Feb 10 Let's Review Music

How Can I Be A Music Reviewer?

(we always start with this assignment)

in order to do this, we need to be able to think about music in a specific way

we can’t just like or dislike something, we have be able to figure out why or why not

even hipsters have to figure the reasons why they hate everything you like – there has to be a pattern or some logic to deciding what’s a good song and what isn’t

Steps in Listening to a Song For Review

1. Listen to the song. But, we don’t just listen to the song, we think about it whilst we listen.

2. Think about what we’re feeling – what is the response? Question your response. You have to know what you like and don’t like in general – you need to know yourself

examples – some like chilling music, some like hyping up before something, some like work out music, some like dance, etc.

Break away from our prejudices.

3. Genre – what style of music is this? What tells me that? What are the elements of that style? eg Sugarland – acoustic guitars, twangy singing, fiddles, just at the start

Gives people a baseline to think about the song.

We need to be able to identify those elements that categorize a type of music.

We usually know the type and the identifiers but we don’t really discuss them or think about it.

4. Describe what you’re hearing – there are a number of ways to do this

a) Instruments and vocals – you need to dig deep and not invent things that aren’t there, and not miss things that are

- and they we need be able to say what is working or good and not –it’s not easy to break music into pieces, but reviewers need to do it.

b) parts of a song – intro, chorus, bridge, verse, solo, outtro, breakdown,

- parts of all songs – we see patterns in songs and these patterns can be isolated and identified and qualified

- hook, riff, groove, etc

A riff is a repeated musical phrase that carries through a song – “ACDC” uses them like crazy

A hook – riff that repeats and is designed to catch the listener’s ear – these can get annoying and they often work against the song after a while – could be an instrument on a vocal

Women in particular will respond to melodic hooks, esp. in pop music

Men, in particular will respond to guitar hooks, esp. in harder music

Rap uses sampled hooks as the whole song