Australian Music Blog: Crowded House – Dont dream its over analysis

Select on piece of music to discuss in detail refering to the concepts.

The Piece of music has a rate of harmonic change is one chord per bar. The song uses chromatic harmony. The Song is played in a major key giving a feeling of happiness. Throughout the song the texture is dense.

Pitch

This piece of music starts with an instrumental that is very thin in texture making it polyphonic, as just the guitar plays the main melody. As the bass comes in and the verse starts the texture gets thicker and becomes homophonic, The voice has the main melody and is being accompanied by the drums , guitar, bass guitar. This becomes thicker as backing vocals are added in the chorus. The Melody in the verse is conjunct, the notes move using steps. The only disjunct parts are when the chords change. The keyboard also moves in leaps during the instrumental at 1:47-2:21. The verse then starts again and the guitar is accompanying the melody at 2:25, the range of melody is narrow-medium. It doesn’t require the singer to have wide coval range and most of the melody sigs on a medium pitch that most people can sing easily. This is common characteristic of popular music and allows the audience to be able to remember and sing the song easily. The use of melodic repetition in the verse repeats “There is freedom within, there is freedom without ... there’s a battle ahead, many battles are lost.. “ The whole song is very repetitive when it comes to the melody. The melody stays the same in all of the choruses and a different repeated melody is played in the verses. The Chorus repeats “ Hey now, Hey now, Dont tream its over.. hey now hey now when the world comes in...” This has the same repetitive melody and also repeats in the other chorus’s throughout the song.

Texture

The Texture during the song stays the same but changes in the instrumental solo. The vocalist stops singing and the accompanying instruments take the spotlight for a few bars. The song stays homophonic. The guitar, bass and drums accompany the keyboard solo. The same happens in the guitar solo. The texture remains dense throughout the whole piece.

Duration

The Song is played moderately slow with a time signature of 4 4 which is a simple time signature. All of the instruments have very repetitive rhythms throughout the song. Eg the drums play the same simple rock beat throughout the piece. The verse also has a very repetitive rhythm, for the lead singer and the rest of the band. The melody is syncopated in areas throughout the song. Not all of it is syncopated though. The accompaniment is straight, providing contrast to the “off the bead” parts of the melody. This piece of music consists of 5 rhythmic layers, no necessarily playing at the same time. The Drum kid is playing the same rhythmic ostinato of a basic rock beat throughout the song. The bass guitar and guitar also play a few continuous ostinatos and riffs throughout the piece.

Tone Colour

The instruments or voices playing include the solo vocalist, the backup vocalists, the drum kid, bass guitar, the guitar and the keyboard.

The Drums are played using a hitting motion with drum sticks. The Drums are making a sound that sounds rich and deep. This is used in quarrel to what the guitars sound like.

The Bass and guitars are played using a strumming and plucking motion with either fingers/nails or a pectoral. The guitar is playing in a twangy type of sound that quarrels to the way the drums sound, making contrast inside the accompaniment of the piece.

The voices are using their voice box with the help of their diaphragm to create the style in which they are singing. The vocals have a soft, yet powerful sound. Which also contrasts to the accompaniment which is rich and deep. The Vocalists use accents to emphasize the words “HEY now HEY now” in the chorus. This gives his voice a more powerful and energetic tone colour on the emphasized words in relation to the rest of the song.

The tone colour changes in the instrumental as the keyboard comes in. The Keyboard sound quality is like that of a church organ, giving a unique and attention grabbing contrast to the rest of the song.

Dynamic and Expressive techniques

The piece is moderately soft (mp) during the verses but becomes louder (f) in the chorus. The instrumental solo gives the keyboard and guitar a chance to be louder (f) that what they have been playing for the rest of the song (p).

The vocalists uses accents on “HEY now HEY now” during the chorus. The chorus is the climax of the song, so he puts emphasis on these words to show the power and strength of it .The piece uses lots of slurs joining multiple words at a time during the verse. The chorus is more individual notes. The last words of the sentences the main singer uses vibrato on his voice to create a more relaxed and intense pause. In the instrumental the piano is using some mute or sound setting on the keyboard to create the eairy sound.