“An Overwhelming Feeling of Confusion”: The Brain and Atonal Music
I was referred last week to an interesting article by a fellow CFAMC composer. It talks about a new book by Philip Ball called The Music Instinct, in which he finds that there’s a neurological reason why people find it hard to enjoy atonal music by Schoenberg, Webern and the like. Apparently our brains are always looking for patterns in the music we listen to, and while music by Bach, Mozart and other classical composers naturally has the sort of organization that lends itself to pattern recognition, the music of twentieth century atonal composers is devoid of such patterns. (An interesting quote: “We measured the predictability of tone sequences in music by Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern and found the successive pitches were less predictable than random tone sequences.”) To his credit, though, Ball qualifies, “That isn’t to say, of course, that it is impossible to listen to, it is just harder work. It would be wrong to dismiss such music as a racket.” It reminds me of something my piano teacher at Cal State Fullerton used to say: he said that he enjoyed listening to modern, avant-garde music–as long as he was in the mood to work hard enough to understand it. Check out the Telegraph article at the following link and let me know what you think!
“Audiences hate modern classical music because their brains cannot cope”
“Now My Feet Won’t Touch the Ground,” Prospekt’s March, Coldplay
The final song on Prospekt’s March, clocking in at only 2:27, is “Now My Feet Won’t Touch the Ground,” the coming to fruition of the theme of that phrase from Viva La Vida and this EP. In this song it comes to its full expression, and the lyrics seem to be accepting of death, even implying that it’s time–again envisioning death as freedom. It begins with just a solo guitar and Chris Martin’s voice, like “Prospekt’s March/Poppyfields,” but it’s much more upbeat and fuller-sounding. The guitar is tuned in a different way than a normal guitar, allowing it to utilize more strings for each chord, play melodic lines within the strings and provide a richer sound (like the guitar in “Kingdom Come,” the hidden track on X&Y). It has an almost folk-song-like quality to it, with its simplicity, easily singable melody and basic chords (I, IV and V). Some electronic effects are added in the background after the first chorus, which sound like manipulated brass samples; they foreshadow the repeat of the chorus, where the guitar and effects remain the same but a full brass section accompanies them (along with a doubling of the vocal line an octave higher). The last line (“now my feet won’t touch the ground”) is repeated with only the brass as an accompaniment, recalling the strings-only accompaniment to the chorus of “Rainy Day” earlier in the album; and with that, Prospekt’s March comes to an end.
And with it this series of blog posts! I hope you enjoyed the last two weeks, and aren’t too offended that it was published a year late. Hmmm… what to write about next?
“Lovers In Japan (Osaka Sun Mix),” Prospekt’s March, Coldplay
The penultimate track on Prospekt’s March is the “Osaka Sun” remix of “Lovers In Japan,” a song from Viva La Vida. It’s almost exactly the same as the album version, which is pretty disappointing, especially considering how cool the acoustic version is (which was a bonus track included in the iTunes preorder of Viva La Vida). It’s a fun song though, with a unique sound: toy piano, rhythmic snare pattern, shiny electric guitars that fill out the sound and add character. The chorus maintains the same feel and instrumentation but adds a couple of electric guitar riffs to add intensity. The main difference in the remix is the addition of some background vocals after the first chorus and a slightly more lively tempo. I would have liked something a little further removed from the album version, but at least I have the acoustic version to fulfill that desire.
And there’s only one song remaining….
“Prospekt’s March/Poppyfields,” Prospekt’s March, Coldplay
After the rocking energy of “Rainy Day,” Prospekt’s March chills out with the title track, “Prospekt’s March/Poppyfields.” It begins with a solo guitar and voice, which creates a simple yet powerful texture. The guitar itself is very thin-sounding with lots of fret noise, giving it a “fragile” sound. As the song continues, atmospherics and high strings are added to fill out the sound even though it’s still just guitar and voice; eventually the bass and electric guitar enter, but they do so subtly and without changing the simple sound of the song. The lyrics again deal with the theme of death, as the opening words seem to describe a battle’s aftermath and Chris Martin sings “I don’t wanna die on my own here tonight,” and it ends with an oriental-like pentatonic figure in the electric guitar.
“Lost+,” Prospekt’s March, Coldplay
The sixth track on Prospekt’s March is “Lost+,” one of the four versions of the song that the band has recorded. All of them have a unique symbol after “Lost” to designate which version it is. The first to be released, “Lost?”, is a piano-solo acoustic version; “Lost!” was the track on Viva La Vida; “Lost@” is a live version recorded in Chicago; and “Lost+” is the Prospekt’s March track, designated “+” because it features an extended solo section with a rap by Jay-Z about success and its consequences. Other than the rap, which is pretty well-written and well-performed, the song is essentially the same as the Viva La Vida track: the same progression, cool sampled percussion and sweet lyrics. The rap occurs over an extended verse chord progression, and a choir enters subtly in the background to fill out the sound; at the line “success is like suicide,” the guitar solo from the original song begins. When the rap is finished, the song ends the same way the original did. You can read my thoughts on the original song, and how I first fell in love with it, here.
“Rainy Day,” Prospekt’s March, Coldplay
The second coolest song on Prospekt’s March (at least in my opinion) is “Rainy Day,” track four. It begins with a weird piano sample for a few moments before beginning the song proper. The verse is backed by electronics, a lead electric guitar and an electric guitar with delay (the effect that makes each chord repeat multiple times even though the guitarist only plays it once).
But the reason the song is one of the coolest on the album, as with “Glass of Water,” is the chorus. The chorus of “Rainy Day” is accompanied entirely by strings. No guitar, no drums, no bass. All strings. And to my surprise when I first heard it, it sounds terrific and it works. The basses provide a driving rhythm which ensures that the song doesn’t lose energy or momentum from losing the other instruments and the drums. And the arrangement of the strings is very well done: the basses have the rhythm, there’s an independently moving cello line in the low mid range, and the violins and violas have held notes in the mid and high ranges. The other thing that makes the strings so cool is the sick high cello riff in the middle of the chorus (listen for it, starting with a flattened third, right after the words “slow down”). The range of the line (high for a cello) gives it a great deal of tension on the instrument, which, along with the flattened third, makes it jump out of the texture and bring attention to how rocking it is.
The chord progression in the chorus is VII – IV – I; the song is in E-flat, which means the chord progression is D-flat – A-flat – E-flat. This is a relatively common progression in pop music, and I’ve heard it zillions of times. But I think that “Rainy Day” is the most musically satisfying use of the VII – IV – I progression I’ve ever heard. And the accompaniment is all strings. Brilliant.
“Glass of Water,” Prospekt’s March, Coldplay
The third track on Prospekt’s March, my personal favorite, is “Glass of Water.” The lyrics deal with living a full, satisfying life, continuing the themes of life, death and living well. The opening texture of the song through the first two verses is pretty sparse: thin electric guitars, chill drums and thin bass. But the rock-awesome chorus is what sets this song apart even from Coldplay’s standardly excellent modus operandi. It’s in 7/4 time (reminiscent of the rocking chorus of “Death And All His Friends” from Viva La Vida), with full, beefy electric guitars and bass, high electronics, and lots of cymbals. There’s a high sparkly sound effect in the middle of the chorus (on the word “cling”) which is subtle but adds to the huge feeling of the chorus. At the end of the chorus, the music goes back to straight 4/4 time for one measure, then keeps the listener thrown off with a syncopated bar of 4/4. You can hear the straight 4/4 by listening for the snare drum on beats two and four, right before the lyrics “going nowhere fast” (which happen over the syncopation).
The piano interlude after the second chorus confused me for the longest time, because I couldn’t figure out whether the piano arpeggios were triplets (three notes to one beat) or sixteenth notes (four notes to one beat), no matter how hard I listened. But finally, I figured it out, and the reason it’s so difficult to hear is that it alternates between triplets (three notes going up then three notes going down) and sixteenth notes (four notes going up then four notes going down). You have to listen closely, but I’m almost positive that’s what’s happening. In a song called “Glass of Water,” it creates a cool blurred rippling effect that’s very clever and leads into the final chorus, which is instrumental without vocals. My only disappointment in this song is that there isn’t a cooler guitar solo over the instrumental chorus; the song as it is features an electric guitar simply repeating a high F-sharp and A (the third and fifth of the tonic chord D major).
The end of the song consists of a solo piano, voice and quiet electronics, bringing to a close the coolest song on the album and bringing the energy level back down before launching into the second coolest song on the album….
“Postcards From Far Away,” Prospekt’s March, Coldplay
In an interesting twist for a mainstream pop music album, the second track of Prospekt’s March is a piano solo. Clocking in at 47 seconds, “Postcards From Far Away” was written by frontman Chris Martin between recording sessions for Viva La Vida. While the piano style isn’t foreign to modern pop piano playing–alternating notes in the right hand, and a simple “oom-pah” accompaniment in the left hand–the chord progressions are reminiscent of the early Romantic period, and the whole piece sounds almost Schubert-esque. It ends, after a long drawn-out Gsus chord, on a G major chord–or rather just a B-natural, suggesting G major, after a piece in B-flat major (in which G would usually be minor); it creates a Picardy third-type effect. Another unique song on a unique album that continues to portend even better things to come.
“Life In Technicolor II,” Prospekt’s March, Coldplay
The first track on Prospekt’s March, “Life In Technicolor II,” is the full version of “Life In Technicolor,” the first track on Viva La Vida. It’s the same song, but minus the opening electronics, extended, and with lyrics, unlike the instrumental first version. It still retains the same compositionally excellent unfolding structure that I wrote about last February: the perfect, gradually additive balance of repetition and contrast. One interesting thing to note is that the dark, bracing lyrics (“Oh baby, it’s a violent world”) contrast over against the happy, carefree style of the music. And it’s also in this song that the lyrical phrase “Now my feet won’t touch the ground” is introduced on this album. Taking Prospekt’s March as an extension of Viva La Vida, the first occurrence of the phrase is found in “Strawberry Swing,” the penultimate track of the first record; and by virtue of its appearance in “Life In Technicolor II” and as the title of the last track of the second, it becomes almost a theme–again one that deals with mortality, in this case picturing death as freedom. That theme, and the fresh, original sound of the music, set the stage for the rest of the album to come.
Prospekt’s March, Coldplay
A looooong, long time ago, one year ago to be precise, I promised that I would write a series of posts on each track of Coldplay’s EP companion to Viva La Vida, Prospekt’s March. Since then I’ve been distracted by many things and I’ve kept putting it off, but in honor of it being a whole year since I originally said I’d do it, I’ve finally gotten around to it. So prepare yourselves for a series of posts on one of the most original EPs I’ve ever heard. Tune in tomorrow for the first entry!
