We have discussed many songs that were sung and basically redone completely from the original. One we did not mention was “Smells Like Teen Spirit” which was originally written and performed by Nirvana. Tori Amos did a cover of this song and completely changed it up. She turned a rock song with a harsh, deep voice to a pleasing and more quiet voice. The original song is from 1992 while Tori’s is from 2008. She slows the song down immensely and plays the piano in the background while singing it. But in Nirvana’s version, there are the typical instruments of a hard rock band and no piano. Nirvana is an American rock band with the lead singer and guitarist Kurt Cobain. They were inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2014 and have won many awards such as the MTV Video Music Award for Best New Artist. Tori Amos is an American singer, song writer and pianist. She has a mezzo-soprano vocal range and she has also won many awards. The meaning behind the name of this song is actually because the singer of Nirvana apparently smelling like the deodorant Teen Spirit. The lyrics are meant to convey a mystery about Nirvana. Something similar between the performances are the lyrics stay the same and that is about the only thing that stays the same. There are way more differences including the overall meaning behind the song is changed and Tori has softer verses. The melody is enhanced by her voice. Like I mentioned, the , meaning of the song is changed when Tori delicately plays the piano and sings much more softly because the entire mood of the song changes.

Harry Styles – Falling (Live) 

Link: Harry Styles – Falling (Live From The BRIT Awards, London 2020)

1) Share some background info about the song and each performer

Harry Edward Styles is an English singer, songwriter, and actor who was born on February, 1st, 1994. As a solo candidate on the British competition series, “The X Factor”, he launched his musical career in 2010. During this competition, he was eliminated but called back along with four other boys, who formed One Direction. The group went on to become one of the best-selling boy bands of all time until taking an indefinite break in 2016. When the “band break” occurred, Harry started his solo career, and “Falling” was one of the songs that he came out with as a solo artist. 

The song “Falling” by Harry Styles was featured on his second solo album called “Fine Line” and is one of the great hits on his record.

2) Discuss what story and/or emotions are being communicated by the lyrics

“In an interview with RADIO.COM, Styles explained the truth about Falling, saying it was about a period of time where one starts falling back into a dark place. ‘Falling is about getting right before a place that you recognize as a low for you’, he said. ‘You kind of feel yourself falling back into that down period, I guess, and being sad about what you lost”.

Wright, Minnie. “Harry Styles Reveals Heartbreaking Meaning Behind Falling in Candid Interview.” Express.co.uk, 3 Mar. 2020, www.express.co.uk/entertainment/music/1250122/Harry-Styles-Falling-lyrics-meaning-interview-2020.

3) Using musical elements vocabulary (form, tempo, timbre, etc.) and time stamps (when something happens in the song)

“Falling” is a very simple song. All it associates itself with is Harry’s voice and a piano. The tempo in this song is also very slow. It takes around two seconds before the pianist hits the other note. Harry’s voice range also does not vary that much. His pitch is either high or low. In his verses, he tends to sing in a low tone, and in the chorus, he sings in his high tone or frame. From the time stamp of 2:43 to 2:54, Harry hits one of his highest vocal ranges and he stresses the last word as well on that high note. You could see the effort that he puts into hitting that note, as you can see the strain in his neck. His veins are very visible. 

Little Mix – Falling (Harry Styles Cover) Live

Link: Little Mix – Falling (Harry Styles cover) in the Live Lounge

1) Share some background info about the song and each performer

Little Mix is a British girl group made up of four women, Perrie Edwards, Jade Thirlwall, Leigh-Anne Pinnock, and Jesy Nelson. Jesy broke away from the group in 2020 and shortly after the release of their sixth album, “Confetti”, the group decided to take a break and follow in their own careers, after the completion of their Confetti tour. The group promises to always come back together at the end of the day, that Little Mix will always be together. The girls have no bad blood with each other, they are sisters who will always be there for each other no matter what circumstance, always and forever. 

2) Discuss what story and/or emotions are being communicated by the lyrics

[Same as previous #2 statement] [This group did a cover to this song.]

3) Using musical elements vocabulary (form, tempo, timbre, etc.) and time stamps (when something happens in the song)

Compared to Harry Styles’s version of “Falling”,  the girls made it their own. Even though the lyrics are the same, the tempo, the pitch, and the way it is sung are polar opposites to each other. The first obvious difference is that the tempo got picked up, it is much faster in the Little Mix version. Instead of just having a piano and voice in their version of the song, they are also accompanied by a guitar. The guitar helps assist and clarify the difference in the tempo. The song structure is another major difference. They did not sing the song in the same melody and rhythm that Harry Styles did. Their vocal range was also aimed more specifically toward the higher ranges as well. From the time stamp of 3:00 to 5:13, a lot of improvisations to the song are occurring. From the way they sang the bridge, “And I get the feeling that you’ll never need me again”, to the added verse to the song, that is not in the original lyrics. (I do not know if they wrote those lyrics or got it from somewhere else.) This verse was sung by two artists in the group. Even though “Falling” was sung very differently from Harry Styles’s version, it was still a brilliant execution by the girls that gave me goosebumps when I first heard their versions. 

Comparing And Contrasting The Two Songs

1) Identify at least two similarities and two differences between the performances

Two similarities between these two performances were the tone in which the song was sung, both songs had a very calming sense to them, and the baseline of the piano remained the same throughout the song in both performances as well. Two differences between these two performances were the tempo, Harry’s version was slower compared to Little Mix’s version, and the way the song was sung as well, the song structure, was different.  

Emotions And Story Of Music

1) Consider how the different musical settings affect the story and/or emotions of the lyrics.

The musical setting of a song can have a major effect on how a song is depicted. For the song, “Falling” by Harry Styles, he made a music video to go along with the song. The video portrays Harry, as a lost man, who seems to be depressed, and nothing in his life is the way he imagined it to be. He is in a room with his piano and an alcoholic drink. As he is singing, the piano is spilling out water and towards the end of the video, the entire room and Harry are under. The water took over. Harry is illustrating this image of drowning, which is very similar to the feeling of falling. That you are drowning there. You can also really see those feelings of hurt and being kind of angry in Harry’s facial expressions as he is singing the song. The video to this song helped convey those emotions of sadness and despair.

The song “Can’t Help Falling In Love” was released in 1961. It is famously known as the song sung by Elvis Presley and is of the R&B/Soul genre. The primary emotions being conveyed in the song are love. In the song Elvis shares how love is dangerous and no matter how experienced one is, it is hard nonetheless. He then goes on to share how despite knowing the danger of “love” he can’t help falling for this girl that caught his eyes. With the lyrics, we can see how his feeling for this girl are genuine and how deeply he has fallen in love. Another performance of the song I found similar yet different was a cover from the artist G-Dragon. The cover from G-Dragon was overall very similar but the portion near the chorus was different. Around 1:29 the song takes a different route from the original and changes the beat and tempo. The tempo increases and the song changes from a calm to an energetic feel. The cover had a very pop feel as opposed to the original song. Elvis Presley’s version was very calming and melodic while the cover was very energetic. Despite the few differences most of the song and lyrics remained the same and overall conveyed the same message. The song still conveyed the same message of love and how deep he is into love. Another similarity is the beat and overall tempo. The beat of the song is very similar to the original song. Some ways the musical setting could have affected the emotions in the song is the style or genre. The original song was sung by an American artist while the second song was done by a Korean singer. The styles or genre that is popular could have been different between the two countries leading to such differences. Artists after all make songs that would be appreciated by their fans and normally their country. 

DAWs or Digital Audio Workstation is any software that runs on a computer, that records, produce and edits music audio files. You can record vocals for sing/rapping and sampling audio. You can also play instruments virtually on a DAW that were digital recordings of real instruments and synth sounds.People that use this technology are mainly Music producers, Artist (Singer, Rapper) and Mixing engineers. They can use this technology for creating music for genres like Hip-Hop, Pop, R&B; or creating music for Tv, Film, and Commercials. DAWs influences the way how music is produced because, it is a faster method of creating music. You no longer need a band or orchestra to compose music when you can play all the instruments on one digital software. You can also record and edit faster on a DAW. Examples of DAWs that are known are Pro-tools, Ableton, FLStudio, Logic Pro x, MPC, and NI Maschine.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_audio_workstation

TikTok. No, not the sound of a clock. Nope, not the sound of your watch either. TikTok! The super popular social media and funny video app! If you haven’t heard of this app then you must be living under a rock. It is the #1 entertainment app out on the Appstore today! With over one billion users. Yes, one billion. TikTok originally was called “Musical.ly” and was more focused on creators (users) making videos that had music in the background which they would either dance to or lip sync to. Now, the new updated version of Musical.ly (TikTok) is more oriented towards anything mainly being funny videos. But there is one feature that everyone knows about yet it isn’t widely known for it. Its music streaming! Well, sorta. TikTok is able to play a brief portion of any song in a creator’s video. This feature on top of videos going viral for silly reasons has completely changed the way people find music! When a video is going viral and others make videos with the same “Sound” (song) it kind of starts to get stuck in your head which then makes you or anyone else search it up to hear it again! I have had my fair share of earworms because of TikTok, but one song in particular really helped jumpstart my favorite artists career, Jack Harlow. His first big song “Whats Poppin” gained a massive amount of listeners not only because he is so catchy but because of TikTok. After her received a great amount of attention, he continued to make more music as well as his other songs gaining traction which eventually got him in the top charts of Hip Hop/Rap.  

Something I would consider to be musical technology is a microphone . A microphone is ” an instrument that converts sound waves into electrical energy variations which may then be amplified, transmitted , or recorded”. It’s purpose is to amplify sound.To achieve its purpose it must go threw the process of electromagnetic induction , which is when the sound waves create electrical currents when attached to a speaker makes it louder and therefore you can now reach the ears of people all over a room , stadium etc. Even though the microphone is mostly used in music people are now using it for different things like creating content (Youtube , TikTok), Sports( spokesmen/woman), Ted Talks etc. I had my own personal experience with microphones because i used to participate in talent shows a lot for singing so using microphones is nothing new to me. The song I’m going to choose to prove my point is ” God is a Women” by Ariana Grande (the live version) after watching the video you can see how the microphone help her during her performance . Having the microphone allowed her to be heard all thorough the stadium clearly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKm4YqadSGw

Technology is knowledge, techniques, and tools that help humans achieve certain goals. Therefore an example of Music technology can be Spotify, an application that streams music from millions of artists all over the world. The purpose of Spotify is to give you global access to songs and podcasts. It has over 400 million monthly users and almost 200 million subscribers which shows how reliable it is. Recently I’ve seen posts on Instagram where people would be able to watch full on movies on Spotify. It’s something that people working at Spotify definitely did not intend to let happen but happens anyways. It only happened for a short amount of time though seeing that when I tried to search up the movies myself, it would come up as blank. I have a lot of experience with this app. I’ve been using Spotify for years now and it’s my go to app to use to listen to music.

#BrooklynBloodPop is a song that can be found on Spotify. It originally became extremely popular when it blew up on Tiktok and attracted many viewers to the sound. Due to its popularity people started looking to listen to the entire song, not just the short 15 seconds found on Tiktok. This is where Spotify came in. With the song now at almost 200 million listens on the app, the creator of the song has benefited greatly. Spotify is an app used globally by people all over the world to do one thing, listen to music.

https://open.spotify.com/track/7K9Z3yFNNLv5kwTjQYGjnu?si=81e2e53cefb94ae3

Sampling is a technique that was born under hip hop that uses a clip from a preexisting song. The clip is isolated and then looped underneath a rapper. People are often debating the use of samples and the copyright laws behind it. It can be considered plagiarism if proper credits and previous negotiations are not settled. I have heard some songs where I can recognize a sample because I hear it in many songs. A popular song that used samples is M.C. Hammer – U Can’t Touch This. The sample is taken from Rick James – Super Freak. The sample played the whole time in the song.

The technology I chose is audio recording.

The original purpose of audio recording was to preserve and reproduce sound.Audio recordings include analog and digital recording.Analog recording refers to printing sound waves directly onto physical media (such as records and magnetic tapes).Digital recording is more familiar to me. It refers to converting sound signals into binary code and then processing them on a phone or computer, such as recording music or sound on a recording software.Sometimes I will record songs on my laptop or phone and process them.

The music genre HIP HOP was born from the  technique of sampling, where rappers isolate a snatch of song and play them over and over again to produce a percussive, rhythmic sound, and then innovate it. As the technology in our life is continuing developing, the technology for entertainment is also being more and more advanced, synthesizers play an important role in the music of the 21st century.In Japan, there is a speech synthesis engine called Vocaloid.They recorded and synthesized human voices, and then presented songs by typing in tones and lyrics.And the singers created by these music software are called virtual singers. The advent of this technology means that a song can be created without a band and singers.Here is a song that was created using this technique：https://youtu.be/e1xCOsgWG0M