The session on participatory discrepancies was really eye-opening to me, for two reasons. The first is that it changed the way I listen to music – I started to pay more attention to the interactions between musical elements in songs and I had a lot of fun picking up on discrepancies in my everyday listenings. The second is that it changed the way I play music – I’m trying to be less caught up in being “perfect” and learning to accept my mistakes and quirks as integral parts of the music I make.
I wanted to add on to blog prompt 7 by offering two of my favorite songs and discussing the participatory discrepancies I hear in them.
Animals, by Big Thief
https://open.spotify.com/track/1EdxRfFbpdYKrVijv29LEL?si=c80guCsxQM-VJIim22_Bjw
This song fluctuates in tempo, loosely alternating between common time and cut time. This switch happens several times throughout the song, sometimes in the middle of verses. The transition isn’t totally fluid, which breaks the listener’s sense of a steady rhythm. Near the end of the song, a guitar part enters that plays a harmony in almost the same key as the singer, but its pitch slides around and doesn’t ever perfectly land on the “right” note.
Si Tú Supieras Compañero, by Rosalía
https://open.spotify.com/track/0lEaqq59YmCxJNB6cb209Y?si=BfFgsRh7SmGSVsX1azq_WA
This song is kind of life-changing… It’s from Rosalía’s first album, which has a more traditional flamenco style than her new music. The song begins with a young boy learning to read a poem, occasionally pausing and stammering as he figures out the words. A guitar joins him, playing a lilting melody that loosely align with his speech. (Speech is music!) This melody continues as he finishes reading and Rosalía enters, singing a different poem. She and the guitar aren’t metrically independent of each other but don’t line up perfectly either. The staggered vocal and instrumentals support the lyrics, which describe exhaustion from running for “leagues and leagues” to recover one’s soul. The essential flamenco hand claps enter for the second verse, which is a sung version of the poem from the beginning, and the guitar part becomes more complex. Rosalía’s singing is offset from the instrumentals, so there’s no overall steady pulse, which makes the music all the more compelling. The third verse continues similarly, and then the song modulates to a minor key for the fourth and final verse. It has a sense of urgency that completely opposes the languid opening verse. Rosalía sings, “At once I am burning / For how much I love you / Protect me, San Rafael / To be so close to the water and yet unable to drink”, and the misalignment between the guitar and vocals creates a sense of disorientation and tumult. As the verse ends, a cello enters and is kept in time by a maraca and the guitar. It plays a haunting melody and is soon joined by a second cello. The guitar and percussion drop out and leave only the cellos, who abandon the key and the meter of the song. They slide into piercing dissonances for nearly a minute and then suddenly reach a unison and the song ends.
