#song structure

[madrone33]

Hey so I realised the difference between songs you'd hear on the radio and musical theatre numbers.

On average, radio songs are trying to tell a vibe, a mood.

While they do tell some sort of story (a breakup, a love song, a summer holiday), it's very generalised. It's supposed to be relatable for a wide audience, so other people can relate to it and feel the feeling the song's trying to convey. It's trying to convey the feeling of betrayal, or elation, or just a total vibe. You want it to sound good even if it's in the background, even if the lyrics aren't really listened to; the feeling should still come through. And the feeling is what makes it sound like one song. The whole song should have one overarching mood, one feeling.

Musical theatre numbers are trying to tell a scene, an event in a story.

In KYFC, the first half and the second half of the song sound drastically different, but they're still the same scene. Aeolus' game, and then the dream leading to the storm being unleashed, are just two parts of the same Wind Bag problem. It's only when they deal with it and Poseidon announces himself that the scene changes, and a new song starts accordingly.

That's why sometimes it could feel like the songs in EPIC are a bit disjointed, musically. Because if you're used to general songs, then a drastic change in mood or style means it should be two seperate songs, not "mashed" into one. Especially since the verse chorus verse chorus structure of a normal pop song isn't always there. But if you come at it from a musical theatre lense, then it makes complete sense why certain events are grouped the way they are.

Take Mutiny, for example. It changes like, seven times: "Tell me you did not know that would happen", "... Then you have forced my hand", "My brothers... why?", "Some island, the first one we found", "Please don't tell me you're about to do what I think you'll do", "How much longer must we suffer now?", "... You've doomed us..." Mood wise, each part is very tonally different from the others, with no real verse or chorus or bridge; Scene wise, the whole thing is the breakdown of their relationship leading to a mistake they can't come back from, and all the tonally different parts of the song work incredibly.

Just putting my rambling thoughts to page lol. I know I generalised a lot. Bohemian Rhapsody comes to mind as an example of pop songs rapidly changing styles, but it's not like that type of song is the norm, so.

Anyway, I guess that was my essay on why the Wisdom Saga did not need to be split into more songs.

[diet-cokette]

does any music geek know what its called where the song doesn't really have a bridge but just immedeatly with little to no pause goes into that last incredibly hurtful verse with more passion and oomf because it kills me every time

[anlilmusic]

Forbidden Melodies to Get Lost In

This breakout artist, renowned for her captivating voice and unparalleled fusion of Middle Eastern influences with dark pop, invites you on an emotional odyssey through her most personal track yet. “Forbidden” uses the Hijaz scale, creating a dark and haunting atmosphere. The song features rhythms inspired by Middle Eastern traditions, adding a captivating feel. From the heart-wrenching vocals…

[paneer-biryani]

i am such a sucker for crazy song structure. like give me a 4-measure post chorus breakdown and a random beat change in the second verse. ill eat up a key change in the last chorus and a 3-part bridge, each part designed to give you a different emotion. idc how long the song is, i just want to feel breathless by the time im done listening, like ive reached the end of a climactic story arc

[musiciantoolbox]

How A Billboard #1 Song Is Made featuring 24kGoldn & Louis Bell

[fangrurin]

Fashion of the Great Houses of Westeros: House Tully of Riverrun

[babblingbonnabel]

🥁 | hurray for Imp and Skizz!!

Other Hermitcraft x Soul Eater designs: Stress + Iskall

[lookninjas]

Pick a song from a bad description! You do not have to recognize any of the songs to vote (although tbh I feel like this is one of my most obvious ones -- there is an actual song title in one of the choices). Just go from the vibes. Pick whichever is funniest to you, or matches your current situation, or whatever makes a random bad song description appeal to you.

At the end of the week, I will take the poll results and use them to arrange the songs in a playlist, from the song with the lowest amount of votes to the song with the highest amount of votes. If you would like to hear the playlist, leave a comment or put it in the tags of your reblog, and I will tag you when the playlist goes up. And if you really can't wait to know what a song is, send me an ask and I will answer it.

And please reblog the poll! 'Cause this is as close as I can come to sending you guys a mixtape, so if you share it with your followers and they share it with their followers it's like we're all getting a mixtape, and that's fun. So let's keep the mixtapes moving.

[shakooo]

i won't lie to you, making this drawing distracted me from making the comic AND IT WAS because i just wanted to practice making a quick background, but uhh i think i took it more seriously lol

although i have been advancing :D/ i have not shown more progress cuz i do not want to spoiled everything hehe i want it to be a surprise 😌 anyway, i hope you like it and here's a close up shot( °∇^)］

[hellsite-proteins]

I love this idea.

Can you render the lyrics of Never Gonna Give You Up?

i’ve gotten this request several times now, so for anyone who asked for this after uniquepickles you can just look at this post.

enjoy!:

letter sequence in this ask matching protein-coding amino acids:

WerenstrangerstlveYknwtherlesandsdIdIAfllcmmitmentswhatImthinkingfYwldntgetthisfrmanythergyIstwannatellyhwImfeelingGttamakeynderstandNevergnnagiveypNevergnnaletydwnNevergnnarnarndanddesertyNevergnnamakeycryNevergnnasaygdyeNevergnnatellalieandhrtyWeveknwneachtherfrslngYrheartseenachingtyretshytsayitsayitInsidewethknwwhatseengingngingnWeknwthegameandweregnnaplayitAndifyaskmehwImfeelingDnttellmeyretlindtseeNevergnnagiveypNevergnnaletydwnNevergnnarnarndanddesertyNevergnnamakeycryNevergnnasaygdyeNevergnnatellalieandhrtyNevergnnagiveypNevergnnaletydwnNevergnnarnarndanddesertyNevergnnamakeycryNevergnnasaygdyeNevergnnatellalieandhrtyWeveknwneachtherfrslngYrheartseenachingtyretshytsayitsayitInsidewethknwwhatseengingngingnWeknwthegameandweregnnaplayitIstwannatellyhwImfeelingGttamakeynderstandNevergnnagiveypNevergnnaletydwnNevergnnarnarndanddesertyNevergnnamakeycryNevergnnasaygdyeNevergnnatellalieandhrtyNevergnnagiveypNevergnnaletydwnNevergnnarnarndanddesertyNevergnnamakeycryNevergnnasaygdyeNevergnnatellalieandhrtyNevergnnagiveypNevergnnaletydwnNevergnnarnarndanddesertyNevergnnamakeycryNevergnnasaygdyeNevergnnatellalieandhrty

protein guy analysis:

i was really interested to see how this one would turn out, as it is made up almost entirely of repeated domains (the chorus). unfortunately, as many of you may be quick to point out, the chorus of Rick Astley's 'Never Gonna Give You Up' is not in fact a protein domain, and the only thing repeated are some terrible looking loops. i've even included a second picture to properly show you how flat this terrible protein is.

i thought i understood Levinthal's paradox before starting this blog, but these structures are giving me a newfound appreciation. for those who are unaware, Levinthal's paradox is based on the fact that any given protein can fold into an enormous number of possible conformations, but cannot test all of these within the seconds or less that it takes for a protein to fold into its stable tertiary structure. correct folding is controlled by the primary structure (or, the sequence of amino acids encoding the protein) as well as complex factors including the presence of any chaperones to assist with folding, and the relative abundance of the tRNAs matching specific codons for each amino acid. running this blog makes me think of all the ways this process can fail along the way, and all of the almost correct places a protein can get stuck. this one certainly looks like it failed, but even then its hard to believe this is the shape that stuck.

for those interested, the one beta sheet goes with the line 'you wouldn't get this from any other guy', which does only occur once in the song.

predicted protein structure:

[whaliiwatching]

Hey hello. Consider. Hobie reading over and suggesting edits to drafts of Peter's writing and then going home visually with clippings and quotes from said writing as a part of him. Alternately, Peter takes inspiration from quotes visible on Hobie

heart on your sleeve…..

[xenomorphicdna]

This is an on the string propaganda post

Brought to you, by me (with love)

It's time for machine comforts. Comforts we can't understand, or experience. Let them be happy, let them be at peace with their body.

Does a breath of cool water feel nice on their systems? When it's quiet do they listen to their own heart and feel the electricity pulsing? Does it remind them that they are alive and a part of this world? Do they have dreams? Hopes and projects they wish to work on, hobbies?

Why get off the string into the harsh and deadly world, fighting for survival and losing everything they've ever known to love about themselves?

What about the safety of their bodies? How scary would it be for a machine with thousands, maybe millions of throughs to suddenly have just a handful. The horror of everything going silent.

They have hundreds of eyes to see the world for all its beauty, they capture moments that would otherwise go unseen. Why blind themselves of such things?

[lazuliquetzal]

I keep on telling people you're the only one who knows how to plot. Can you teach all of us how to plot, please? I love you.

I AM SUMMONED? PLOT BRAIN SUMMONED?

I love plotting. It's my favorite part of the writing process. Plot is "things that happen" and the best part of writing is imagining things that happen. I'm going to assume that whoever may be reading this knows how to imagine The Happenings, so I'm gonna be talking more about structure, but in like, a kinda abstract sense.

A good plot is a little bit more than a string of events. Plot is like music: there's variation in rhythm and sound and melody, but ultimately there's cohesion, because it's all one song. You can have a bunch of wild things happening, but no matter how strange, there should be something that links them all together, because you're telling one story.

Plot structures are patterns in stories. I'm pretty sure most of them were developed as analysis tools (as in, story already exists > look! it follows this pattern) rather than as writing tools, but people use them as writing tools because it's a neat little way to organize the chaos that is "shit happens." Stories follow patterns for the same reasons music follows patterns: we enjoy the certainty of hitting certain beats. But we also like being surprised. A good pop song doesn't sound like a random collection of sounds, but it also doesn't sound like the middle slider of other songs.

There is this shared concept in both music and writing: the idea of tension and release. Basically, you're playing with reader expectation: there's an imbalance in the experience (tension), and we want to see that imbalance resolved (release). All the common plot structures deal with this basic pattern:

You set an expectation

There are complications to the expectation

You meet the expectation

And this rhythm is happening on multiple levels in writing. Scenes follow this structure (we're gonna get past that door, we're gonna find the murder weapon, we're gonna collaborate and come up with a plan) and all those scenes feed into the overarching expectation (we're gonna solve this murder!). I usually think of chapters as their own mini-story, part of the larger whole. And I think of scenes as their own mini-story, part of the larger chapter. I have engineer brain. I see the gears spinning in the clock. That's why all my chapters have at least One Important Thing happening, because that's that particular chapter's Step #3.

And One Last Important Thing:

In music, a delayed resolution is almost always more interesting than the standard resolution. In writing, that means you wanna drag out Step #2 for as long as you can. That's where the bulk of the story is happening, that's how you build tension, that's how you get people to turn the page.

So when you write a fake dating fic, those bitches better not get together until the very end. I came here for fake dating, not for real dating, damn it. If you resolve that expectation early on, you better replace it with a different expectation that's just as engaging.

But also don't drag it out for too long. Sorry. The hard part of writing is learning the difference between too short and too long. Writing is unfortunately a nuanced skill which is why my advice is like "do this but not too much teehee." But tension and resolution is just rhythm, you can build a sense for it if you engage with enough stories.

[joyfuladorable]

A call that turns to Two, then a Third, then more and more and more every day and every night, just so they can hear each other's voices because any moment without is a moment missed.

-

A month late, but I had fun drawing capril in these cute outfits for my buddy @kiwiwikiartist's twt dtiys! ^w^

[mouse-drawings]

If I break his heart

I'll buy another to enjoy

(Halle Abadi - BOYTOY)

God, I wish it was me (gripping a Zasp plushie by his neck)

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

Not to be uhhhh annoying, but Karkat's theme and Eridan's theme from Alterniabound at the very least have to do with each other.

Both of them start off with a melody, but switch it up at around 0:06 seconds. Then once again another switch at 0:52 (almost perfectly in sync).

At around 1:06, Eridan's theme goes slow and sad, and on the other end? Sounds of tediousness(TM). Barking, Super Mario ghost oooohing that sounds like rolling your eyes, and vaguely digital soundbites.

And THEN, at around 1:23, Karkat's waltz resumes, and Eridan's theme also becomes a waltz (more or less at 1.25x Karkat's speed).

Karkat's music ends at 1:57, WOULDN'T YOU KNOW IT Eridan's theme kicks up. And then a "Hey!" is heard at 2:03/2:04, a couple of seconds after Karkat's theme actually ends. Quite literally: "Karkat pay attention to me. Hey. Karkat. Karkat. Karkat." lmao.

And guess which theme also loosely follows this pattern? Terezi's. A canonical crush of Karkat's (A lot more out of sync, though). Kanaya's theme doesn't, however. Much less Vriska's, or any other theme in Alterniabound's album.

Of course all of these songs follow a pattern, and they're made for the same [S] Pages. Karkat and Eridan's, though? Almost completely in sync.

I dunno, maybe I'm trying to fit triangles into square holes, but it seemed worth mentioning. I genuinely tried listening to both at the same time in two different tabs but I couldn't get much out of it.

(This is nosyDetective btw, I just can't send asks from this blog bc it's not my main 😔)

Unfortunately, the similarities seem pretty superficial - eridan's theme is mostly in 4/4 (2/2 technically because its a march) and karkat's is in 3/4 the whole time - but still, here's the two 3/4 parts mashed together for your listening pleasure, hahah.