Sunday, January 23, 2011

130 Bears Per Minute Blog Assignment 3A

Justin Timberlake's "My Love"
It's a pretty cool music video as well.  Well choreographed at least.

We Came As Romans cover of Justin Timberlake's "My Love"

I’m really not a big Justin Timberlake fan, mostly because I don’t want to seem homosexual, but every once in a while he has a pretty catchy song that becomes way over played on the radio and then gets ruined.  One of these songs is called My Love that has a really hypnotic yet catchy melody.  Most of this song is generated electronically other than his voice.  The main sources of this song are his voice, his harmonized voice, another harmonized part, and a big ol’ computer.  The song in it’s entirety is very organized and structured with lots of layers and layers of electronic sounds built up behind Justin Timberlake’s extremely high and somewhat soothing falsetto.  Although the song has a seemingly very slow base beat (speed), the producer of this song which I am too lazy to look up created contrast in speed and tempo by leaving out main drums (kicks, snares, and hi-hats) between measures.  So to the receiver of this song may seem as if it has a very slow BPM rate (90 or so), while in reality, the creator did that to disguise what really is a somewhat speedy, average tempo-ed pop song with a rate of 130 bears per minute.  I accidentally typed bears per minute, and I was about to fix that, but then the thought of 130 bears per minute charging into Ohio University popped into my head and I liked it so I kept it there.  Also this is a lot of words that I won’t have to actually think about typing later to fit the word requirement.  Anyway, another good example of contrast and affinity shown simultaneously in this piece is through the melodies and harmonies played throughout the song.  You can identify huge affinities between Justin Timberlake’s falsetto and the high-pitched tremolo synth backing him up melodically while you can also simultaneously hear the nice pumping bass and low kick drum pulsating throughout the song driving the rhythm together with the really fast paced synth.

I’m also really not a big scream-o music fan, however the band that covered Timberlake's song did a phenomenal job in recreating the same familiar sound while adding a completely different twist to it’s original sound.  We Came As Romans, a heavy metal band, covered this summer hit, hip hop/pop song their way, and I thought it sounded amazing yet hilarious the first time I heard it.  The majority of the electronic sounds and beats heard in the background are replaced by low (pitch) and loud (intensity), palm-muted, minor guitar chords and an actual drum kit.  However the synth remains the same throughout but that was probably reproduced in a studio or on a filtered keyboard.  But this song really stands apart from the original and there is no doubt about that from the very first second you push play on either song.  This is already obvious when I stated the different genres of artists: metal/screamo and hip-hop/pop.  But within the first song, when the song begins it’s a really smooth, somewhat quiet transition into the beginning of the pop song that slowly builds with layers and layers without the lead singer for about fifteen seconds.  Within the second song, the metal one, as soon as the play button is hit, a man screams at what seems to be the top of his lungs the lyrics to the chorus of the song and heavy, low guitar noises just start charging into your ears at an extremely fast and irregular rate, while maintaining the steady beat throughout the song.

I like the second version more.

That is all.  600 words.  Bam.

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