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Latest Picardies and Bug Songs

Los Doggies — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 15:52:20 +0000

The new Weezer album “Hurley” has a picardy on it – the band’s first and only picardy. If you recall from our last post, a picardy is when music changes key from Minor to Major on the very same root note. A reverse picardy occurs when a song turns from Major to Minor. In a rocking twenty year history of power chords, love-lorn lyrics, and Sensitive Female Chord Progressions, it’s nice to see songsmith Rivers Cuomo finally employ this obscure musical device.

“All My Friends are Insects” by Weezer is in the key of E. It starts off with E Major for the “earthworm” and “butterfly” verses, but then promptly switches to E Minor for the “dragonfly” verse. The subsequent guitar solo keeps rocking the E Minor key in Munsters style, until the song modulates once more back to E Major for the remaining bridge and verse. Thus, it uses a reverse picardy in switching from E Major to E Minor, and then picardies again back to E Major. The structure is: Major-Minor-Major.

Thanks to Weezer for their picardy contribution, and also for correctly using gender-specific pronouns in reference to non-human animals. “It” is sung for the gender-bending earthworm, “She” for the pretty butterfly, and “He” for the colorful powerful dragonfly.

Why are insects friends? For their vital work in service of the ecosystem? Nah, because they fly around, being beautiful, doing what they do.

The Heart Shuffle ♥

Los Doggies — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 16:30:36 +0000

The Human Heart is our natural metronome. It kicks like a bass drum anywhere from 60-80 beats per minute. In Italian, this tempo is called larghetto. It is no coincidence that the moderate rock tempo (120 bpm) – the cut-time of our heartbeat – is the standard tempo for Pop Music. The pitch of our hearts is quite low, and occupies the lower registers on a 4-string bass guitar. Thus, the ‘feel’ of a piece of music, is strongly dictated by the bass and drums – the riddim, as the rastas call it. The riddim is the heart of music.

Drag over the noteheads or push play to loop.
The heartbeat is a kind of shuffle beat composed of the two basic heart sounds – S1 and S2, or “lub” and “dubb” – separated by cardiac rests. In poetry, this beat is called an “iamb” as in the Shakespeare line:

A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!
Trying tapping the above line out with your hands while saying it in time with your heartbeat. Iambs were used in ancient Greece for a satirical form of verse. The mocking quality of the heartbeat is seen today in kid songs parodying Ring Around the Rosie.

In locomotion, the heartbeat expresses itself as skipping. Children love to skip, and like myself, often can’t help tapping beats out on their environment.

Our love of 60 b/p/m iambic shuffle music and poetry is shaped during our time in the womb, while listening to the constant pulse of our mothers’ biomusic. The loudest sounds a fetus hears are her heartbeat – the four sounds of the heart (in waltzes and gallops) – the bruits of the blood, nerve noise, and all the sounds of the social environment filtered in through the subwoofer of her womb. This intrauterine soundtrack is like listening to riddim underwater – big bassy waves and strong pulsing rhythms.

So what to play for your newborn’s First Sound? We know babies like Major, bass and drum music, at Moderate rock tempos. Should the First Sound include the froufrou of a scrub’s shoes? The syncopated applause of family? Or a 4/4 Lamaze beat – a natural extension of mom’s 60 bpm heartbeat – jammed out upon delivery by the Hospital House Band? Or should, as William Burroughs suggests, the newborn be treated to silence as her First Sound?

Of course, it you want to sever the child’s sonic umbilicus right away, have the doctors play your newborn some Mahavishnu Orchestra.

Comments are always welcome. It’s easy and anonymous.
Love, Homey

♥ These are my Heart Sounds…

Wooh Hooh H’oh Oh Oh

Los Doggies — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:23:31 +0000

“Wooh Hooh” is a non-lexical vocable, or an “utterance without meaning”, though the meaning is quite clear in the example below.

Non-lexical vocables express the pure joy of playing and singing music.
Fa la la la la. Ob-la-di Ob-la-da.

Backwards, these notes form a D Major Pentatonic Scale.
The vocable from Weezer’s Dreamin’ is also found in an older song.

In both examples, the “Wooh Hooh’s” are sung in falsetto, as “Wooh Hooh’s” ought to be.

Weezer frontman, Rivers Cuomo, carries around a three-ring binder known as “The Enyclopedia of Pop” which breaks down the song formulas of Nirvana, Green Day, and Oasis. (I’d sub in The Beatles for those last two.)

It seems likely that Dreamin’ was inspired by You are the Woman, at least unconsciously. There are 3 main reasons why come I believe this:

1) They both go “Wooh hooh whoa oh oh” .
2) They have the same chord progressions.
3) And for Jupiter’s sake, they’re both in D Major!

Imagine if Music Publications actually reviewed songs? Actually talked about real music?
Here’s what it’d look like:

Dreamin’ by Weezer
Keys: D Major and G Major
Chords: I III IV V
Feel: 4/4 Swing. 4/4 Straight.
Tempo: 130 for beginning and end. 90 at the bridge.

You are the Woman by Firefall
Keys: D Major
Chords: I III II V
Feel: 4/4 Straight.
Tempo: 120

In You are the Woman, the third chord is an E Minor instead of a G, but the movement in both songs is essentially the same.

A Song Schema, like the ones above, can reveal so much more about the music than buzzy adjectives can.

So here’s my music review, fortified with real music talk.

Dreamin’ by Weezer is a sick song. The melodies are belt-outs. The music is swinging and straight, yet rocks throughout. The structure is adventurous, featuring a bridge section with a little song within the song, sung by Brian Bell with Rivers Cuomo doing counterpoint. The attitude, as always with the Weez’, is bravura – musical bravado.

Dreamin’ harkens to some of the best moments from Pinkerton. The tempo slowdown at the final chorus is reminiscent of Pink Triangle and the same “One Three Four Five” chord progression was used in Why Bother and Across the Sea.

The kiss-the-sky feedback in the intro is like the drowsy hypnogogic state preceding the kick-in of sweet rockin’ dreams.

How can one not like this song? It’s 4/4 D major anthemic punk-pop with a swing and child-like lyrics and it’s got crazy changes.

Weezer Rules. Wooh Hooh.

Dedicated to all the Post-Green haters. Whoa oh oh.

Other Dreaming Classics:
Daydream Believer by the Monkees
I can’t wake up by Krs One
Dream by Sean Lennon.

Ya gotta song ya want me to ‘review’? Shoot me an e-mail!
losdoggies@losdoggies.com