Re: Loud music / Lady Gaga

[Matthew McCabe <mccabem@xxxxxxx>]

hi everyone,

just to throw in a little bit of interesting knowledge here -- Lady Gaga 
has her moments when it comes to musical materials, for example, many of 
her songs seem to sit on a minor chord during the verses, and then switch 
modes during the chorus.  granted, not too interesting in the grand space 
of tonal design, but it does create something of a tonal ambiguity which 
would appear to match many of the other ambigious things about her in 
general:

"Bad Romance"
Verse:  Am
Chorus:  F G Am C / F G E Am

and at least it has a secondary dominant in it :)

there is much to be said about her.  check out:

http://gagajournal.blogspot.com/

i think it's important to remember that popular music (rock or whatever 
you want to call it) has never been about musical complexity -- to me, 
it's about execution.  how is it arranged?  what are the lyrics?  are we 
supposed to dance?  etc. etc.  If pop music were the same as concert hall 
music, without most of the extramusical things that make it "cool", life 
would be pretty boring!

best,

-m





On Fri, 24 Sep 2010, alex olsen wrote:
> The first part of your post is a very interesting piece of music
> history -- a very interesting read. I would though have to echo
> Bruno's comment about the current diversity in music (although I've
> not sure I'd argue that Gaga is as sophisticated as the Beach Boys,
> but then again I'm not so into the sophistication debate in music
> anyway). :-)



---
matthew mccabe <mccabem@xxxxxxx>
visiting assistant professor / music tech :: columbus state university
ph.d., music composition :: uf college of fine arts
lab member :: reilly cognition and language lab :: uf phhp
http://plaza.ufl.edu/mccabem/     http://www.euph0r1a.net/