Aural Perception

For our Aural Perception unit, we have to choose 3 varied tracks from different genres, and then explain different characteristics of each. For my first attempt at this task, I chose to do these three songs:

-Don't Let Me Down (Reel Big Fish)
-Robot Rock (Daft Punk)
-Rap God (Eminem)

Don't Let Me Down is a track from Reel Big Fish's newest album. Reel Big Fish are a ska/punk band. Ska is usually said to be 'sped up reggae', but I disagree with this. From the reggae I've heard, there doesn't appear to be much brass use, whereas in ska, it's a key factor. The brass is known to play almost fanfare type phrases, as you can hear in this song. This is a defining characteristic. As well as the brass parts, the guitar plays off beats. It's mainly very simple chord progressions, such as 1, 4, 1, 5 or 1, 2, 4, 5. The bass plays a very important part in ska, as it's very heavily used. The bass emphasizes the feel, giving a contrast to the guitar playing off beats. Seeing as Reel Big Fish are ska/punk, they also use distortion on some parts of their songs. When someone says distortion to me, I imagine some really heavy metal sound. Reel Big Fish's sound isn't that heavy, so they get a nice transition from clean to distorted. I've based my distortion sound on Metallica and Paul Gilbert, but this is a whole different sound to what I need.

The album this track was on was released in 2012. It's the band's 7th studio album. The song itself is a cover of The Wonderstuff. Reel Big Fish are well known for doing their own take on covers, with their most famous being 'Take On Me'. The Wonder Stuff released this song is 1989 on their album Hup. This was only a few years after grunge came to fruition, and you can really hear it in the original track. It has that classic 90's sound (even though it was a year before).

Link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbaWRnqjMzs

Robot Rock is from Daft Punk's album Human After All. This track is classed as Electric Rock. You can tell this by how the sounds were created. It mostly sounds like it was programmed, except the guitar sounds real. It heavily uses synth on the main riff between the two chords. Towards the end of the song, you hear a vocoder come in following the guitar power chords. The guitar only loops between 2 chords (D and C) which gives the song quite a simple feel. It changes texture a lot, with instruments dropping out at times and then later joining back in. The song actually uses samples from another song called Release The Beast by Breakwater.

This song was released in 2005. Although Daft Punk have been making tracks like this for years, this song could fit into any kind of dance music nowadays. I can't really explain the context of this track, as I can't seem to get an idea of what it's about. The lyrics 'Rock. Robot rock.' are repeated through out. It could be about how rock music is 'simple' enough to be played by robots, but who knows. 

Link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2tYJoocSgg

Rap God is the ninth track of Eminem's new album Marshall Mathers LPII. Eminem is well known for his style of hip hop, and it really comes through in this track. He is a master lyricist, and makes a lot of puns, jokes and references to other rappers. In this song, he raps about how other people are trying to get into his style, and I think he wrote this song to almost show them who is the alpha dog. I've heard from colleagues that he apparently wrote this entire song in 15 minutes, which is incredible due to the speed of what he says. At one point, he describes the next verse as 'supersonic speed' and then proceeds to say 97 words in 15 seconds. Averaged out, that's 6.5 words a second. This is probably the main focal point of this song, as everyone talks about how he fast it is. Again, the texture changes a lot to accent certain words and add some effect. The track itself is quite simple, as it's just a piano, drums and synth. The piano plays 2 chords, and the synth sounds like it is just two notes but one of them is modulated somehow.

Eminem's new album came out in 2013. Eminem is well known for being very open in his songs, and if you listen to some of his old track you'll hear this. He talks about his life, being on drugs, his mother, his father, and everything else. Two of his albums, 'Relapse' and 'Recovery' talk about his addiction. The album names clearly state this. This is his most recent album since 'Recovery', and it's kind of like his triumphant return. This song, like stated before, just shows him off. On other tracks on this album, he talks about other subjects he has before. He says in one song that he forgives his mother. This is the only song he's said this since his first album.

Link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7cQ3b0iqLo