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Sir Mustapha Offline




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Posted: April 16 2010, 12:19

Quote (Ugo @ April 16 2010, 08:13)
@ Sir M. : a crescendo doesn't necessarily imply tension building - only Hollywood film composers do that. :)

Check out Glósóli, then, which is far from Hollywood territory and is, in my book, one of the best examples of "crescendo" in pop music ever -- not only because the rising feeling in the ending portions is extremely strong and moving, but THE WHOLE song builds towards that -- with every dip, every shift and every turn, the song is going somewhere, and THAT is where it's going.

If a song just instantly rises in intensity, I find it hard to call a "crescendo". Technically, a crescendo can last one second, it's true, but when we're talking about human interpretation, there's MUCH more to a crescendo than that. And The Inner Child is, like I said, merely a sudden, uncalled-for climax. I have nothing against sudden shifts in intensity -- for one, I gave good examples of them before. I just cringe against gratuitous, crowd-pleasing climaxes, especially when they're pretty much devoid of content and purpose. The Inner Child, in Mike Oldfield's catalogue, for me is the prime example of that.


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Check out http://ferniecanto.com.br for all my music, including my latest albums: Don't Stay in the City, Making Amends and Builders of Worlds.
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The Big BellEnd Offline




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Posted: April 16 2010, 12:56

Bolero

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I, ON THE OTHER HAND. AM A VICTIM OF YOUR CARNIVOUROUS LUNAR ACTIVITY.
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Scatterplot Offline




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Posted: April 16 2010, 13:08

Thats the 2nd time you've said Bolero. Ravel?

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We raise our voices in the night
Crying to heaven
And will our voices be heard
Or will they break Like the wind
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wiga Offline




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Posted: April 16 2010, 14:20

Quote (Sir Mustapha @ April 16 2010, 12:19)
And The Inner Child is, like I said, merely a sudden, uncalled-for climax.

I would say the climax builds for a full  two and a half minutes, from the moment she starts singing to the full explosion of raw despair.

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Barn's burnt down - now I can see the moon.
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wiga Offline




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Posted: April 16 2010, 14:38

Quote (Sir Mustapha @ April 16 2010, 12:19)
Check out Glósóli, then, which is far from Hollywood territory and is, in my book, one of the best examples of "crescendo" in pop music ever -- not only because the rising feeling in the ending portions is extremely strong and moving, but THE WHOLE song builds towards that -- with every dip, every shift and every turn, the song is going somewhere, and THAT is where it's going.

I love this track btw - it is a great cresendo as you describe. "The Inner Child" is slightly different - probably more subtle and complex.

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Barn's burnt down - now I can see the moon.
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Ugo Offline




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Posted: April 16 2010, 18:45

@ Sir M.: I love "Glósoli", as I do love most of Sigur Rós' output. But in your post above, commenting on my definition of "crescendo", you said that a crescendo is a device for building tension. Well, Sigur Rós don't do that. They never did... except maybe in one occasion, "Pop Song" from ( ) - a song which, as always, I won't bother writing down the original title of. :D In the vast majority of their pieces, Sigur Rós don't build tension. They build power. Their pieces start from nothing at all, and they they add more and more and more and more and more and more stuff to that nothing, until they finally explode. That's not "building tension". That, to me, is a crescendo which involves just an accumulation of power, of sonic force. Most of Sigur Rós' crescendos sound like that to me, just very positive statements of power - like they were saying "We can get very loud and we are proud of it". :) The only exception, as I said above, is "Pop Song", which IMHO sounds apocalyptic - an end-of-the-world, atomic-bomb kind of thing. By the way, I happen to have the sheet music book for TBIII. On "The Inner Child", in the spot corresponding to the timpani roll before that icky, icky hook, the sheet music says cresc. followed by a V-like symbol (pointing towards the left of the page) and a ff corresponding to the high note. I guess you know what these symbols mean. :) So it's not really a "gratuitous, crowd-pleasing climax". It was actually written that way. I don't think that the people who did the transcriptions for the sheet music book would have dared to put something in there which wasn't on Mike's own handwritten (or computer-written) sheet music.

Ravel's Bolero is not at all a crescendo, to me. It's a layering - a pre-Oldfield Oldfieldian layering of instruments. Each repetition, of course, gets louder than the previous one, but the single repetitions never grow in sonic intensity or in volume within themselves.


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Ugo C. - a devoted Amarokian
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The Big BellEnd Offline




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Posted: April 16 2010, 19:20

Bolero climaxe's after about fifteen minute's, I on the other hand  ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.

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I, ON THE OTHER HAND. AM A VICTIM OF YOUR CARNIVOUROUS LUNAR ACTIVITY.
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nightspore Offline




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Posted: April 16 2010, 23:35

Quote (Sir Mustapha @ April 16 2010, 12:19)
Check out Glósóli, then, which is far from Hollywood territory and is, in my book, one of the best examples of "crescendo" in pop music ever

I really like this - and for once the visual imagery seems to suit the music. I've never heard of Sigur Ros. Who is he/she/it, and is the rest of the record that this is on any good?
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wiga Offline




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Posted: April 17 2010, 05:21

Quote (Ugo @ April 16 2010, 18:45)
So it's not really a "gratuitous, crowd-pleasing climax". It was actually written that way.

All climaxes are different, but when people are going to cry they literally burst into tears - you might not see it coming, 'where did that come from' you might say. In this case she sings mournfully a while and then bursts into tears (with the orchestra). Mike has captured the characteristics here of a distressed person. He deals with all climaxes (anguish, empowerment, sex, anger, joy, love) differently. He's not faking it.


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Sir Mustapha Offline




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Posted: April 17 2010, 11:35

Quote (Ugo @ April 16 2010, 18:45)
But in your post above, commenting on my definition of "crescendo", you said that a crescendo is a device for building tension.

Sorry, I see that I didn't say properly what I meant: a crescendo, or a climax, is usually the result of the mounting of tension, in the sense that something must lead to it. In Glósóli, particularly, the structure of the song points towards a resolution -- in the first part, we merely get a small hush and the entry of the bowed guitar, and in the second time around, the massive crescendo and climax are somewhat expected. I think one of the few cases in which Sigur Rós made something gratuitous was on Festival.

Quote
By the way, I happen to have the sheet music book for TBIII. On "The Inner Child", in the spot corresponding to the timpani roll before that icky, icky hook, the sheet music says cresc. followed by a V-like symbol (pointing towards the left of the page) and a ff corresponding to the high note. I guess you know what these symbols mean. :)


Yeah, I do know. :) Technically a crescendo can last just a few notes, but when I think of a "crescendo" in terms of overall song structure, I think of musical evolution.

Quote
So it's not really a "gratuitous, crowd-pleasing climax". It was actually written that way.


Yes, of course, I didn't mean otherwise. I'm aware that a recording is an insanely complex thing, and that huge climax wouldn't be there if Mike didn't explicitly want it there. And that's what I mean: it was written to please, and it's an easy way to please. I'll tell you what: I wouldn't be so turned off by The Inner Child if Mike's catalogue by that time wasn't RIDDLED with similar things (The Wind Chimes, part 1, eh?). If The Inner Child were completely one of a kind in that aspect, I definitely would take it that way, but as it is, it's just a "oh, no, not again" moment for me.


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Check out http://ferniecanto.com.br for all my music, including my latest albums: Don't Stay in the City, Making Amends and Builders of Worlds.
Also check my Bandcamp page: http://ferniecanto.bandcamp.com
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SunkenForest Offline




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Posted: April 17 2010, 11:44

Man the sigur rós are fantastic.  I can see parallels between their music and mike's.

Also, despite the sudden shift on Inner Child, I would argue that the composition has balance to it.  While the change isn't sudden... it isn't entirely <i>unexpected</i> either.
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Ugo Offline




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Posted: April 17 2010, 12:14

@ SunkenForest: of course "The Inner Child" does have some balance. Listening again to the live version from the HGP performance, I realized that I was somehow missing the point of the piece. Indeed, what Sir M. refers to as a "hook" isn't actually a hook at all. It's a chorus. The piece has the traditional structure of a pop song: intro, verse 1, chorus, verse 2, 'enhanced chorus', coda, outro. It only misses an instrumental solo to be identical, from a strictly structural point of view, to a Sixties pop song. So, when Rosa hits the high notes, that's a chorus. And a chorus, by its very nature, is bound to attract the listeners' attention - in other words, it's bound to be a crowd pleaser :D and it's bound to stand out from the rest of the song (otherwise it wouldn't be a chorus at all), and obviously a chorus, musically, has to do whatever it can to lift itself off the ground. If it doesn't, people do not notice it and the song is flat. When Jennifer Rush and Céline Dion go into "'Cause I'm your laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaady...", that's very clearly the chorus of "The Power of Love" - that's the most powerful point of the song, and, as schmalzy as it can be, it obviously manages to stand out in quite an impressive way. To me, the very same thing happens in "The Inner Child". That's one of the reasons why I love it. :)

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Ugo C. - a devoted Amarokian
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Delfín Offline




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Posted: April 30 2010, 21:46

I wonder if ever i will disagree with you, Ugo. Still, it's not my merit, because you have good taste in your opinions :D .

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The most precious thing I possess, is knowing the answer's yes
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