A com­mon­place in rock and pop song­writ­ing: minor keys are sad (or dark or soft) and major keys are hap­py (upbeat, extro­vert­ed, etc.). Want to add some com­plex­i­ty? Set hap­py lyrics in a minor key or vice ver­sa. You don’t need much the­o­ry to grasp the con­cept (apply­ing it effec­tive­ly is anoth­er mat­ter). But even for clas­si­cal­ly trained com­posers, the why of it all is still a bit of a mys­tery. Guardian clas­si­cal music blog­ger Tom Ser­vice sug­gests that since the 17th cen­tu­ry, it’s become learned behav­ior, as is our ten­den­cy to fall into minor thirds when com­mu­ni­cat­ing sad­ness through speech. Whether a nat­ur­al or cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non, there’s no doubt that trans­pos­ing tonal­i­ty can give a song vast­ly dif­fer­ent emo­tion­al res­o­nance.

Which is exact­ly what hap­pened with a recent viral dig­i­tal exper­i­ment: a tweak of R.E.M.’s tor­tured “Los­ing My Reli­gion” from minor to major so upset reli­gious blog­ger Matthew Lin­der, he com­ment­ed that the “change in tonal­i­ty white­wash­es the sor­row­ful song and brings in the Pollyan­naism of REM’s much derid­ed ‘Shiny Hap­py Peo­ple.’” Now I hap­pen to think “Shiny Hap­py Peo­ple” is a com­plete­ly stu­pid yet love­able song, but he does have a point. The tonal­i­ty hack, orig­i­nal­ly per­formed by MajorScaledTV, has also been done sev­er­al times by Ukrain­ian YouTube user MajorVs­Mi­nor, real name Oleg Berg and his daugh­ter Diana. The Bergs take songs like the godaw­ful “Final Count­down” by Europe and make them almost lis­ten­able, or ruin songs like “Hey Jude” (above).

And some­times a fas­ci­nat­ing thing hap­pens. Remem­ber that coun­ter­point between tonal­i­ty and con­tent I not­ed above? In some cas­es, the entire effect of a song depends upon that ten­sion, as is the case with George Gershwin’s “Sum­mer­time” from Por­gy and Bess. In the tweaked Ella Fitzger­ald ver­sion above, the lyrics—“and the liv­ing is easy”—lose their sex­i­ness, their melan­choly under­tones and strained irony, when the tune sounds as hap­py and straight­for­ward as the words. This is not an improve­ment, of course, but an inter­est­ing exam­ple of how form and con­tent push against each oth­er in com­po­si­tions more musi­cal­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed and emo­tion­al­ly com­plex than “Final Count­down.” Once these tweaked ver­sions of pop­u­lar songs lose their appeal as viral curiosi­ties (if they haven’t already), they’re sure to make excel­lent teach­ing tools for musi­col­o­gy pro­fes­sors.

MajorVs­Mi­nor have applied their treat­ment to over two dozen pop­u­lar songs and film and video game themes. Want to know how they do it? Watch Oleg and Diana reveal their secrets in the video above. There’s quite a bit more to their process than Evolver.fm assumed about MajorScaledTV’s REM exper­i­ment.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

R.E.M.’s “Los­ing My Reli­gion” Reworked from Minor to Major Scale

Bob­by McFer­rin Shows the Pow­er of the Pen­ta­ton­ic Scale

His­to­ry of Rock: New MOOC Presents the Music of Elvis, Dylan, Bea­t­les, Stones, Hen­drix & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

If you learned to play a musi­cal instru­ment as a kid, you like­ly remem­ber your first encounter with tra­di­tion­al music nota­tion. You remem­ber being baf­fled by the sym­bols denot­ing quar­ter notes, eighth notes, six­teenth notes. Or the dif­fi­cul­ty of read­ing notes locat­ed above or below the staff. The West­ern sys­tem of music nota­tion goes back hun­dreds of years, and it has been befud­dling stu­dents for gen­er­a­tions. Enter Blake West, a piano teacher from Austin, Texas, who enlist­ed his old friend Mike Sall, a data visu­al­iza­tion wiz, to cre­ate a more intu­itive form of music nota­tion. They dubbed it “Hum­ming­bird,” and between the two videos on this page and this com­plete ref­er­ence guide, you’ll get a quick feel for the con­cepts under­ly­ing this new way of read­ing music. On the Hum­ming­bird web­site, you can also find 26 songs — every­thing rang­ing from Bach’s “Ode to Joy” to Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train” — rewrit­ten in a for­mat that bud­ding music stu­dents will love.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How a Bach Canon Works. Bril­liant.

85,000 Clas­si­cal Music Scores on the Web

Bob­by McFer­rin Shows the Pow­er of the Pen­ta­ton­ic Scale

Lis­ten­ing to Music (Yale) in Our Col­lec­tion 700 Free Online Cours­es

The Police pulled off the most unlike­ly of musi­cal feats. While sev­er­al bands com­bined the rest­less, raw ener­gy of punk with the rhyth­mic, tune­ful urgency of reg­gae, these guys wrapped it all up in the accom­plished musi­cian­ship and off-kil­ter key changes and shift­ing time sig­na­tures of jazzy prog rock. This had nev­er been done before, and any­one who’s tried it since owes a tremen­dous debt to Sting, Andy Sum­mers, and Stew­art Copeland (no one comes to mind, though). The fact that they were able to retain rock cred­i­bil­i­ty while win­ning pop star­dom and a Gram­my for a rock instru­men­tal (1979’s krautrock-influ­enced “Regat­ta de Blanc”) are all fur­ther tes­ta­ments to the phe­nom­e­nal odd­i­ty that was this band. While I’ve nev­er been much of a fan of Sting’s solo work, The Police have always kind of aston­ished me with their brav­ery and vir­tu­os­i­ty.

And so we come to the act of brav­ery above: in a live appear­ance at Hat­field Poly­tech­nic (now the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hert­ford­shire) in Feb­ru­ary of 1979, the band decides to drop a new, untest­ed song on the enthu­si­as­tic crowd. The song? “Mes­sage in a Bot­tle” from the ’79 album Regat­ta de Blanc, the same record that pro­duced that Gram­my-win­ning title-track instru­men­tal. What’s so brave about that, you ask? There’s often no bet­ter way to try out new mate­r­i­al than in front of an already appre­cia­tive audi­ence. Well, this gig was record­ed for a BBC series called “Rock Goes to Col­lege.” Although The Police were skirt­ing star­dom with the sin­gle “Rox­anne” from their first album, they hadn’t quite made it yet, and their first TV appear­ance was a risky venue for demo­ing a new tune. But they pull it off. The crowd bounces in time and the three Police, who seem on the edge of a mis­take or dropped note some­where, give the song a flaw­less turn.

You can watch the full “Rock Goes to Col­lege” con­cert below, which also includes ear­ly hits like “Can’t Stand Los­ing You” (the open­er) and “Rox­anne” (at 29:45).

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pavarot­ti Sings with Lou Reed, Sting, James Brown and Oth­er Friends

The First Live Per­for­mance of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” (1991)

Two Very Ear­ly Con­cert Films of R.E.M., Live in ‘81 and ‘82

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness