Critical Analysis of composition, performance and production techniques used in Sweet Home Alabama a

Sweet Home Alabama is a song recorded by the southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd which was released in 1974 on their second album "Second Helping". The song is in the key of G Major and the genre of the is known as Southern Rock. The song was made in response to "Southern Man" and "Alabama", which dealt with themes of racism and slavery in the American South. Ronnie Van Zant felt that the lyrics featured in those two songs were an attack on the whole of the south so the whole theme of the song is about pride of where they're from.

My response to the song is usually a good response because it makes me feel rather happy due to the guitar solos which use both melodic blues lines in the E minor pentatonic Blues scale and the G major pentatonic scale which is a very sweet sounding scale when used in solos which Lynyrd Skynyrd do in a lot of their songs. The relative minor of G major, the key used to play the solo, is E minor meaning that the two keys have the same key signature. The song is played in wrong key, its played in G major when it should have been played in D major. To maybe improve this song they could have played the guitar solo in the right key even though the timbre of the guitar solo is perfect with the slight overdrive to help add dynamics while the rhythm guitars have a cleaner tone. I like the bridge played before the second verse and played after the main solo, its essenitally a new melody but it sticks to the chord changes which are D, C9 and G. It helps to add texture and dynamics because the song mainly sticks to the same chords throughout the song, so to grab the attention of the listener they decided to add more dynamics by creating new melodies, however to maybe improve the track the band could have used some more chords. This could have added more dynamics and structure to the song instead of using the same chords. I still believe though that the song with only 4 chords is great because by adding more chords it could have been roo muchfor the song and sometimes, less is more therefore by only using 4 chords it just it nice and simple and makes it easy for the listener to enjoy the song The 3 chords, D, C9 & G, are the main chords which are played in every section. F is another chord which is played before the first solo at the very end of the first Chorus and is played in the third verse.

The song contains a lot of instrumentation which adds a good amount of texture, therefore due to the mass amount of instrumentation, 4 guitar tracks, bass guitar, drums, piano, lead vocals and mulitple backing vocals, this results in instruments playing different melodies to each other instead of staying on the same chords. As a result of these different melodies which are played by the guitars and the other instruments, but with main focus on the guitars, harmony is created with the different guitar tracks. There is an acoustic guitar, and the rest are electric but one has overdrive whilst the other two are clean. They're also panned to different sides which was good in terms of production in this song. The song doesn't have a very clean sound, its quite raw. You could call this a fault and a need for improvement but the time it was recorded could be the result of its raw production, I personally see it's raw production as a good thing which adds a somewhat character to the record. The chords aren't aggressive and the timbre of the guitar is clean and the lyrics aren't really that aggressive. They talk about pride therefore they're happy when they speak about where they come from. The chords are all major chords so you could relate that to the theme of pride, its a somewhat statement that they're happy and proud so the major chords help to reiterate the lyrics.

The song only uses major chords which resulted in me feeling ubeat therefore I enjoy the song whenever I listen to it. One of the reasons which makes this song so successful is due to its catchy chorus which usually has a crowd singing in unison. That was one of the main reasons why my band decided to choose the song due to its popularity and how its a crowd pleaser which everybody knows.

This was the main reason why we picked the song "Holiday" by the Pop-Punk band Green Day which was released on their 7th studio album "American Idiot". It's a real crowd pleaser and the crowd always like to shout the lyrics out at the bridge therefore we know that the audience like the song. The song is in the key of F minor and it is a quite aggressive song. The song makes you want to essentially rock out due to the guitar melodies which are powerful and catchy. Its distorted guitar is raw and it relfects the nature of the lyrics which are politically driven. The melodies played within the song help to reiterate Billie Joe Armstrong's points which are in the lyrics. The song is essentially a protest song, an anit-war song, so to get there points across they use power, power in terms of distorted guitars, lyrics and the bridge which Armstrong hoped to be as "twisted as possible," was designed as a "politician's worst nightmare."

The song is good because it uses a melody in the intro which also slightly changes during the intro which is the main part to the verse. It adds texture to song which is important and therefore results in me liking it because songs have to have elements of strong structure and texture to intrigue the audience. This song overall has a dynamic range of structure and use of chords therefore in my opinion it makes this song a good solid song.

One of my favourite parts of the song is the bridge where it's just the bass guitar and drums. I think thats a really good way to help add dynamics to a song. There are only so many times you can keep playing the same chords with all the instruments within the song but to reduce some of the instrumentation resuslts in more deepth and structure to the song for less is more.

The time signature is 4/4. 12 notes = 4 triplet eights. The song has a simple yet effective rhythm section which works very well.

The production is very good because it manages to capture all of the instrumentation and the tones for the guitars and bass are powerful like what punk should be. Though I feel that it is a little over produced and I would change all of the instrumentations production to give it a raw punk feel. All of the classic punk albums, Damaged by Black Flag/Bad Brains by Bad Brains/Suicidal Tendencies by Suicidal Tendencies, all manage to capture the bands raw and powerful sound and philosophy which I feel would have helped to make 'Holiday' a much better song than it is. When it comes to punk as a whole, I feel that over produced isn't exactly punk, even if it's pop punk like Blink 182 they still have a good blend of what a punk record should sound like with its raw sound and overall good production. Raw is usually not clean and has some distortion but i assoicate raw with pure power that you can feel the band deliever. It never quite delievers with 'Holiday', I mean it is a pretty raw sound when compared to other genres of music and when compared to 'Sweet Home Alabama' it is pretty raw but when compared to punk or other pop punk artists like Blink 182 it isn't as powerful. I believe that there needs to be the right blend when it comes to punk. The song 'Soul Craft' or the whole album 'Quickness' as a matter of fact by Bad Brains manages to get the right blend of power and precision for each intrument which are easily heard without issue. When albums manage to do this I think it's great but it really depends on what genre it is, having a raw sound wouldn't suit artists like Steely Dan who go for the clean route in terms of production so it usually depends on what type of band you are and punk is best when its gritty and pure powerful to shock and support the lyrics within each song.

As a whole I think the track is good and it is powerful but if it was a bit more raw and dirty in terms of the sound then it would have been a lot better but don't get me wrong, its a great song for the audience.