingsmen:

The riff, “Bah bah bah. Bah bah. Bah bah bah. Bah bah,” keeps repeating. The first three “bah bah bahs” are the tonic. The riff keeps returning to it. One trick is to think about what note sounds right for the song to end on - that is usually the tonic.

In a key change, the tonic of the song changes. For example listen to this song, Livin’ On A Prayer by Bon Jovi, and pay close attention to what happens at about 3:25 when the chorus comes back around.

Did you hear that? The last set of choruses is higher than the previous ones. The key has changed. If you need to compare, click around in the video and listen to the first chorus side-by-side with the last one. The key change will be easy to hear.

This is the most common type of key change in pop music. Raising the key by a bit (in this case I believe it is by a minor third, but don’t worry if you don’t know what that means) is a way to add excitement to the end of the song. Usually the singer moves to the very top of his register which gives more emotion and lets him get screamier. Also, you usually hear the chorus at least 3 times in a pop song and this gives a little bit of variety.

This isn’t the only way a key change can work in pop music. Sometimes a song will have the verse and chorus in a different key. Frequently this will mean moving from a minor key in the verse to a major key in the chorus. I don’t think I can explain major verses minor, but we usually think of major as being happier which makes sense for a chorus. I’ll try to talk more in depth about types of keys in a future post. Just so you can hear an example of a song that changes from a minor key to the corresponding major key check out this video for Ana Ng by They Might Be Giants:

Do you hear the change?

For a different example, check out this video for Man! I Feel Like a Woman by Shania Twain (I wrote a [whole post about this video](/posts/the-best-thing- about-being-woman-man-i/) before):

The verses of this are in a minor key and the chorus shifts it up a fifth and to a major key. What does that mean? First, listen to the chorus and hum what you think the tonic note is. Then, listen to the chorus and do the same. Notice that you are humming a different note. These two notes are a certain distance apart. The distance between two notes is called an interval. This particular interval is a fifth which is a very important interval in music. We’ve been talking about tonic notes. For every tonic there is a note considered the dominant. The dominant is sort of the opposite of the tonic, but it also is the chord/note that leads back to the tonic. We can spend more time talking about tonic-dominant relationships in the future, but this switch of a fifth is very common in all types of music.

As a side note, notice how this song moves very naturally from the key of the verse to the key of the chorus, but that it is a little unnatural in how it moves from the chorus back to the verse. Doesn’t it seem abrupt? The way songs transition from key to key can be quite different, some changes are so smooth you hardly notice them and others are sudden jumps with no preparation. Shania Twain gives us both in one song, which is fun.

As a final example of key changes in pop music we’ll take what we’ve learned and listen to an example of a song that’s a little more sophisticated. Here it is, Up Up and Away by the 5th Dimension:

This song is all over the place and it is fantastic! Now that you’ve heard some examples, how many key changes do you hear? Approximately 5 million, right? But it also seems very natural. This is a great example of how key changes can enrich a song and how knowing about key changes can distract you from the fact that the lyrics to this song are really stupid.

I hope learning a little bit about key changes helps you enjoy pop music even more. If you enjoyed this, I plan to talk even more about the appreciation of pop music in future posts. Let me know what you are most interested in!

I’ll see you next week with more music videos.

-PTD

I always tell people, “I like to have fun.” This is meant to be a joke (by “joke” I mean a statement meant to make you mad) because I actually hate fun and because most other people seem to hate fun as well. Why is this? Shouldn’t we all love fun?

I’ve been thinking about fun because I am in Disney something right now (check out yesterday’s post for the deets) and it is their semi-fascist mission to ensure you have fun. As I discussed in Another Flavor’s very first post, “it’s so bad when you’re young to be told you’re having fun.” I think it is supposed to be one of those fake-wise paradoxes like if you fail to master your rage, your rage will become your master. (Side note: What was the deal with Mystery Men? It was all over the place! You learned all this stuff about Casanova Frankenstein that turned out not to matter and they didn’t even have William H. Macy do full frontal!) I think fun should come naturally, though. It is almost impossible to have fun in a forced manner.

Do you remember new year’s eve? If you do, you probably didn’t have a very good one. If you don’t, getting blackout drunk only seems like a good idea, it actually is very unhealthy for your eyes and I think eye health is vitally important. Anyways, there is a lot of pressure on new year’s eve (and not just on your eyes). It only happens once a year and you must have fun no matter what. Inevitably it is either a huge letdown or you permanently damage your eyeballs.

I see the same thing here in Disney. I am working on my professional photography portfolio (a.k.a. the three Ps) so here is a picture:

People spend a lot of money to come here and they are GOING TO HAVE A GOOD TIME, DAMMIT! I was at this magical spheroid until after 9 PM and there were a bunch of small children still up. Why? Because these families were determined to have fun. This means if something happens like it is cold, or it rains (both of which happened while I was here) people are brutally disappointed. And something always goes wrong! You can’t realistically expect everything to be perfect so being determined to have fun guarantees that you won’t.

Think back on those times you had fun. Were you thinking about how much fun you were having? No! You were having too much fun! Fun cannot be deliberate. Therego, in order to have fun we must deliberately try to not have it.

Did you follow that? It is extremely logical. For the truly logical thinkers out there, let me demonstrate it in your own language: 00100111011010110. Got it? Good.

So what does this have to do with music videos? Does it have to have anything to do with music videos? It is Free-for-all Friday! This is the day I let my inhibitions run wild! I guess I can relate it to one just for you, the demanding reader. Take a look at this frighteningly serious video for Ana Ng by They Might Be Giants:

Isn’t it funny? Because it is so serious!

The video is about two gentlemen with pretty serious anger management problems.

Sometimes while working at their empty desks, they get so angry! They are angry that they have no paperwork.

There is a lot of very serious frustration at this office.

And possibly pain?

Their duties in the office are very serious as well. For a few hours a day they each must do serious-military-portrait-holding.

There is shouting at the phone time, of course.

Even during the cruel-overlord-mandated play time the play is rigid and serious.

I’m pretty sure this is the opposite of frolicking.

If, outside of work hours, these men are forced to interact with another human being they avoid eye contact because there might be a moment of levity.

Naturally, that must be avoided at all costs.

These serious men usually end up working themselves to death.

So why am I so delighted by these men? They are deadly serious and I am smiling about it. I think seriousness is inherently ridiculous. If I arrived at Disney world and was told to be very careful with my bag because theft is a serious problem, then I would be having fun. I just get a kick out of it!

I hope someone at Disney takes this to heart and it becomes the most serious place on Earth. One can only hope.

-PTD

Welcome to another edition of Free-for-all Friday here on Another Flavor! Friday is the day I let my mind (and eyes) wander to any subject (or open window) I choose.

I used to be a boy scout. In the boy scouts I won the Zero Hero award twice. This reward is very easy to earn. All you need to do is sleep outside when it is below zero degrees. In case you are reading this from a foreign (i.e. non- US, i.e. bad) location, yes, I mean below zero degrees Fahrenheit. So, based on my handy converter that is about -18 degrees Celsius, 255 degrees Kelvin, or 42 degrees Canadian. You could say I have an affinity for winter weather. I don’t think it’s true, but you could say it. No one is stopping you.

Anyway, I mention this because I live in Chicago and due to tropical storm Hercules we have been having some very wintry weather. I would estimate that, since Wednesday, we have received 10 inches of snow. For those of you not familiar with winter or snow, that isn’t hyperbole. Saying we got 58 inches of snow is hyperbole. Also, wouldn’t it be great if they changed the name of the Super Bowl to the Hyper Bowl? Write your congress-person to let them know.

It hasn’t been crazy cold (I believe it is 9 degrees right now. The real cold is coming Monday where the high is supposed to be -8 degrees.) but there is just so much snow! Why do I mention all this? Because I hate it! Snow is such a drag. I can deal with an inch or two, but this amount of snow has a real psychological effect on me. I think it affects all of us.

We can see these effects in music videos. Another Flavor is a blog about music videos! This is great!

Snow can cloud our judgment. (It also apparently makes me think that there should be an “e” between the “g” and “m” in judgment, but shouldn’t there be?) Look at this video for We Got Snow:

Leah Daniels apparently thinks of herself as a white Zooey Deschanel. She doesn’t have such a deep, distinctive voice though. She also has picked a real clunker to perform. Why, when doing old timey jazz stuff, does it seem appropriate to dress in old fashioned clothing? Do classical musicians wear powdered wigs? Do baroque harpsichordists poop dangerously close to their own drinking water supply? If not, then why do people doing 1920s-style music wear 1920s-style clothes?

Also, I don’t find this song very interesting. Do you think the director kept telling the background musicians to pretend to be happy and excited? They aren’t very good actors. I think their brains have all been addled by snow. Even to the point where they aren’t wearing particularly warm clothing. Crazy.

Snow can also make you lazy. I am reluctant to go outside unless absolutely necessary. Many people put off chores, and sometimes don’t even go into work just because of snow. The Red Hot Chili Peppers got extremely lazy when it came to their song Snow (Hey Oh):

It seems like this video just consists of some rehearsal/sound check shots, a few shots of a single live performance, and many shots of death row prison inmates just before their executions.

Those poor bastards.

This video seems to have been made entirely incidentally. I guess it shows the current (when I say current read it as 2006) attitude towards music videos. Apparently they aren’t very important and don’t need to be remotely interesting. If you are feeling lazy you can just hire a couple of college kids to film you for a day and edit it into a music video. The results just make me angry. Snow!

Also, did you know that song was called snow? I didn’t. I am amazed that Red Hot Chili Peppers had a repopularitying over 10 years after their original popularityness. It seems like every time John Frusciante is their guitar player they are super popular and every time their guitar player is Dave Navarro or some dead guy they have no hits. They need to do everything they can to keep that guy around. Otherwise they are just lazy people with bad songs. That’s a recipe for Trouble (yes, with a capital “T” that rhymes with “p” that stands for “pool”).

Finally, snow can make us extremely racist. Just ask a man so racist that he named himself Snow. Here’s his monster hit from his album hilariously named “12 Inches of Snow”:

There is nothing racist about being a white person playing reggae. Seriously, go for it! Be the second coming of UB40 for all I care. The problem comes from his use of the Jamacain accent/patois. This is just linguistic black face. Why would this ever be considered acceptable? This song was big in 1993! Just 21 years ago! Unbelievable.

On a non-snow-related, but black-face-related side note, check this out:

Specifically, this:

Man, what is wrong with people? Why can’t people just be themselves instead of pretending to be black, no matter how inherently hilarious all black people are? Terrible.

I’ll see you next week with more music video fun and hopefully less racism here on Another Flavor!

-PTD