The Medieval Time began around 476 A.D. which can be also called “The Middle Ages or Dark Ages”. The Medieval Age had played a tremendous role in Catholic Church which in that time era the composer’s with vocal music are being well respected. Many might be concerning, what’s the meaning of the medieval music? Let me explain, the medieval music was referred to the Western Europe music in the late 8th through 15th centuries. The musics are around with the church.

Léonin – Messe du Jour de Noël (Ensemble Organum) The rhythm, pitch from Léonin music was surprising amazing. During the entire process of his singing, It’s giving me goosebumps on how different the tone of his music is. The backing voice just gives the perfect fusion that I’m flowing with it. Comparing to today’s music in church, it a lot different, they don’t focus on the melody as strong as back then. Till today this kind of music still glows out cause it’s just a master piece of what they created back centuries ago.

For this prompt, I decided to go with the song Everybody Wants to Rule the World by Tears for Fears. Tears for Fears is a British pop rock band that started in the 1980s. Their first album had hit number one in the UK but, they didn’t hit the US until their second album released. Which had two singles,  Shout as well as Everybody Wants to rule the world, hitting #1 on the US Billboard Hot 100. However after their world tour, the band had split but reconciled a decade later in 2000. Recently, they had gone on tour this past spring and are performing in the UK the day this assignment is due. I had listened to this song when I was younger but it was only until a few years ago, when I rediscovered the song, when I started actively listening. Listening to the song, I think the rhythm of it follows a ¾ signature due to the drum accenting every meter. And from my research, the song has a tempo of 112 BPM which is just slightly under allegro. The piece follows a alternate verse-chorus form where it goes from verse one, chorus one, verse two, chorus two. But after that, following the bridge and the third chorus, there is a solo from the synth at first and a guitar improvisation afterwards (right around the 2 minute mark). This was most likely a song Tears for Fears made to appeal to a general audience and assumed that it would be slowly forgotten after a while. However, thanks to the use of the song in media like TikTok, Tears for fears still gets 14 million monthly listeners and has over 800 million streams for Everybody Wants to Rule the World on Spotify. I think the most musically interesting part of the song is the guitar solo. There is a part where the guitar plays an intro riff right before the solos start but after it ends it uses the same pattern but in a higher key. It’s a little hard to listen for but if you focus just on the guitar you can hear it happening.  

A song that I love and have loved for over three years now is striptease by carwash. Striptease is a lo-fi pop song that can be found on Spotify, Soundcloud, and many other platforms. I honestly just find this song adoring and often see myself listening to it when I need to cheer myself up. I often get bored of replaying songs over and over again after a month or two but I’ve stuck with this song for a few years now which is special to me. At 0:35 seconds of the song the dynamic changes for just a few seconds. It lowers itself and then introduces the chorus right after. I personally love it when a song does this, a good beat drop always makes or breaks a song for me. I may be wrong but I believe that the song is polyphony. LIstening to the song I can hear the beat of the instruments and the singer of the song. Putting them together makes the song what it is and it would be entirely different if either of them did not have the other. Overall I do not know much about this artist nor do I care for their other songs but this specific one will always hold a spot in my playlist.

I picked the song “brown eyed girl” by Van Morrisson. I picked this song because my grandpa sings it to me and plays it on his guitar and because of that it has become one of my all time favorites. Van Morrison is one of the most legendary musicians in America. He started singing from a very young age and went on his first tour at 17. His top song is Brown eyed girl. This song is considered pop. It was number 10 on the Billboard hot 100. Brown Eyed girl spent a total of 16 weeks on the chart. My favorite line of the song is “you’re my brown eyed girl” because my brown eyes are the main reason my grandpa sings it to me. This line of the song is the melody. This is because it’s the part of the song that will get stuck in our heads and we can identify the song by this line. This is also a homophony. This is because there is one line accompanied by other cords. There is a guitar playing in the background along with other instruments, but just one line being sung by one person. The tempo of this song is 151. This means the speed in which the beat is played. The song is played in the key “G” and the dynamics is -10.1db. The dynamics of a song is how loud or soft something is or the volume of the pitch, so here the loudness is -10.1db. This three minute and three second song is a timeless classic and I am glad I got to learn more facts about the elements of the song. https://youtu.be/kqXSBe-qMGo

The piece of music I chose to talk about today was “All Falls Down” by Kanye West. I really enjoy listening to this song whenever I wanna boost my mood. This is a hip-hop song that demonstrates a great example of rhythm. Kanye West is known for taking time on making his songs unique, as most would say. His whole career started when he chose to add lyrics to the beats he would create for other musical artists. I think making a beat for Jay-Z is what really opened his eyes to take his own music seriously. West would create beats for the rising artists in Chicago and become popular because of Channel Zero. This small news channel in Chicago grew bug once the small town producers on it, one being Kanye West, realized that they could reach their dreams if they kept trying hard enough. That’s when they realized they had a chance to achieve their dream and West didn’t give up. He got so popular there that he brought his talent all the way to New York. He watched other artists receive so much recognition for the beats of a song that he would create. The song I choose to talk about today is actually one of the first songs West took into record label offices to show them his talent. I would say this song shows a good example of texture because it has many beats going on at once, this song would fall best under the polyphony category. This is because the song features two relatively independent voices with Syleena Johnson being the featured artist in this song. Johnson sings the chorus while rapping phrases that he turns into verses. I would say the first verse of the song is what’s most interesting. The song follows the same beat the entire time while the verse and course switch.