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MY FAVORITE SONG: January 12th, 2016
Led Zeppelin - “Four Sticks” (Led Zeppelin IV)
I think being a musician is a bit of a lost art in modern day music. Here’s what I mean when I say that.
Now I mean to some, these may sound like elements of a bygone era. But we’re talking about fundamentals and music theory. Songs today are straightforward. Who knows, I may not be listening to the right artists. But I feel like artists today are more focused on the quality of music and the end product, rather than the process of actually making and playing the song.
Now this isn’t something that’s any sort of deal breaker for me. In fact, I love even the music elementary of musical production. But really making an attempt to dig into this song and figure out it’s technical roots got me thinking.
So I was listening to this song, and I wanted to figure out the count. I started tapping my finger along with the song, and stated counting. 95% of songs I know are on a 4/4 count. So I started counting “1-2-3-4″ with the song. What the hell, this song is NOT a 4/4. Okay, so I started counting “1-2-3, 1-2-3,” a ¾ and nope. Still not it. 6/4? No. 5/4? Nope. I asked my mom if she knew the count of the song. Her guess was 6/4, but we figured that was incorrect.
Eventually, I got the hang of the count for the song. “1-2-3, 1-2, 1-2-3, 1-2” for the main guitar riff, then a “1-2-3″ for the refrain/bridge section. After looking up the sheet music, I realized that the song changes count from measure to measure, between 5/8 and 6/8.
Pretentious musical jargon aside, this speaks to the brilliance of Led Zeppelin as musicians and songwriters. I take this as a sign of the times. If you listen to Pink Floyd’s “Money,” it’s another song that changes count as it runs through the bars. These are things that you don’t see too often in music anymore. And I’d have to guess that has a lot to do with how digestible music is for the listener. I mean, it’s a bit harder to dance to a song that switches up its counts on you every few seconds right?
This doesn’t make this song the best song in the world or anything. And it doesn’t make music today less interesting (in fact, technology alone puts music today on another level). But I just find it interesting knowing how much the audiences tastes for music have changed over the years.
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