Listening to Music - Personal Hobby Essay

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Listening to Music

The song I choose for this assignment, after listening to a large number of songs, is ‘here comes the sun’ by The Beatles. The song is composed by George Harrison who was a band member of The Beatles for their 1969 album: Abbey Road. This 3 minutes 6 second song was released on 26 September 1969 and covers two genres of rock; folk rock and pop rock. The folksy influences on this song are apparent in the prominent role of the acoustic guitar and in the series of the verse/refrain pairs. From the very beginning, the tempo of the song is slow and not upbeat. This tends to transmit a different feel of calmness to the song. The lyrics of the song are vocally sung slowly and consist of repetition of lyrics. The form of this particular song is intro, verse, bridge, chorus, solo section and the end.

Listening to this song, one feels a great sense of calmness and relaxation even without recognizing it. It brings out a feeling of joy and comfort and demonstrates the fact that every day is a new day and the sun will always shine.

‘Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
And I say it's all right

Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it feels like years since it's been here’

Referring to the melody and harmony of the song, the verse/refrain tune is seen to be constrained completely to the pentatonic scale pattern. Albeit the lyrics are repeated in the song, the danger of melodic monotony is avoided as the chord progression alters when certain parts of the tune are reiterated for example, he title phrase as it appears in the first two lines of the refrain. The song is based harmonically on I, IV and V and the primary and key elements observed on the backing track are, in order of appearance are:

1. Acoustic guitar
2. Synthesizer
3. Bass
4. Drums

The syntth made use of here mimics the sound of the woodwinds. Coming to the vocal parts, it seems as if the entire song is sung by George on overdub with the backing vocal parts being used mainly for the bold font highlighting effect.

After listening to this song, my idea of perceiving the worries and hardships that come my way has been changed. This is mainly because when George wrote this song he mainly was explaining that when the sun comes it brings a chance to forget the mistakes you made in the past and this is an opportunity possessed by all. As he mentions the winter and the cold, he mentions the hardships and worries that are gone once the sun shines and marks a new beginning.  The feeling of calmness provided to the listener is all because of the perfect combination of composition and harmonics coupled with the orchestration of the song. The reason why this song is an inspirational song and has inspired many is because it possesses all the elements required to produce a well synched composition with no dissonant note or pitch. The quite elegance with which the final phrase of the outro not only restores the initial instrumentation of the intro but also makes an allusion at the last second to the bridge makes this song worth listening.

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Straw, street and Frith (n.p) claim that one of the most popular genres is that of pop music. The reason is simply, the light and addictive tunes that are made use of. In general pop music refers to a song that is popular and liked by a variety of individuals. A song cannot be labeled as pop following a set of rules and styles. As mentioned before, a sing with a high rate of acceptance or popularity is defined under the degree of pop music. The modern society defines pop as a song that is listened to because of its very nature. Or in simpler words, because it has been famous from a long time! Pop rock refers to a song that is popular and is part of the rock genre. In a standardized pop rock band, the group is made up of 4 people. The members include a guitarist, a vocalist, a drummer and a bass player. The use of keyboards and pianos has also increased by a great extent over time.