The economics of music is fascinating. Beyond contract negotiations and residuals, merchandising rights and tour dates, each song is distinctly homey. Completed works are all different. Every song uses different combinations of sound, making some more comfy than others. Textures are modeled as necessary. The purpose, all the while, is to convey a message or emotion while appealing to a contemporary audience's taste. A seemingly insurmountable feet even when peaking at 40 Alas, every song is the natural habitat for music economics, and its composer is the lecture hall's professor. Turn down for notetaking!
Take this trip with me. When any one person listens to a song, elements are isolated. In the process pleasure is extracted, or not, from these sums of a whole. Some of this is due to predictability. Some of this is due to nostalgia. Regardless, the common thread is the use of a cammon resource: sound. PIcture an imaginary library - a workshop of sound . Patrons are free to roam to aisles so as to pick and choose one, of an infinite number of copies, as they go about sound selection. Overwhelming because any number of possibilities exist; innumerable combinations are possible. Some make sense, some do not; some are logical, some are gratuitous. This is both an oversimplification and a criminal misunderstanding, but until Roland Kirk rises from the grave to give me a patented Albert Ayler beatdown, I will continue to think the way I do (incorrect as I may be). The model works well enough. The resources are unlimited but the space and time is not. It is rare that a truly original structure arises. More often than not a song is deemed "good" because of it fits well within a formula. One the materials had to be selected, not how to use them.
DJ MaboOku operates on a special plane. Working with dance music, Maboku's designs are expected to fir a style. Electronic or not, the rhythm and speed of dance music is largely predetermined. The purpose is to provide a soundtrack for the dancefloor; BPMs are just as much a guideline as a convenience. What makes any DJ special is his discretion in selecting resources are creativity in use. CDM's Maboku is fixated with rhythm, and shows this again in "Chapa Quente." The song's base is introduced immediately in a brief introduction. The remainder is built out of this nucleus. The song, however, is more than just hand drums and sampled accordion - the latter of which is not appreciated until of brief hiatus following the minute mark. The outside has all the appeal of an office building with an ambiguous bass drum, but the inside is marked by the quaint feel of a workshop. MabOuku's change to 2/4 from kuduro's breakneck 4/4 may likely be the culprit. The breeze can ease through. The use of batida, though, is just as likely. The song is busy, but not cluttered even as a second rhythm is placed above the first. In the stripped down nature of the song, only one vocal sample is used - and twice at that - to signify quickly approaching changes not for harmony. For all their simplicity, both the accordions and the drums vary in the second half of the song: a testament to the song. A design's appeal is not how many items can be fit into an area so much as how they are applied.
- John Noggle
No comments:
Post a Comment