Class 5

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Hello, and welcome to English and Music, I’m Dr. Patrick Francis, your instructor. And this is class number 5, Music Elements and Music Production. Now, that we’ve talked about language the last four classes. We are going to start getting more into the discussion of music, particular elements of songs. Interesting approaches to song writing, and approaches to putting music together. And hopefully you will have a better understanding how music comes together to be recorded and finally reaching the public. So a music government and a music production, and first we are going to talk about song themes. Because themes are what songs are based upon. Let’s get started.

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Common song themes, a theme is an underline idea upon which a song is based. I got a short list here, common song themes. First, and the most common theme is “Love and Relationships”. Count this, love songs have been really known many years, probably some of your favorite songs are love songs. And love is a universal theme understood everywhere. And there’s been love song really direct history and will continue to be written. Because it is the most common music theme, music theme and that is the bases for songs. Relationships are little more general. A relationship could be between a mother and daughter, or brother and sister, or between a family, father and son. Those are all relationships. Different types of not romantic relationships that a song might be based upon.

Ok, the next category, “Sadness and Loss”. Usually sad songs deal with losing something or more likely someone that we love either through the end of the relationship or through death, losing someone, common musical themes for songs, “Sadness and Loss”.

Next, “Friendship”, “Friendship”, we all need friends. Friends make life more enjoyable, more fun. We like to do things with friends. We also need friends to help us through hard times. And many songs have been read about this type of relationship, having friends that help you through difficulty.

Next we have “Historic and Current Event”. Historic hmm… historic songs are about things that had happened in the past. Often about a war perhaps, or a battle within a war, a song like tells the story about particular battle or situation that current history is a common approach to a song writing. Also current event, hmm… current event can influent song writers to write a new song, a good example that would be the song, “Fragile”, that we covered earlier in the class by Sting. Sting wrote the song, “Fragile”, to or in responds or in reaction to the murder of a man in South America, a man who was murdered due to political confident. Unfortunately, was murdered. Sting wrote a beautiful song abut that, and the fragility of life.

Next, we have “Philosophy and Reflection”. A philosophical song can tell us the song writer’s view of live. For example, the song, “Beautiful day”, by the Irish Robin, You Tube, we listened to in the earlier class. “Beautiful day” is a philosophical song. The philosophy is that life is beautiful, no matter what difficulty or what problems it presents that each day is beautiful, because you are alive and each day is to be enjoyed. That is a philosophy life, a very positive philosophy. So that’s a good example of a philosophical song.

“Reflection”, “Reflection” simply means thinking about something. Usually, thinking deeply and for quite some time about something. A song writer might write a song trying to solve a problem. Perhaps they’re having a difficulty of some sort or problem in their lives and reflecting on it, thinking about it, working out a solution can become the inspiration for a song. So reflection is another song theme.

Next, we have “People”, “People”, fictional and real people. Fictional means that the person or character is not real. It is a made up person. It is a made up character from the song writer’s imagination. If you like to read novels, many people like to read fiction. Fiction is by definition, something that is made up. It’s not based on historical. It is not relaying or telling historical or factual information. It’s all made up.

And then a song writer might write a song about a real person. Maybe someone who inspires them, maybe a family member, a grandparent perhaps, father or mother, or friend, or it could be about someone not so close to them, or even someone who was not a nice person. He could write a song about a bad person. One song that comes to mind is the song, “Make the knife”, “Make the knife”, “Make the knife” is a well known Jazz song. That was recorded by Frank Sinatra. And many others Tony Bennett, Bobby Vinton, recorded “Make the knife”. “Make the knife” tells the story of a bad man who is a gangster and a robber and a killer, and is told than a very created then crawled away, so that a song about a person.

And finally we have “Cultural and Social Issues”. This can span a variety of social or cultural issues. A social issue, for example, in the 1960’s, the United States was in vote in a war in Vietnam. And this was a very unpopular war. The American people a great number of people were unhappy that the United States was in vote in a war in Southeast Asia. And many songs were written against the war.

In response to the war, cultural issues facing cultural society are often connected in the 1960’s also. African-American culture was getting power, getting more power in the United States, due to the efforts of civil rights leaders. The civil rights movement was a movement hoping to bring justice and equality to African-Americans, and other African minorities in the United States in the 60’s. And there were song strings about this movement as well. So those were cultural and social issues facing the United States in the 1960’s. There were others that those were two of the major issues facing society.

OK, so we have some common song themes, some things that think about when you listen to music in the coming weeks. Ask yourself what is the song themes. This is connected to the message of the song. What is the message of the song? They are not quite the same thing song theme is. Love is the general idea, for example. And the message could be about love; love that ends, love that is forever, love that is not quite right like for example. So ask yourself: what is the theme of the song? And also what is the message? OK. Let’s forge ahead.

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Here is a love theme song. Because love is a most common thing, its thought would be good include a love thing song for one of the examples today. This is “Time in the bottle”, this is a song recorded in the 1970’s by guitars and singer, Jim Croce. Jim Croce was very popular in the 70’s but unfortunately, died very young, and his best work or some of his best work was actually recorded right before his death. And the record, or album, was released after his death of Jim Croc. Has sample hit songs in the 1970’s. And this is one of them “Time in the bottle”, this song is about love. But the interesting thing abut this song is that the word love is not used at one time but is not used at all. Instead, the song of the lyrics talk about what the song writer wishes. “If I could make days last forever. If words could make wishes come true, I’d save every day like a treasure and then, again, I would spend them with you.” I know this in late live. “I’d save every day like a treasure.” That is the use of simile, saving everyday making everyday precious like a treasure. This uses a very effective use, ‘simile’. So this is “Time in the bottle”, by Jim Croce, and why don’t we listen.

Song Time

OK, beautiful love song from the 1970’s by Jim Croce. The use of the language here’s dealing with time, “Time in the bottle”. He says in the third line, in the second and third line. “The first thing that I’d like to do is to save everyday ‘til eternity passes away”. So he’s using time as it’s a female, to express love very interesting. He uses the day as a management of time and eternity is till the end of the time. Eternity is a word that means full all time, very interesting beautiful song by Jim Croce. OK, let’s move ahead.

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OK, next we have “Music Production”, active listening vs. passive listening. Active listening is what we want to do or working in class or we’re listening at home or we go on the internet to find the song and listen to it. Active listening is devoting all of your mental energy, all of your attention to the music. You pay close attention to the music and nothing else. This way you can gain new insides and new understanding of the music. Because your full attention is devoted to the activity. Passive listening is what most of us do most of the time when we listen to music. We get in our car and we need to drive somewhere. And we turn on the radio and the radio is playing when we are driving, and maybe our cellphone ring. We are talking on the phone, driving, listening to the radio, well, in this situation we are not really listening very closely, we can’t, because we need to pay attention to drive the car, so that we’re save to get where we need to go. Or another example is, you have some house work to do and you turn on some music while you are cleaning. That’s another approach to passive listening. It’s just you dividing your attentions. You are passively listening to the music. So when we are listening we wanna focus some active listening. Listening to noting else, not doing anything else while we’re listening to the music. OK, that’s active listening. Let’s move ahead.

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OK, one element of music production and music recording performance we need to understand better is the instrumentation. Instrumentation is simply, is simply what instruments are used, and they’re giving performance or recording. And we have some pictures here for you to look at the common instrumentation. And pop, rock, and blues music, we have guitar, bass, drums, piano or keyboard, and vocals. The piano or keyboard is often not with the group, but you could also include a piano or keyboard in any of those settings. Rock music is more influence by guitar as its blues music. Rock and blues is what we say guitar based music. Pop music is a little more facsimiled and more frequently will feature a piano or keyboard. And vocals, vocals is a word that means singers, a vocals means singing.

OK, so next we move on to classical, classical instrumentation. Well, the largest group for classical music is the symphony orchestra; the symphony orchestra purpose is to perform symphonies written by composers. A symphony orchestra is the group that was played the piece called a symphony. A string orchestra is simply the string instrument that has come to us to history. That would be violin, viola, cello, and bass. In the symphony orchestra we also have other instruments, we have woodwinds, woodwinds are another or we called family of bass instruments, and also brass, brass instruments, and also the harp. So we have several families of instruments in the symphony orchestra. If you look at to the pictures to the right, we have a group of perform musicians playing string instruments. This is one of the most common configurations, the common groups from classical music. The string called “Ted”. All of he great composers that you may know most are Beethoven, Haydn. People like that they all wrote music for string quartet. String quartet is a beautiful song with two violins, a viola, and a cello, so wonderful song. And the picture you see there is the Tokyo String Quartet.

And finally here is the country music. Country music features different music instrumentation. It has guitar. It’s very heavily influence by guitar, bass, drums, steel guitar, and also called lap steel, that’s l-a-p, as empathic for lap. See all guitars, banjo, vocals which is voice and fiddle. Fiddle is a violin, essentially, but in the country music, well, that’s called fiddle. And you see picture here, a violin is to, well, I shall say fiddle player, fiddle player. A bass player is playing a large string instrument on the ground. A guitarist and then a lap steel player, the man with the white hat noted is holding a guitar so it’s been a funny way, fun of him. That’s how a lap steel guitars play and that is country music instrument. You don’t hear lap steel guitar in a lot of other musical styles. Once in a while you might hear it, but in general, it’s a country music instrument. Ok, let’s move ahead.

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Here we have “Annie’s song” by John Denver. John Denver has picture here with his dobra guitar; know that is the guitar made of steel. It’s a very interesting sound, that guitar. We are looking at “Annie’s song”. We looked at it before, because of the use of simile. Jon Denver makes great use of simile. In the first and last verses of his song, let’s hmm…, let’s look at the production this time. Production what decisions were made in the making of “Annie’s song”. If you know this, there were some words read in red. With some information, mandolin enters, then, strings enter. This usually is just little notes for you to take note yourself as we listen. The mandolin is a very high pitched in string instrument. That is played like a guitar, but it’s very small.

And then strings, the strings are violin, viola, cello and bass. So listen for that and then down below, you see percussion enters. Percussion is a general term for any instrument that is struck, like a drum, or a bell, or a gong. That’s all percussion, something you strike. And the oboe, it says then oboe enters. The oboe is a woodwind instrument what we called a double reed instrument. It has kind of a narrow, but beautiful sound. You know here that playing in the high melody.

And then below that you know this is said humming. A group comes in humming. Humming is hum.., like that. Making a musical sound, but not saying any word through with the voice. We have group for goals that means many singers, string orchestra, the string instruments, we really talk about. Mandolin also and a high string melody, high string, you will hear the violins playing in very high melody, melody inside the tune that you can sing or play in an instrument.

OK, then we have couple of more than else down below, but those are production notes some one that I want you to know the arrangement of the song. Some one has to decide when to do all of this, when these instruments will come in, when they will stop playing, what they will play. That could have been John Denver, it may have been somebody else. He could have been the producer or the string arranger. But here’s the “Annie’s song”, beautiful song, and we’ll listen to our list, production elements.

Song time

OK, “Annie’s song”, so I hope that you are following along with the song active listening. That you noticed the new instruments coming in to the song, the mandolin, the strings, the percussion, the oboe, the group vocals of humming, and what happened in the effect. The idea is to create a hind emotional effect on the listener and I think it’s very effective in the song. So that’s an example of decisions made in production in “Annie’s song”. And I hope in the coming weeks, you’ll be more comfortable noticing and finding these elements of music and song that you might already know. And the new music we discover. OK, let’s move ahead.

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Here we have a sneak preview of the song from next week’s class. The song is “Don’t come around here no more”, by Tom Petty. Perform by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. If you know this, there is a substantial among words in color. These words are notes on the production. This is the song from 1985, the time when musicians were cooperating a lot of electronic instruments into their music. Tom Petty is a rock musician and has history cribbing, plays rock music without a lot of electronic instruments. But in 1985, he did an album and this song was on it, “Don’t come around here no more”. So this is a sneak preview we are not going to listen today, or discuss lyrics. But I want you to, as a small assignment, find this song and listen to it on your own. You can visit I Tunes, if you have Apple I Tunes, and preview the song. You can also buy the song at Apple I Tunes. You can also go to You Tube would you free, and find many versions of this song as well as a video in the 1980’s MTV. Music television became a powerful force in the music industry. And all musicians too were successful made music videos. That’s a very interesting and quite humorous video of the song. That was released at the same time as the song. And I’m sure you can find that on You Tube, so “Don’t come around here no more”, by Tom Petty. Before next class, try to find that song, listen to it, and if possible, watch the video. And you will become an expert on this song. OK. All right, I hope you enjoy the class and learn something about music production, musical instruments, and instrumentation. And until next time, take care.