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.

The song that I am familiar with and chose for this blog is, Flashing Lights by Kanye West(ft. Dwele). Kanye West is a Rapper, Producer, and Fashion Designer. Kanye is not only one of my favorite rappers/producers, but he is one of the most influential Hip Hop Musicians of all time . He is from Chicago IL., and he first gained recognition as a producer at Roc-A-Fellas Records (in New York). It wasn’t easy, but he had intent on pursuing a rap career. He was able to release his first album which was called the ”College Drop Out”. That album became a commercial success and made him really famous. Until then , Kanye West has released a lot of hit singles/albums and is still one of the biggest rap artist today.

Kanye West is very experimental and diverse with his music. The song Flashing lights comes from one of his known albums called “Graduation”. The bpm(beats per minute) of the song is 90 bpm, slow paced, and the key is in F sharp minor. The instruments consists of violins, synths, and digital drums. The Harmonies of the song gives a consonant sound when the violins are playing smoothly like an orchestra. It then switches to a dissonant sound where the synth stabs are playing. The synth stabs gives a bright loud feeling to the song. The Texture of the song shows a sense of Homophony. The chorus of the song “What – do – I – know; Flashing – Lights!” stands out the most, and it is being accompanied by the synths stabs playing in the background. This song is definitely one of my favorite songs from Kanye. Not only the song has a cool feeling but it also gives an anthemic vibe.

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanye_West

Song: https://youtu.be/ZAz3rnLGthg

The song that I picked is “Runaway” by Kanye West. Kanye is a hip-hop artist that in recent years has been shrouded in controversy, yet his work is some of the best music has ever seen and has influenced countless artists. This song has affected me as it really made me understand that music itself is art and I believe everybody should listen to this song at least once. The melody of this song is so memorable especially due to the first few C notes that are played. It is so distinct and the rest of the song is so recognizable due to its uniqueness. The melody is very diverse and pitches up and down but is balanced in a sense. The timbre of Kanye’s voice adds so much balance and beauty to the song. He often pitches up and down, yet he does not make the 9-minute drag time of the song boring at all. The pre-chorus and chorus especially shows the timbre of Kanye as he often changes how loud or how low he is sounding, yet it is balanced and creates a new sense of stability to the song with his intensity, which is why it is often regarded as Kanye’s best song. This song’s best moment is that chorus with the way Kanye harmonizes all instrumentals and voices into one beautiful piece of art. 

The Baroque Era is one of the most eventful periods in human history. On the one hand, it contain’s both the American and French Revolution’s, two of the biggest political movements in modern human history. It also contains some of the greatest composers of the era, like Bach, Vivaldi and Handel. Their influence was so great on music that they have managed to influence people generations away from them, and have even managed to have a era of music based on them, even if that era isn’t technically correct to their time. All I knew about this era was that it had something to do with those composers, however I had assumed it had been named after Bach. The textbook describes the period as extensions of the Renaissance era, however I would consider it one of the high points in music history.

I listened to Vivaldi’s Summer, as I had heard a few things about him, but nothing that I can determine as actual fact or can recite here. I listened to two versions of the song. One was by composer Antonio Janigro and was recorded in 1957 in Vienna. The other version was recorded in 2011 by guitarists Alexi Laiho and Roope Latvala, who were in the band Children Of Bodom. What I expected from the music was for it too be sophisticated. What I didn’t expect was for it to be heavy in the before heavy metal context. What also interested me is that the music was able to translate over too different instruments, and that it managed to sound the same despite this.

The Renaissance era  was not only a change for humanity, but for music culture as well. This era consisted primarily of the change and accomplishments of art, literature, music, nature, and our own human philosophy overall. This historical era fascinates me the most because this was the start of modern day music, what we hear today was developed and built off the renaissance era. Though we had medieval times before our Renaissance era, the Renaissance is where you start hearing modern musical components and tones such as soprano, Tenor, Bass, echo, etc. Today, we recognize these sounds as played by instruments such as the trumpet, the trombones, the alto, and other instruments. After hearing “The Glory of Giovanni Gabrieli”, by Giovanni Gabreli, you can distinguish this as the earliest of what our modern music consists of today. 

I must say, this is what I expected when I started listening to his music mainly because I know this era of orchestras, bands, groups coming together with instruments in general, all produce a harmonic yet rhythmic music meant for an audience to indulge in (from this era specifically). During this era, music was meant to express emotion through the people producing the music as well the people cheering to the music as entertainment.

One of, if not the most important era in musical history is the Medieval Era also commonly known as the Middle Ages (450-1450). Why is this one in particular so important, you may be asking? Well, that is because it established a foundation for the music we know and listen to today.

Christianity was spreading rapidly through Western Europe. Proper education was not big or sought out which factors in for most of the population’s inability to read or write. Instead, “monasteries were centers of learning.” (¶2, Line 5). In these monasteries, the monks were able to practice their religion through manuscripts that were made by other Arabic and Greek scholars. Their sacred texts were sung and passed on. Although they tried singing it in a certain way it eventually would change as time went on. To prevent any further change, the monks created a system that “fixed the pitches of a melody” while allowing for the representation of multiple melodies to be playing “simultaneously.” (¶3, Line 9-12). An early example of this could be heard by “Leonin” through a piece called “Viderunt Omnes.”

I was honestly surprised when I heard this for the first time. It doesn’t sound as foreign and weird as I thought it would. If anything, it sounds more calming and comforting than a lot of the music that is produced today. It’s interesting how a big portion of the music made in the twentieth century is what I expected to hear in the Middle Ages, especially through the way the article made the creation of the system sound. Though it was made centuries ago, the art he made still shines brightly to this day.

The Medieval time period also known as the “Middle Ages” took place from 450 to 1450. This period in history was heavily influenced by religion. Christianity began to spread wildly during the Medieval period and the music at this time could be considered similar to chants and songs that were sung in religious places. Something that I found interesting was stated in packet #1 “The chants sung in the services, some of them of ancient origin, were passed on through oral tradition, undoubtedly undergoing changes in the process”. The Christians had difficulty passing down the passed traditions and because of this problem, they would later create the basis of staff lines and spaces which is something we still use today. It is considered one of the greatest achievements in human history. I listened to a song by Guillaume Dufay who was a major figure in this period “https://youtu.be/6mcxEtyEUw4”. The song sounded very majestic and echoed through my headphones. I was very surprised as it truly felt like I was listening to someone singing in a church.