Hey Darlin' Song Analysis

Our Second original song is a number called Hey Darlin', named by kit, which started off as me jamming with some bass chords. I learnt how to play these Minor 7 chords, minus the 5th, by watching a video of Victor Wooten explaining tapping on the bass. I quickly came up with a small groove that Jack, Rowan and Marco quickly picked up on and we went from there.

This is the structure for the song. The x1, for example, means the amount of bars.

Intro x4

Will 8 beats

Verse x8

Chorus x4

Verse 2 x6

Chorus x4

Bridge x4

Verse (Half a Bar)

Chorus x4

Chorus x4

This song has a some what jazz and soul feel to it. Again you could say its similar to neo soul, it has lots of typical instrumentation which features within neo soul. Keys, drums, bass, guitar, soulful vocals and rapping. A key feature of neo soul music is the drums and bass locking in with each whilst the bass plays smooth melodic lines and the drums really push. The drums in the first verse play a normal beat with the kick landing on the 1st beat, the high-hat on the off beat and the snare landing on the 2nd beat. The high-hat plays in the off beat. In the chorus the drums start to push, it sounds great when I compliment the drums by grooving with the kick drum which pushes. It has a hip hop feel due to the amount of pushes, this is similar to most hip hop beats. The drums stay the same after the chorus and don't change back to the original drums in the first verse.

The song contains a lot of minor 7 chords. As I briefly mentioned before, I learnt these chords by watching a Victor Wooten video on tapping where he briefly showed the chords that he would use for tapping. The song only contains 2 major chords therefore it gives the track a very mysterious some what relaxed feel. The bridge is my favourite part of the song. Bridges usually complete change in direction and I feel that we did a good job when it came to writing this part. The bridge is a descending sequence of Minor 7 chords which starts with Bb Minor 7 and reaches G Minor 7. We then quickly ascend back through the chords until we reach Bb Minor 7 which starts right back on the first beat of the new bar.

These are all of the chords we used within Hey Darlin'.

Verse:

C Minor 7

B Minor 7

G Minor 7

A Minor 7

A# Minor 7

Chorus.

G Minor 7

Eb Major

F Minor

Eb Major

C Minor

Bridge

Bb Minor 7

A Minor 7

G# Minor 7

G Minor 7

The song contains Kit rapping. He does this in most of our songs if not all. Him and Charlotte really manage to compliment each other with Kit's raps and lead vocals and Charlotte's lead vocals which brings a sense of balance between the two. Charlotte is able to hit higher notes while Kit is able to singer at a lower frequency resulting in the two vocalists harmonising with one another. They manage to harmonise within Hey Darlin', this takes place in the chorus.

You can hear in my bass part, http://15001801.wix.com/wills-music1-blog#!demo-recordings/ozqbk, for this song that I took influence from bassists such as Les Claypool, Marcus Miller, Victor Wooten and Tal Wilkenfeld who incorporate lots of bass chords in their own music.