Laces Out!

Hello everyone.

Here's something i found a little interesting in Tom Petty's "Freefallin", and U2's "Stuck in a Moment." First, I figured out what I believed the climax to be and found the ratio that the ratio was a little lower than what we have been looking for. I than calculated where the climax would have to be in order for it to work out, and what I found was that in "Freefallin" it would have to be at 153 seconds, and in "Stuck in a Moment". it would have to be at 169 seconds. What is interesting is that both of these songs follow a similar pattern. A few verses, a chorus, an instrumental period, then precisely at the "Fibonacci second" the singer starts the slower, dramatic verse. After thinkin about Brante's post, I realized that is the point in a live performance where the crowd will be going crazy, so that could also technically be considered a climax. Go ahead check it out.

another type of music

hey guys...and recently gal.

so what kind of music do you like? ...well, anything but country. We've all heard this conversation before. And while this may be one of the most universally used and agreed on statements, there have been plenty of country artists who have managed to slip there way into pop culture. John Denver is certainly among those in that category. And the first song i think of is Take Me Home Country Roads.

Duration- 193 seconds
Climax- 120.

That gives us 1.608, right around the ratio we are looking for. I'm going to look for more of this with some other country/pop artists.

The King of Pop

I've been going through a lot of my Michael Jackson collection (yes, it is a lot!) and I came across the hit song "Wanna Be Starting Something" This song has a long dramatic climax that lasts almost 15 seconds. The golden section appears halfway through that climax, making this a song to add to the list!

duration: 363
climax (mid section): 226

363/226 = 1.606 which is pretty close to the golden section...because this is the middle of the climax, the exact golden section definitely appears at some point during it.

JUMP!

In the tremendously well known (and sweet) Van Halen song JUMP, which is off the album "1984"...Eddie Van Halen begins a dramatic keyboard solo at 2:31 seconds in. The song is 4:03 in length:


243 / 151 = 1.6093

This example is purely instrumental and has no singing at all during the climax. However, if you watch the music video you can see some great hair-bouncing and jumping from David Lee Roth, which is always a plus...

Pop Music Example?

As I thought of different popular bands of the current music era, I thought of All American Rejects and their very popular song "Move Along", which i have heard on the radio numerous times in the past couple of days alone..

The song is 4:02 in length and at 2:32 into it, a instrumental of piano that is much quieter than the rest of the song begins. I would argue this is the climax of the song. 242 / 152 = 1.592, which is close to the fibonacci sequence. Here in lies my question...

I feel as if an interesting topic for debate. When a noticeable difference in the speed of a song occurs, for instance a fast song that has a slow verse around the time of the climax such as Move Along, does the beginning of the slow verse mark the climax or does the end of it? At the end of the piano instrumental(which does have words sung during it, at a much slower pace than the song's previous pace) the lead singer screams loudly and marks the beginning of the fast pace of the song again, which could arguably also be called the climax. Also, does the climax have to be exclusively instrumental, with no lyrics at all?

Buffalo Springfield

"For What It's Worth" is the song of the day by Buffalo Springfield. The song is a classic Vietnam era song, you'd recognize as soon as you hear it if the title is not familiar to you. It's on the Forrest Gump soundtrack as well as on any classic rock station, probably daily.

Duration: 160 seconds
Climax: 97 seconds, the chorus starts that leads into some picking

160 by 97 gives you a ratio of 1.6495.

The Boss

"Where the Bands Are" by the legendary Bruce Springsteen is my next song. Being from NJ, Bruce is one of my favorite artists and it seems like most people from NJ love him as well. I saw this thing on CNN awhile where they asked people if Bruce ran for Senate, they vote for him. A surprising number said yes despite Bruce's only involvement in politics are the power his songs have.

Getting to the song, its off 18 Tracks which is basically a composition of songs that Bruce had written for other albums but did not make the album. There are some real gems on it.

Duration: 225 seconds
Climax: 141 seconds starts "And I want something that'll break my chains"

225 by 141 is 1.5957 which is close enough as per our criteria.