This post was inspired by the Twitter Discourse this past weekend. I recognize that I’m not addressing one of Ethan Hein’s main points—namely, who is or isn’t discussing this in the undergraduate music theory curriculum—but I do have some ideas and wish to pose some problems for folks to think about with respect to some of the questions that Hein raises, about how putting just about anything over a repeating groove legitimates it—makes it sound good. I want to share a few examples that the conversation got me to thinking about.
First, Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s “Shimmy Shimmy Ya.” I love this song’s beat. In terms of pitched material, I hear two primary streams: a high one that moves between C and B, and a lower one, which moves between B and F#. Both of these figures are commonly used to reinforce the tonic pitch in tonal music. In the upper stream, the B sounds like the leading tone to my ear: do-do-do do-do-do do-do-do do ti. In the lower stream the bass player in me hears a so-do dominant-tonic relationship. Taken together, the two could technically be understood as a perfect authentic cadence, however, are there really two different keys happening here—do we hear this as bitonal? Or do we hear it as mistuned octaves? This site says the song is in C major:
The site also ranks its “acousticness,” “instrumentalness,” and “speechiness,” which is weird (and reminds me of the Six Sigmas bit from 30 Rock, but I digress…)
It seems that the bass line samples “I Like It” by The Emotions, which is in C major, but then it’s slowed down so that the pitch drops by a half step.
His singing to me doesn’t help to break the tie: the low “rawwww” sounds like a flat C, but the higher “rawwww” is a more in-tune C. His inflections in the verse seem to fit better with the B/F# in the bass, largely perhaps because the higher of the two streams is more or less absent from the verses. None the less, the repetition legitimizes whatever it is that’s happening.
The next example I want to highlight is by another Wu Tang Clan member, and in my opinion is one of the great album openers in the genre: GZA’s “Liquid Swords.” The characteristic pitch material of this song is a pair of perfect 5ths that are a half step apart: F#-C# and G-D. For the sake of argument, let’s say that each fifth fills a 4/4 measure with eighth notes. Again, the half-step motion is a powerful indicator of tonic (^7-^1 or ti-do) but here, the “leading-tone-ness” of the F# is undermined by the C# (if the F# were a leading tone to G, the C would be natural, creating the tritone which, when paired with any other note in a diatonic collection, can project a sense of key).
Ok—so what? Maybe this is some kind of Phrygian progression: both 5ths would occur diatonically in F# Phrygian. This is certainly plausible, but it’s undermined by a little four-measure fill at the beginning that oscillates between B and E chords. Given that B is the first of the two harmonies that we hear we’re most likely to interpret is as the tonic, and the E as a plagal motion. The F#-G then sounds a bit like ^5-b^6 (so-le) in that context. Of interest is the fact that the B-E harmonic progression comes from one song (“Mercy”) and the F#-G comes from a different song, “Groovin’,” both by Willie Mitchell. In the original “Groovin’,” the F#-G becomes F#-G# as the song progresses, suggesting more of a B-major tonality. Of course we don’t really get that in RZA’s treatment of the sample, but his use of “Mercy” does create a B-minor-ish context that we only hear for those four measures.
(Which to me raises another important point about tonic-finding in situations like this. What if we turn on the radio and hear this song not from the beginning, but from somewhere in the middle. If we don’t have the B-minor-ish context that those few measures provide, can we really make an accurate judgment about the tonic or the key? Does it matter if it’s a “correct” judgment or is it sufficient for it to be an accurate one based on the information at hand?)
Also important to note in this case that the spoken introduction that precedes the song (“When I was little…”) has a vaguely F#-minor underpinning, which supports an F#-Phrygian hearing of most of the song, but then forces us to reinterpret a bit the B-E introduction.
Both tracks are produced by the RZA, not surprisingly, who is known for his “dissonant,” rough production style.
Last but by no means least, another one of my favorites, “Lick a Shot” by Cypress Hill. The bass line in this song also oscillates between a pair of perfect fifths (this time played melodically—one note after the other—instead of harmonically—two notes at a time). I have an easier time hearing this as a Phrygian ^1-b^2 right off the bat because we don’t really have a lot of context to inform our decision. According to whosampled.com, the bass line comes from Cannonball Adderly’s performance “The Weaver.” The performance seems to accord with a Phrygian interpretation of the fifths.
All of this is to say that it’s not as easy to find a “tonic” in a sample-based rap track. A lot of our usual perceptual information is absent, rearranged, or obscured by the producer. It’s also important to consider that we don’t listen in a vacuum. When we hear a song for the first time, we may not have immediate access to the sources of the samples—sure, we can look them up, but again, I like the “radio” test: how do you interpret this song if you get in the car, turn on the radio, and catch it in the middle?
I want to do another post or two in this series—stay tuned…