Ugo
Group: Members
Posts: 5495
Joined: April 2000 |
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Posted: July 02 2010, 17:40 |
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Quote (wiga @ July 02 2010, 21:56) | I can see what you mean by the plonk-plonk-plonk giving a sense of urgency and expectation, and I've tried to like it, but it's way too brash and out of place for me. |
Of course I'm not trying to convince you to like it. I like it, you don't. Syd B. likes Mars Volta, I don't. As I said above, opinions are opinions - Horace, a very long time ago, said it so cleverly: De gustibus non disputandum est. But that's not the main point of this. The main point of this is estabilishing whether the bass line is a "leader" (as you think) or an element in a whole (as I think). Well, the more I listen to that section, the more I'm convinced that both of us may be right, and neither of us is. I'll try to explain myself more clearly. From 12:12 to 13:24, the bass has clearly a melodic purpose - the fact that the organ follows the bass note by note (and vice versa, obviously) proves that the bass part was written melodically. But if the bass line was actually conceived as a "leader", then it would have been louder than anything else. Instead there is an organ doing exactly the same thing as it, even in the original 1974 mix - and this has never been changed! So, at best, we may talk about a "joint leadership". At 13:24, the bass line (always IMHO, of course) loses its melodic purpose and it becomes an ostinato - one of the many beautiful ostinatos that Mike has written over the years [heck, there's even one in MotS! ] - because it does not carry a melody anymore, as the main melody is being carried, first with long notes then with shorter ones, by other things (organs and keyboards and guitars). So, what I think is that from 13:24 onwards the bass line not only doesn't "lead" anything, but it doesn't even drive anything in that particular section: the driving forces in that section (from 13:24 to 15:10) become, gradually, the organ, the keyboards and the guitars... before the whole thing culminates in the choir, and, of course, in those majestic tubular bells. Sorry about getting a little bit techincal here, I'm a musician and I am putting all this in purely musical terms. If you are putting it in terms of "feel", then it's rather obvious that our opinions should diverge widely.
-------------- Ugo C. - a devoted Amarokian
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