I started noticing this a decade ago.
https://tedium.co/2022/11/09/the-death-of-the-key-change
Here is the story in a single graphic:
I usually think it’s lazy songwriting when a song injects energy by shifting up a half step or a whole step right around the last chorus.
This used to be called a "truck-driver modulation."
We could probably do some charts on the narrowing of tempi, dynamics, melody and so on as well.
7 comments:
I think you're going to find a broadening of tempi over the past ten years, because trap is pushing the bottom end of the tempo all the way down into the low 60s. Melody is using a narrower pitch range but a wider variety of between-the-piano-key pitches, also due to the influence of hip-hop. Dynamics are uniformly loud as hell but at least hip-hop introduces some empty space in the mid frequencies. I guess what I'm trying to say is that all the musical interest in current pop lives in the hip-hop world, as it mostly has since the 1990s.
Thanks, Ethan, for filling in the technical details that I am just not aware of!
Thank you for featuring this phenomenon. The recent trend of pop tunes being written more often by large committees of people ("engineering" the tune even before it's even recorded, in a way) doesn't seem to be helping.
We've been collecting all genres of modulating tunes for over a decade. Certainly, an unscientific endeavor -- but the vast majority of them aren't number one hits; many are more obscure album tracks and not top charting songs whatsoever.
http://modulationoftheday.com
I'd direct your attention to a recent song by Lana del Rey, called "Textbook". Surprising in that it incorporates several contrasting tempi, and while each section seems to be at least in a related key, there's some contrast there too. Pretty unusual to my ears.
I would think the demise of modulation would come from guitarists not mastering all the keys on the one hand, and pianists following suit. Most guitarists I've known in my life don't want to play in E flat major or E flat minor without using either a capo or scordatura.
It seems like modulation is a case where those who can do, and so so with ease, and those who can't avoid it like every kind of plague. No one will hear modulations in U2 songs whereas Stevie Wonder ends "Golden Lady" and "Summer Soft" with rapid and progressive or surreal continual modulations. Usually I can't stand the truck-driver modulations that happen in more pop choral arrangements but I get why they happen. Adds momentum. The surreal modulations of William Harris' Faire is the Heaven have programmatic ends (if you know the piece you know what they are). The modulation in "Man in the Mirror", I think, works well, kind of like how the unresolved neapolitan harmony in "Living for the City" is more potent than ending on the tonic as Wonder sometimes did in live performances.
Variations of the unresolved plagal cadence in pop music could/should be a post all unto itself but I'm trying to resist blogging for the rest of 2022 because of some IRL stuff.
Hello Bryan. I just discovered your blog & it's been pleasant to read through it as we have similar opinions on many things.
I also dislike the truck driver modulation as it's often used in a way that doesn't match the established mood of the song. Takes away the pathos IMO.
Doubly worse when it occurs in a song I really like up to that point (ex. that Beatles song And I Love Her)
Wenathchee, there was a brief period in my early life where I played rhythm guitar in a big band and their arrangements were all in horrible keys like B flat and E flat. I still remember the first chord in the first tune I played with then: E flat 13th, flat 5th, flat ninth. Ewwwww! So it can be done. There is that very challenging study by Fernando Sor in B flat and pieces by Torroba and Ponce (one of the preludes) in F minor. But yeah, mostly unpleasant keys for guitarists and they really put your left hand through a workout.
But it's not just guitarists: you might notice that many violin concertos are in the very favorable keys of D major and G major.
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