![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
koganbotOther than "Day By Day," my song of the summer has been Flashe's "Drop It," which instructs us precisely to drop it, pop it, shake it, move it. Is on the unknown-to-me CGM Entertainment label, and unfortunately since dropping in early July it hasn't moved anywhere near the charts. But it is a perfectly constructed piece of dance pop.
If I knew more about harmonic progressions I'd tell you how it was constructed. As it is, I'll just flail a bit, toss forth some adjectival descriptions: there is caught-in-a-carousel accompaniment to the original spare dance instructions, nursery-rhyme-style sing-songiness in the first half of the verse, followed by dreamy call-and-response, then all voices on deck for the pre-chorus, as the music jumps a couple of steps and rises up the rigging.
Okay, trying for specificity, I'll say we seem to be in A-Flat Major,* with the melody in the first half of the verse (1:02 on the embed, the part I'm calling the nursery sing-song) running a fa-sol-la-sol twist in the second and third bars, then, in the fourth bar, mirroring itself down in the re-mi-re-do, except she's singing mi as a blue note rather than a major (so we've got an indeterminate major or minor). This gives way to what I'm calling the dreamy call-and-response (1:17), where the accompaniment fools around with do, sol, and ti, the last again suggesting minor, and the melody wafts down the upper notes of the scale. Then, in the prechorus (1:32) — where in full voice we climb the mast, set the sails, and catch the wind — we've jumped to B Major,** which would have been merely the relative major to A Flat Minor, except that we'd been in something less determinate than minor. So (for some reason) this jump has the effect of opening up the sound. Actually, what I'm calling the "pre-chorus" is located where you'd normally put a chorus — except it clearly isn't the chorus, the drop-it-pop-it-shake-it-move-it chant functioning as the actual chorus. Actually, it doesn't feel like a pre-chorus either, just a nice big release. But I don't know what else to call it.
Have nothing else to say about the structure, except that the rap break (3:05) is set excellently, to the part that had previously been the nursery sing-song — it's also performed excellently, somewhere between talk and rant. Then Flashe go into the drop-it chant (3:13) but this time with the same accompaniment as the rap, chugging right along. Then a dramatic pause, and we leap directly to the pre-chorus but this time with only one lone singer (3:23), the nakedness being as powerful for its contrast as the collected voices had been previously.
*I know that there's a philosophical difference between a A-Flat and G-Sharp, but I don't know what it is. So I've arbitrarily chosen A-Flat. Correct me if I'm wrong.
**EDIT: Which I believe is functioning as a new key for the length of the pre-chorus, so it (B-Major) is the tonic, with E-Major and G-Flat-Major showing up as its IV and V.
If I knew more about harmonic progressions I'd tell you how it was constructed. As it is, I'll just flail a bit, toss forth some adjectival descriptions: there is caught-in-a-carousel accompaniment to the original spare dance instructions, nursery-rhyme-style sing-songiness in the first half of the verse, followed by dreamy call-and-response, then all voices on deck for the pre-chorus, as the music jumps a couple of steps and rises up the rigging.
Okay, trying for specificity, I'll say we seem to be in A-Flat Major,* with the melody in the first half of the verse (1:02 on the embed, the part I'm calling the nursery sing-song) running a fa-sol-la-sol twist in the second and third bars, then, in the fourth bar, mirroring itself down in the re-mi-re-do, except she's singing mi as a blue note rather than a major (so we've got an indeterminate major or minor). This gives way to what I'm calling the dreamy call-and-response (1:17), where the accompaniment fools around with do, sol, and ti, the last again suggesting minor, and the melody wafts down the upper notes of the scale. Then, in the prechorus (1:32) — where in full voice we climb the mast, set the sails, and catch the wind — we've jumped to B Major,** which would have been merely the relative major to A Flat Minor, except that we'd been in something less determinate than minor. So (for some reason) this jump has the effect of opening up the sound. Actually, what I'm calling the "pre-chorus" is located where you'd normally put a chorus — except it clearly isn't the chorus, the drop-it-pop-it-shake-it-move-it chant functioning as the actual chorus. Actually, it doesn't feel like a pre-chorus either, just a nice big release. But I don't know what else to call it.
Have nothing else to say about the structure, except that the rap break (3:05) is set excellently, to the part that had previously been the nursery sing-song — it's also performed excellently, somewhere between talk and rant. Then Flashe go into the drop-it chant (3:13) but this time with the same accompaniment as the rap, chugging right along. Then a dramatic pause, and we leap directly to the pre-chorus but this time with only one lone singer (3:23), the nakedness being as powerful for its contrast as the collected voices had been previously.
*I know that there's a philosophical difference between a A-Flat and G-Sharp, but I don't know what it is. So I've arbitrarily chosen A-Flat. Correct me if I'm wrong.
**EDIT: Which I believe is functioning as a new key for the length of the pre-chorus, so it (B-Major) is the tonic, with E-Major and G-Flat-Major showing up as its IV and V.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-09-15 04:17 pm (UTC)(It's just a convention, and on a piano they're obviously identical -- but the reason for the convention is so that when you move from a mjor to its relative minor, you're not suddenly confronted on a score with a great slew of new sharps and un-flatted flats which turn out to be much less surprising than they look. A good professional sightreader would not be thrown -- a bad, non-professional one, ie me, might...)
no subject
Date: 2012-09-15 05:25 pm (UTC)In any event (tell me if I'm wrong), the song never goes to B-Minor/C-Flat-Minor, but rather to B-Major (C-Flat-Major?). And that's a total key shift (right?), B-Major now being the key for the pre-chorus (B-Major the tonic, with E-Major and G-Flat-Major showing up as its IV and V). And since my A-Flat (G-Sharp, whatever) has played with being both major and minor, heading from the former to the latter, the relationship I'm pointing out (or flailing in the direction of) is that A-Flat-Minor is B-Major's relative minor. Or, if "relative minor" is the wrong terminology, A-Flat-Minor is vi to B-Major's I.
Or — if we want to take A-Flat/G-Sharp as our baseline standard, since that's where we started — then B-Major/C-Flat Major is its III, but only if our A-Flat/G-Sharp is minor. Damned if I know what the relationship
betweenof B-Major/C-Flat Major is to A-Flat Major/G-Sharp Major.Bear in mind that I was last instructed in (rudimentary) music theory in 1973.
Of course the song seems very simple; the description is what's complicated. Maybe the description would be simple as well, if I knew what I was talking about.