23rd Jun, 2020
University of Adelaide
Question
Asked 22nd May, 2016
Which is the best way to analyse a rock song?
I need to analyse the music structure of a haevy metal song, is there any "protocol" to follow, for best and more objective analysis? I am a biologist and in my PhD course I want to study the impact of rock in cell metabolism.
Thanks for helping me.
Danielle - Brasil
Most recent answer
If you can find a copy of Richard Daniels' "Be Dangerous on Rock Guitar" it may give you some interesting contemporary perspectives on Rock theory. You could use these perspectives as a platform for analyses.
All Answers (15)
I suggest our article Music and more than music: difference and identity in Portuguese punk. Edited bu Journal of European Cultural Studies. And we also have a book "As palavras do punk". In Portuguese: deve fazer uma análise de conteúdo categorial como fizemos com centenas de canções e assim poder interpretar os sentidos que procura.
É mesmo, agora que eu vi que você é portuguesa (risos), então posso escrever melhor, porque meu inglês é uma lástima. Acho que é melhor e mais fácil comprar o livro, pois consigo encontrá-lo em livrarias do Brasil, ao artigo não tenho acesso institucional. Você me ajudou muito, obrigada mais uma vez.
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Can I ask about the sound parameters which impact you would like to analyze ?
Have you thought about looking at several pieces, groups, genres of rock, or you would just choose one particular song? If that is the case, how do you chose?
I am very interested in this kind of research, i would like so much that you can upduate us. Thanks and good luck!
Dear, i do not have any particluar hypothesis, just wonder about what kind of musical parameters you would like to take into consideration, and that brings me to the question about the different "styles" of metal, as they span from tonal "classical" melodic progressions (gamma ray, for instance), up to giberrish-nearly-atonal masses of rythm from death, spead, trash metal ( from pantera to meshuggah and so on...). I am not listening to metal since long ago, and i do not mean my caracterization has been representative, but i believe it is clear that the term "metal" includes so many different sub-genders, with different moods and aestherics. So I would like to know what is your hypothesis, which are your goals or basic premises, in order to figure out some musical issues to suggest you. What kind of metal are you interested and why?
I just try to focus a little bit the subject for the sake of clarity, if i may help i will be glad, but in fact i am not properly a musicologist of metal, despite my own subject is related metallic sound sculpture and metallic instrument building ;-)
Hi Martí, thanks for your answer!
Well, I want to study the impact of music in cell metabolism. The 2 compositions I chose for this work are of rock style, substyle heavy metal (from Megadeth's guitarrist Kiko Loureiro). So, to explain and justify the changes (or not) that will be in the experiments, I think it is good to analyse the general song's structure and its other parameters, such as number of notes and its types (e.g.: number of Do/C, the figure of the note, key of composition, and so on), if it has any specific formal structure of composition... this kind of things, to know if there is a pattern of music, which can change any metabolic parameter.
So, the need I have in this moment is: does it exist a "best way" or a to-do list to make a good song analyse?
Thanks again for your attention!
I never thought I'd say this, but I think a heavy metal song is an extremely complex thing, from the perspective of a single cell, even a tissue. In the end you will need to take apart all its components, categorize sounds (amplitude, frequency, duration) and test them separately. Thus you may find out that the effect could be reproduced by, say, a truck horn or a fine rendition of 'Casinha pequenina'... : ). Consider that, eventually, blasting any sound loud enough at cells will induce mechanical damage and alter metabolism. Then I wonder, what would be your model cell, tissue or organism? There is a lot of biophysics involved! There are reports for ultrasound effects in the literature, and several experiments done in plants, but it's all rather controversial.
See this:
I know that, hahaha... but that is the idea, to know if this is true or not, in case of music therapy, which is made of audible sound, and the music is with all of its components in those cases.
Thanks for the archives you sent! They will be very useful to my research.
I agree with Victor Blanco that there are major issues to define in order to clear a geasable working hypothesis. What kind of organisms are you interested? I assume (hypothetically) that the effect of music, or just sounds, would have different effects on different organisms, and particularly humans (and differet effects in different tissues and organs).
I guess the whole thing is that we are not really aware yet of what is music triggering in our perceptual systems. Neuroacoustics are advancing step by but i consider there are many cultural (enculturated) parameters of music that make the understanding of the phenomena so complex. What is usually considered as an interesting aedthetic in Bali is broadly considered out of tune and dissonant in western classical perspective.
I understand that the idea of focusing on the impact of music on cells, may neglect the conscious and unconscious perceptual processes, but I am not sure that we can treat music just as sequences of mechanic pressure waves, neglecting emotional and memory responses, tied to cultural and learned aspects.
I assume that you may have some hypotesis that let you choose specific songs. I believe there is one crucial step, which is analizing why we choose certain kinds of music. Which are the ideas we project on the pieces, which are the features we believe that music has and then try to understand if the assumptions we have are rooted and supported by science. Why metal and not electronics?
Maybe one song may have some mesurable effect, but would those results allow for a general conclusion?
In any case, i recomend you to study some harmony (find some friend who can help at explaining tonal relationships); in music, what we really listen to is not the specific frequencies but the intervalic distances amongst them. Of course, you can argue that specific frequencies can affect particular discrete organic structures, so in this case, we should take both perspective into consideration at analising music: both the specific frequencies and the intervalic relationships.
By the way, when i say "frequencies" i mean all simultaneous frequencies, that involves the timbral cualities of sounds; this is very important, as we can easily understand the difference betwin a "clean" guitar note and the same note on a "distorted" rock guitar, is the spectral amount of "noise" unrelated to the acoustic signal pf the string produced by overdriving the amplification system; those two different spectral sounds would have different impact. So, here is another issue to add to the analysis: timbric features, or full spectral frequencies involved, not just the names of the music notation.
It seems so complex task, and i would allways fear neglecting rellevant aspects. Nontheless, we need scientific who takes these kind of interdisciplinary quests. So i can only encourage you, just having a lot of precautions not to generaluze the observations. Excuse my long digression, but actually I have no idea on how to proceed on your anaylisis, but i am so interested by those subjects (effects of sounds and the analysis of music), so i hope you will update if you get any results. I hope my considerations may humbly help. Best wishes.
Martí.
You could try a musical harmonic (and melodic) analysis If you think there is something harmonic affecting the cells, but given that such things as harmony have cultural origins I would find that surprising.
However, you may have success with a spectral analysis of the music being played. That is not particularly musical in the traditional sense of music theory (although it's used in electroacoustic music) but it is likely to give you some repeatable results with accurate data points. There are several tools available for spectral analysis, including Praat, Tapestrea, and others.
2 Recommendations
18th Jun, 2016
I suggest that to analyze the guitar part, you try to play the music in every guitar tuning.
The idea is that since all guitar sound the same, there seems no way to learn how the guitar is tuned which makes the guitar part a secret club where you need a password to enter.
It may seem impossible to try every tuning but in fact the number of cases to consider is probably not more that a couple of dozen tuning-key combinations.
It is very difficult to learn a new tuning so most people do not bother. Then you cannot understand the guitar music.
Imagine that you got the tablature for your rock song but had no tuning. Then you line up all tunings in serial order and play the tab in each tuning. The music will make no sense until you get to the correct tuning used to write the tab. That shows the guitar is an intelligent machine that recognizes computable instructions just like a computer.
Here's an example. If you play "Aqua Lung" in standard tuning, it really does not make sense. Of course you can play all the notes by ear but the way the notes fall on the fret board is so not pleasing that the guitar part cannot really rock out unless you are very good.
But if you play "Aqua Lung" in Open G then everything rocks! If you try other tunings, you will say the Open G is the correct one. (Open G Minor is close, too).
Of course, if you have not yet mastered Open G then you won't see this, but you could read the tab without having to learn anything.
If any one is interest in this analysis, I can post the Aqua Lung tab. I just presented a poster at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (Pacific Division) 2016 meeting in San Diego where I show that the music mathematic workplace is analytic.
I would infer there might be significantly related transfers of energy(modulated or perhaps stored) from recorded music , in this case "Metal" , to the listener that might facilitate stimulation of cellular metabolism. The arragements and melodic phrasing of distorted and then phased synthesizers or stringed instruments coupled with the percussive aspects of 4/4 backbeat often (or slightly greater than) faster than the upper range of common heartbeat rhythms (>75 bpm) could be an aspect of consideration. I currently and composing music that the further it comes together to form a structure that is pleasing in timbre texture articulation, etc I feel inspired to work further and actually notice an excitement associated with a faster heart rate and additionally when playing a particular phrase that has a pleasing aspect within it, that it can stimulate physical responses from those whom I play the track for, when they like it. A question in my mind then: is, How could this not be quantifiable aspect for a stimulation of cellular "Work"?
You mentioned your were working on a protocol too. You might start at looking at the elements of music there about 9 and qualitate compositions based on a characteristics for each aspect or element of music (for instance a description of its timbre along with rhythmic description). Then, choose the experimentation: a population of people and there responses to the music. Or, how about comparisons of bacterial or yeast cell populations , or mice to their responses to different musical elements or styles. For instance, worker observation of colonies of ants while 24hr exposure to Brahms (Serenades) in relation to Sepultura (Arise or Beneath the Remains)? Who knows?
Let us know your results:!
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