thedailywhat:

Prank Artist of the Day: Are You Taking Video?

A clever troll takes video footage of his friends while they patiently wait for him to take their photograph.

(via brianoelle)

lerchesondre:

oneweekoneband:

       Ricochet

When Sondre Lerche’s self-titled album came out, I was living in New York on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. I downloaded the album after I got home from work, put it on my iPod, and went for a walk. I needed to just walk around by myself and listen all the way through (I also did this when Red leaked last year and I walked around my college campus at 1am and cried). I remember stepping out of my building onto 106^th street when the opening of “Ricochet” played. “Wouldn’t it be nice if we were close”. It was very exciting to have new Sondre music, and opening up with an allusion to a Beach Boys song was almost more than I could take.

Sondre Lerche is possibly my least favorite SL record (we’ll talk more about that later this week), but “Ricochet” is one of his most beautiful songs. Today, I’m going to briefly discuss how I see his use of harmony in the song, and how his pastiche of musical clichés keeps this song concise and interesting as well as reflecting the character of the song.

“Ricochet” does not have a standard Verse/Chorus form. Instead, it strings together different chord progressions without one feeling more important than any other. Each of these sections is in D major, and uses different stock progressions and cadences to keep the feeling of D major very strong.

  

The opening is built from a standard IV-V-I chord progression. When it’s repeated, the I is replaced by a vi, making it a simple deceptive cadence. From there, though, this section gets more interesting. We move to a Gadd6 chord, which can be read as an E minor (ii) in first inversion. This moves to the iii chord. When this progression repeats, the F# minor is replaced by a G# half-diminished, which would imply a move to A, the V chord, but we descend back to Gadd6 instead, then to Em, then to tonic.

 

The next section begins on B minor, the relative minor of our key, D major. From B minor the bass moves chromatically down to A# for a D augmented chord, a typical chromatic descent from the vi chord. Normally, however, this would continue to the V chord. But here, Lerche inserts the leading tone chord of A first, the G# half-diminished, and then goes to A, the V chord. It is implied that this should lead back to tonic, but it first repeats the whole phrase, and then cadences properly to tonic for the next section.

 

In this third section, we begin again on tonic. This then moves to a major II chord, still keeping the tonic in the bass. Normally, a move like this would be followed by the V chord in first inversion, resolving the seventh of the II7 chord down to the third of the V chord, but here the V is played in root position. It is then altered to become a V augmented chord, leading back to tonic.

 

The fourth section feels the most different from the rest. This is mainly because the rhythm changes and the melody takes on more of a folky character, utilizing cliché pentatonic phrases, but also because of the introduction of a new note, C natural. The section begins on tonic and then goes to a D7 chord, turning tonic into the V7 of IV. This is followed by IV then resolves back to I. On the repeat, however, I7 is replaced by the minor v. Because of the inclusion of C natural, these chords function similarly. After the A minor, we move to IV, then ii, then I, which recalls the cadences in the second half of Section 1.

 

In the final section, during a wordless chorus, we get a circular four-chord progression. The bass moves in a simple ||:1-4-3-2:|| motion, emphasizing the D major scale. The chords above this move from I to iv to I in first inversion and then to ii. This then repeats as the song looses steam and fades out.

What’s particularly interesting about these simple chord progressions is how narrow it makes the harmonic scope of the song. Each section continues to emphasize D major, but by switching up the harmonic rhythm and by using different cadences, we don’t grow bored by this. Each use of an “out” chord is replicated somewhere else. The A# in Section 2 becomes the Bb of the G minor chord in Section 5. The G# in Sections 1 and 2 reappears as the major 3^rd of the II7 chord is Section 3. And the C of the D7 chord in Section 5 is repurposed in the A minor chord of the same section. This gives the song a very concise feeling harmonically.

Most importantly, this emphasizes the lyrical themes. The song is about someone who is haunted by a past lover. Someone who wants to move on, but can’t. The narrator sings that, “Now and then you reappear/Out of nowhere/Like some ricochet” (HEY THAT’S THE NAME OF THE SONG!) This strong tie to D major reflects this feeling. For all the harmonic tricks he tries to pull, each progression inevitably ends up back at tonic. He tries different melodic contours or different rhythms, different cadences, but it always comes back to tonic. He “cannot turn this ship around”.

Wow - I seem so smart!

kaleocruze:

Supra with balls.

black-stilletos:

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